Handwriting by Hand is better

A new study, which I also read about in The Atlantic today, along with the Fallows article, highlights a new study that showed students remembering a lecture better if they took notes by hand, rather than typing them on a laptop:

To Remember a Lecture Better, Take Notes by Hand Students do worse on quizzes when they use keyboards in class.
ROBINSON MEYER
MAY 1 2014, 1:35 PM ET


There is a corollary to this when it comes to learning the Chinese language - handwriting is better.

Pinyin on the QWERTY keyboard has been an amazing development. I remember listening to my dad (who was a bit of a computer geek) back in the day talk about the developments going on to figure out how to type Chinese into a computer. There were so many variations being tried. But now we have it. It's awesome.

But as I've come to appreciate while escorting my child through MI programs and the very new, very modern availabilities of word-processing in Chinese (which I've had to painstakingly learn, myself), there are pitfalls. The biggest one I see is the lack of attachment to the characters.

I have to thank my child's kindergarten MI teacher for warning me about this properly. Having raised her then 10-year-old child, and as a professional early childhood educator, she explained to me the importance of "attaching" to the characters. This was not a concept I heard about as a kid. I grew up the "old fashioned way" with the 10x10 at home and then Saturday Chinese school.

We didn't have technology. So we had to do things "by hand." But I see now how important that was to form my own "muscle memory." And that has made things a lot easier for me, as an adult, in re-capturing dormant skills from my child brain, not to mention having retained a lot.

Doing it "by hand" is so important to learning the Chinese characters. Pinyin is important, but it can become a crutch. Plus, the formation of "muscle memory" is critical. My child is 8 years old. But the hard work of "by hand" that happened from ages 5-7 has produced handwriting that is fluid and confident. Even when learning new characters, the "eye" for deconstructing them has been formed. So characters are written more quickly, with far less struggle. Less struggle on this front means effort can be put to other areas.

Sometimes "old school" really is better.