Andy’s Quick Hits (65): Writing by Hand Turbocharges Learning

Photo 55746025 / Handwriting © Ivan Kruk | Dreamstime.com

We’re in a day and age where many things are done digitally and we have become used to access to all sorts of learning programmes digitally and through handheld devices. So you may wonder do we actually need to write anything by hand anymore? Should kids even be learning this and how much time should we spend doing this?

Well, this is the question Robert Wiley and Brenda Rapp of John Hopkins University asked and they took a group of 42 adults and proceeded to teach them letters of the Arabic alphabet in three different ways: through typing, through watching video, and through handwriting.

Hand-writing letters shown to be best technique for learning to read

What were the results?

Well, the results were dramatic. After six sessions everyone could recognise the letters and made few mistakes when tested but the handwriting group was significantly faster in learning, some taking as little as two sessions to get to this level of proficiency. Up to three times faster!

Next they checked on transference: could this learning of letters transfer to identifying them in new contexts…