Hand-writing enhances Memory
I had used computer mainly for my writing and thinking during graduate school. I believed digital world is perfect. I rarely hand-write that time.
One day, I surprised that I can’t remember Kanji (Chinese character). On input Kanji on computer, it shows candidates for translation to Kanji. All I need is just choose appropriate Kanji from the candidates. It is like difference between ‘reading’ and ‘writing’ or ‘hearing’ and ‘doing’.
My colleagues, computer nerd, also complained this problem. We were twenteenager (?) at that time, too early to lose memory. It is obviously come from computer dependence.
Perhaps this problem is special case for Japanese, it is enough to motivate me to return to hand-writing. Memory about Kanji is getting better. And now I believe, from my experience, hand-writing do enhances memory. :)
May 26th, 2007 at 6:35 pm
No, it is not a “special case for Japanese”; how can an issue with *Chinese* characters (used by 1 billion+ Chinese) be a “special case for Japanese”?
Whether you’re relying on a front-end processor for Chinese characters, or spell-checkers to help with alphabetic words, assistive technology will let the memory get lazy. Writing without the computer is a memory training method for anybody, anywhere.
May 26th, 2007 at 6:35 pm
>>S.A.
I wrote “special case for Japanese” simply because I’m Japanese. And you are right. Same is true for Chinese.