The pen is mightier…

…than the keyboard.

Hello all. Welcome to the 167th edition of TEPS Weekly!

Can you recognise these letters?

You may not be fully sure about every single one, but you can probably identify many of them. Why? Because your brain has not stored letters only as perfect printed forms. When it sees a long straight line, a curve at the top and a short line cutting through the middle, it recognises these as the general features of a lowercase f. The curve may not be curved enough, the line shaky, the stroke placed far below its correct position, but your brain still knows, “This is probably an f.”

How does it know this? Because of the practice you have given it over many years. You have seen various forms of this letter in books, children’s notebooks, worksheets, signboards and different digital fonts. You have also written this letter by hand many, many times. Each time, the letter looked slightly different – sometimes tall, curved, tilted or uneven. Your brain knows the general features, so some errors don’t matter. So, we see here that practice of reading and writing make it easier for you to recognise letters quickly.

The main question that this article aims to answer is broader: Which is better for learning – writing by hand or typing?

Writing vs. Typing in the Foundational Years

Let’s start with breaking down the simple act of writing versus typing the lowercase letter r:

• When a child WRITES the lowercase r, her brain practises many things together. It thinks of the sound /r/, connects it to the letter r, recalls what lowercase r looks like, moves her hand in the correct way to form it, and then sees the slightly-incorrectly written letter on the page. Writing by hand activates, exercises and connects the sound, letter, shape, movement and the general written form of the letter in the brain.

When the child TYPES the lowercase r, her brain practises different things. She thinks of the sound /r/, connects it to the letter R, looks for the capital R key on the keyboard, presses the key, and then sees the perfectly-typed letter r on the screen, which looks very different from the capital letter R that she pressed. Typing activates, exercises and connects the sound, the capital form of the letter, keyboard location, finger movement and the perfect, typed form of the letter in the brain.

A child who learns by writing activates, exercises and connects different parts of the brain than a child who learns by typing. 

This is not just theory. Here is an image from the paper The Neuroscience Behind Writing: Handwriting vs. Typing — Who Wins the Battle? It highlights the areas of the brain that are activated when we write versus when we type, based on several brain imaging studies.

At the first glance, we can see that writing also activates more areas of the brain than typing does. But that is not all. These brain imaging studies have confirmed that writing by hand activates areas linked to movement, touch, vision and language. Typing, on the other hand, seems to use the brain differently – it activates areas linked to memory (to remember where the keys are) and control (to choose the right key to press). 

Research has also shown that writing by hand creates stronger connections between different parts of the brain, especially areas linked to movement, vision and processing information. And this is important because learning depends on the brain forming multiple, strong connections in long-term memory. [You can learn more about this in the TEPS Course How the Mind Learns.] So, the benefits of writing by hand are not limited to helping the brain recognise letters more easily – it actually helps build ‘the learning brain’. 

Writing vs. Typing in the Primary, Middle and Secondary Years

As students move out of foundational years and into higher grades, the focus shifts from ‘learning to read and write’ to ‘reading and writing to learn’. Students are now expected to understand, remember (read) and explain (write) more complex ideas in Science, Social Science, Mathematics, Languages and other subjects.

In these grades, students are expected to take notes in class. So, what is the difference in learning when students write notes by hand versus type notes on a laptop?

A Grade 5 teacher is teaching the concept of photosynthesis. She says, “Photosynthesis is the process through which green plants use sunlight, carbon dioxide and water to prepare food and release oxygen.”

Typing is faster than writing, especially for a student who has had a lot of practice. So, a student typing notes may type: Photosynthesis is the process through which green plants use sunlight, carbon dioxide & water to prepare food & release oxygen.

At first, this seems like an advantage because typing allows students to record exact and many more words quickly as the teacher explains the topic. However, ‘exact words’ and ‘more words’ ≠ ‘better learning’. Research by Mueller and Oppenheimer showed that students who typed notes were more likely to copy the teacher’s words directly. They recorded information, but did not always process it deeply. To understand this, let’s compare it with a student who writes notes by hand.

Writing by hand is slower. A student cannot write every word the teacher says, so she has to make choices. She has to think: “What is the main idea here? What information is the most important? What can I leave out?” This difficulty is actually useful for learning. When a student writes notes by hand, she is not only copying information. She is listening, selecting, organising and summarising. She has to change the teacher’s explanation into her own words through a process called ‘generative note-taking’. This process helps her understand the idea more deeply.

In these grades, students are expected to take notes in class. So, what is the difference in learning when students write notes by hand versus type notes on a laptop?

A Grade 5 teacher is teaching the concept of photosynthesis. She says, “Photosynthesis is the process through which green plants use sunlight, carbon dioxide and water to prepare food and release oxygen.”

Typing is faster than writing, especially for a student who has had a lot of practice. So, a student typing notes may type: Photosynthesis is the process through which green plants use sunlight, carbon dioxide & water to prepare food & release oxygen.

At first, this seems like an advantage because typing allows students to record exact and many more words quickly as the teacher explains the topic. However, ‘exact words’ and ‘more words’ ≠ ‘better learning’. Research by Mueller and Oppenheimer showed that students who typed notes were more likely to copy the teacher’s words directly. They recorded information, but did not always process it deeply. To understand this, let’s compare it with a student who writes notes by hand.

Writing by hand is slower. A student cannot write every word the teacher says, so she has to make choices. She has to think: “What is the main idea here? What information is the most important? What can I leave out?” This difficulty is actually useful for learning. When a student writes notes by hand, she is not only copying information. She is listening, selecting, organising and summarising. She has to change the teacher’s explanation into her own words through a process called ‘generative note-taking’. This process helps her understand the idea more deeply.

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Edition: 5.22