Writing with pen and paper - is it better than typing?

[havocthecat]

Writing SFF With Paper and Pen Spurs Memory and Creativity by R.J. Huneke

While the article has a SFF focus because it's written for the SFWA blog, it's really also about general handwriting and whether it's better. It links to studies and articles on handwriting vs typing.

Personally, I turn to handwriting fic in a notebook when I'm trying to break out of writers block. It's a change of format, for one, and for another, I do then stop getting tempted to scroll through whatever social media site I've got loaded. Also, I do just like handwriting fiction.

So this is definitely a biased site for handwriting because it's journalsandplanners - but really, we're all on Dreamwidth. What do you think?

Comments

[ioplokon]

Well, first and foremost, I had to do an exam in my target language that had a hand-written essay section, so practicing was pretty crucial there in order to get my wpm up.

Even beyond that, though, I do find writing helps for conjugations and declensions, for sure. And also, I think, with general written expression. Part of my issue is that my spelling is quite bad and I'm not good at revising. Handwriting means that I can't rely on spellcheck & so have to actually go back through and check my errors.

[havocthecat]

I think that's a good point about what's frustrating me on modern language practice (aside from the sheer lack of explanation on Duolingo, just, omg), I don't get to write anything out. I think that's probably why it takes so much longer to get in my head. Which I hadn't realized until you mentioned it here!

[ioplokon]

Yeah, also, a lot of tools tend to bill themselves as an All-In-One Language-Learning Solution, when actually they're really good at one particular thing, but you'll need to supplement with other things to round out your skill set. Duolingo is an example of that: it's genuinely really great for making drilling fun and keeping you motivated to drill & there's some reading comprehension support, but it really does nothing to help you with the expressive skills (speaking, writing).

If you happen to be learning French, I can recommend specific resources, but in general, my practice is: daily dictation exercises (you play a recording & write what it says, including accents & punctuation; then check it), daily listening practice (mainly podcasts), reading 30 mins/day (variety of subjects) + for longer texts keep a journal of vocabulary/expressions/cool quotes, 5x/wk grammar exercises from a grammar book, 2x/wk in-depth written expression (writing a long-form text, using another exercise book aimed at helping native speakers write better).

But! This is pretty intense. I need to have professional mastery of French across the board, so this is above & beyond what you'd need if you don't need to work like, an office job in your acquired language.