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The importance of handwriting is now better understood

economist.com

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Re: The importance of handwriting is now better understood

#81

Post by hiAndrewQuinn »

eviks wrote: post #62

> One of the best-demonstrated advantages of writing by hand seems to be in superior note-taking. In a study from 2014 by Pam Mueller and Danny Oppenheimer, students typing wrote down almost twice as many words and more passages verbatim from lectures, suggesting they were not understanding so much as rapidly copying the material. > Handwriting—which takes longer for nearly all university-level students—forces note-t…

I'm pretty sure I could handily beat any handwriting fan in "synthesizing ideas into their own words" if professors provided small Anki decks of their material after class. Sadly I've never heard of anyone doing this.

Re: The importance of handwriting is now better understood

#82

Post by Swizec »

pcdandy wrote: post #65

I think the real problem with handwriting is the way it has been thought in school. Growing up in mid 2000s Australia, I recall it being thought largely as a rote learning exercise in which one repeats the same letters over and over again without much context, which isn't a particularly exciting thing to do. (On the other hand I quickly learned to type fast as I enjoyed playing games + writing personal documents on m…

> Growing up in mid 2000s Australia, I recall it being thought largely as a rote learning exercise in which one repeats the same letters over and over again without much context, which isn't a particularly exciting thing to do

Growing up in 90’s and early 2000’s Slovenia, this sounds strange to me. Yes we learned handwriting by rote repetition of letters in the first few months of first grade. But then we started writing real things.

Even in college we were still expected to write essay answers on a piece of paper by hand. In high school we wrote entire essays – up to 1500 words – by hand at school for our literature exams. All our notes in class were handwritten at every level of schooling.

Laptops started becoming a thing in college and most people quickly realized digital note-taking is far too clunky. You need the expressiveness and speed of handwriting to truly capture an idea.

Hell even today I always have a notebook next to my keyboard when I work. The seamless transition between writing, drawing, and scribbling is unparalleled.

Re: The importance of handwriting is now better understood

#83

Post by wrp »

Although TFA is about the psychological aspect of handwriting, this subject usually draws comment on the learning of handwriting. As a counterpoint to some typical comments, I'll point out that handwriting is a motor skill and that it is subject to the same constraints as developing any other motor skill. When speculating on the value of some approach, consider how well it would work for some other motor skill like tennis or woodcarving.

Re: The importance of handwriting is now better understood

#84

Post by binaryprimate »

progbits wrote: post #80
jmkd wrote: post #32

If your handwriting looks good and gives satisfaction you will do it more. It truly helps embodying thoughts and ideas, and provides another significant layer (like flavour in a recipe) of learning and understanding. I was fortunate to be taught Marion Richardson [0] style handwriting aged 8 or so, and decades years later my handwriting is still universally complimented. I hand write letters for pleasure and take not…

> It truly helps embodying thoughts and ideas I agree the act of writing things out helps. But I strongly disagree this is specific to handwriting. Typing things out has the same effect.

https://www.psychologytoday.com/intl/blog/the-athletes-way/2...

"New research from Johns Hopkins University (JHU) suggests that handwriting practice refines fine-tuned motor skills and creates a perceptual-motor experience that appears to help adults learn generalized literacy-related skills "surprisingly faster and significantly better" than if they tried to learn the same material by typing on a keyboard or watching videos."

Re: The importance of handwriting is now better understood

#85

Post by eviks »

edgyquant wrote: post #72
eviks wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So you only need to slow a person down to achieve the same effect, what's the value of handwriting?

The mechanical motion involved, physically putting your thoughts down. It isn’t the same as typing at all where you just click a button, having to motion the letters and words is surely worth something in itself.

You don't click a button, you touch it with your fingers in a mechanical motion physicality putting your thoughts down, the letters and words, there is no learning-related conceptual "surely", just the fact that it's less efficient to do and redo, which in the poorly designed lecture situations can force you to stop and think instead of doing dumb transcribing

Re: The importance of handwriting is now better understood

#86

Post by hknmtt »

tejohnso wrote: post #51
squirrel6 wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am left-handed and the Energel has totally changed my life— it’s the best pen I’ve ever had. I have recently come to believe Pentel is (pardon the cliche) the Apple of writing instruments. They’ve simply PM’d the hell out of their product over time, and it really shows.

Lefty here as well. I always preferred the precision and consistency of a 0.5mm mechanical pencil over any type of pen. The option to easily erase a mistake is pretty nice. And the option to write from very faint to fairly heavy comes in handy.

you could try pilot frixion that uses ink that you can erase with rubber end of the pen because the ink is heat-sensitive.

Re: The importance of handwriting is now better understood

#87

Post by almostnormal »

binaryprimate wrote: post #84
progbits wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It truly helps embodying thoughts and ideas I agree the act of writing things out helps. But I strongly disagree this is specific to handwriting. Typing things out has the same effect.

https://www.psychologytoday.com/intl/blog/the-athletes-way/2... "New research from Johns Hopkins University (JHU) suggests that handwriting practice refines fine-tuned motor skills and creates a perceptual-motor experience that appears to help adults learn generalized literacy-related skills "surprisingly faster and significantly better" than if they tried to learn the same material by typing on a keyboard or watchin…

From that same link:

"After six learning sessions, everyone in the video watching and type-writing group had learned the Arabic alphabet and could identify each of its 28 letters. However, people in the handwriting group—who used pen and paper to write each letter during their learning sessions—gained the same level of proficiency after just two learning sessions."

Replace handwriting with any other activity. It is probably the same. Doing something helps learning faster than just watching.

Re: The importance of handwriting is now better understood

#88

Post by eviks »

davemp wrote: post #69
eviks wrote: post #62

> One of the best-demonstrated advantages of writing by hand seems to be in superior note-taking. In a study from 2014 by Pam Mueller and Danny Oppenheimer, students typing wrote down almost twice as many words and more passages verbatim from lectures, suggesting they were not understanding so much as rapidly copying the material. > Handwriting—which takes longer for nearly all university-level students—forces note-t…

Not sure I agree. Most of my classes had recorded lectures and good notes from the TAs, but I still found taking hand written notes to be helpful. I even tried switch to a laptop then switched back after less than a semester.

Unfortunately, anecdote vs data

Re: The importance of handwriting is now better understood

#90

Post by eviks »

hiAndrewQuinn wrote: post #81
eviks wrote: post #62

> One of the best-demonstrated advantages of writing by hand seems to be in superior note-taking. In a study from 2014 by Pam Mueller and Danny Oppenheimer, students typing wrote down almost twice as many words and more passages verbatim from lectures, suggesting they were not understanding so much as rapidly copying the material. > Handwriting—which takes longer for nearly all university-level students—forces note-t…

I'm pretty sure I could handily beat any handwriting fan in "synthesizing ideas into their own words" if professors provided small Anki decks of their material after class. Sadly I've never heard of anyone doing this.

Yeah, maybe in a couple of professor generations we'll get to some novel use of all this new tech
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