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Handwriting is better than typing when learning a new language, study finds

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Re: Handwriting is better than typing when learning a new language, study finds

#91

Post by pkaye »

elliekelly wrote: post #59
axaxs wrote: post #40

I can believe it. I firmly believe the brain acts very differently between typing and handwriting. I make stupid mistakes all the time when I type. Not misspelling, but those easy there/their/theyre type mistakes. I think it's because I'm just mindlessly trying to express my opinion as fast as possible. I don't write nearly as much as I type, but I've never made such a mistake when writing. Somewhere between the slow…

I think there’s a certain “muscle memory” involved. When you’re writing a word by hand you have to think about each letter, however briefly, as you write it: “w-o-r-d”. But when you’re typing a word you don’t think about each letter so much as you think about the pattern your fingers need to make, if that makes sense? It’s like when someone asks what the keyboard shortcut is to take a screenshot. Uh, I don’t know? I…

In college I used to handwrite out all my notes and prepare cheat sheets for tests but I would never refer back to them. Just the action of writing them out helped me to remember things much better than my normally lousy memory.

Re: Handwriting is better than typing when learning a new language, study finds

#94

Post by makeitdouble »

asciimov wrote: post #60
dahfizz wrote: post #15

I wish they would do studies like this with children / teenagers. In an adult, handwriting is going to be ingrained in their brain because they have been doing it their whole life. It is a part of the language processing their brain does, and it makes sense that tapping in to that helps their brain learn faster. I want to see if the same is true for children who type way more than they handwrite. Is there something i…

> I wish they would do studies like this with children / teenagers. They have. I don't have said studies in front of me. But the gist of it seems to be that typing is a quicker lower process skill (pushing a button), where as handwriting is a slower higher intensive process, (thinking about the letters you write). My opinion is that physical note taking, when not transcribing, requires you to process the information…

I'm not sure there are much variety.

For context, there is long debate between schools/parents who think keeping handwriting at school is a waste of time, and those who argue it is primordial to learning. And it's not just theoretical, some schools are really pushing hard one direction or the other.

While I don't completely agree with the first camp, most studies done by the second camp are focused on how copying stuff during lectures brings better retention when handwritten compared to typed.

My issue with that view is that copying lectures on a computer is mildly stupid in the first place. Why don't they share the slides and text and let the students focus on hearing and understanding the lecture instead ? Ideally they don't need any notes except for future reference on numbers, names or formulas.

Students should be typing to produce content on their own, not to transcribe speeches. If learning has to happen on computers, IMO it needs to be done differently and not just an ersatz of what we were doing with pen, paper and blackboards. That reflection is already happening in some way, it just has nothing to do with the political fights around removing hand writing from school.

Re: Handwriting is better than typing when learning a new language, study finds

#95

Post by likpok »

zsmi wrote: post #82
csa wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. Schools stopped teaching it (even many “good” schools). People largely don’t use it except for signatures. I personally switched to block letters a long time ago because I can’t read my own cursive when I am writing quickly. My penmanship sucks.

> Schools stopped teaching it Wow. Do kids not have hand written assignments anymore? I can't even imagine having to write out, say a 5 page essay, in block letters by hand.

I don't think schools (in the US) have been requiring handwritten assignments (of any length) for decades at this point.

Re: Handwriting is better than typing when learning a new language, study finds

#96

Post by HKH2 »

cromwellian wrote: post #76

This is definitely true I found for learning Chinese characters. Using Pinyin input to do everything results in character amnesia, by drilling on writing the characters makes it easier to recall them when you see them next time.

The other extreme, like at my university, is to drill writing everything (and cover less-interesting topics like telling the time, and almost useless words like '雙胞胎' - how many twins are there in China, Confucius Institute?!)

I suspect most of your problem comes from trying to read isolated characters.

Re: Handwriting is better than typing when learning a new language, study finds

#97

Post by retsibsi »

The volunteers who wrote by hand learned unfamiliar letters more quickly, and did better on some related tasks after a small number of alphabet lessons: 'naming letters, writing letters, spelling words, and reading words'. It's not very surprising that physically forming a set of symbols will get their shapes into your head quicker than simply pressing the corresponding buttons. But that doesn't tell us much about any potential benefits beyond this very early, low-level learning.

Learning higher-level features of the language (and even growing your vocabulary, once you've got past the point where letter shapes are a stumbling block) could just as easily be slowed down by handwriting, for the same reasons that it apparently helps in the complete beginner phase -- it forces you to slow down and expend more effort on the low-level task of letter formation.

Re: Handwriting is better than typing when learning a new language, study finds

#99

Post by danans »

Of the six languages I have studied (including Arabic as described in the article), not one of the programs have included using a keyboard, but then again I studied the last of these well over a decade ago.

I am surprised keyboards would be used, especially for a language like Arabic whose writing system is inherently "cursive" and pretty deeply tied to the language's cultural identity.

Is computer keyboard based language learning actually a significant thing these days?

Re: Handwriting is better than typing when learning a new language, study finds

#100

Post by echelon »

wenc wrote: post #63
elliekelly wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think there’s a certain “muscle memory” involved. When you’re writing a word by hand you have to think about each letter, however briefly, as you write it: “w-o-r-d”. But when you’re typing a word you don’t think about each letter so much as you think about the pattern your fingers need to make, if that makes sense? It’s like when someone asks what the keyboard shortcut is to take a screenshot. Uh, I don’t know? I…

That's a neat observation. Each handwritten letter requires distinct motor skills (manipulating pen angles, pressure etc.), whereas each keyboard-typed letter requires a much smaller set of nearly identical motor skills (just a "tap").

It goes beyond that, I think. As you're planning what to write, you come up with shorthand because it's hard to keep up with a speaker by hand. Summarizing requires much more active listening, analysis, and synthesis. There's a lot more going on in your brain than when typing.
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