Handwriting Makes A Student Smarter According To Research

Along with modernization of education, our young students are also not falling behind. The modernization includes classrooms that started with black boards with chalk to white boards with markers. Students before were using pens and papers, but now most of them are using laptops, netbooks and tablets to take down notes.

Students and teachers choose new technology in the name of efficiency, but does it mean it's more advantageous than the old ways? New studies have shown that students who use pen and paper in class are outperforming the ones who type using different gadgets in taking down notes.

Proof According To Experts

According to Writechoice, a group of researchers coming from University of California and Princeton University in Los Angeles have found that those people who are writing notes in longhand form rather than typing are said to retain information better.

Wondering why? Writing and typing are just the same in terms of expressing what's in your mind in to readable texts but according to Wall Street Journal, researchers who used advanced tools like magnetic resonance imaging found that writing by hand improves idea composition and expression. The researchers suggested that there's a real value why we have to keep this ancient skill of writing.

Other Supporting Research

In a related research, it was explained by a psychology professor at the Washington University, Virginia Berninger, that our hands perform several kinds of strokes when writing letters that activate a part of our brain which is involved in thinking, language, and memory. Writing by hand trains our brains which is better compared to just pressing buttons to type in letters and numbers.

Berninger proved it in her study when she observed students in grades two, four and six when answering an essay by writing. The students have written more words and expressed more ideas in their answers than typing them.