Handwriting Strengthens Children’s Reading Brains

Writing by hand helps a lot in learning to read, especially in the early stages of literacy. This is because the movement of writing activates important parts of the brain that help to fix letters and words. Studies show that children who learn by writing by hand understand and remember more than those who only type. Therefore, even with the use of technology, pencil and paper continue to be fundamental in early childhood education.

Reading is one of the most important skills that children develop in the early years of life. It is not only essential for success in school, but it also influences the way children communicate, think, relate to others and deal with their emotions.

In addition, when a child learns to read well, he or she tends to feel more confident, have higher self-esteem and are more involved in their studies.

In recent years, classrooms have undergone major changes with the arrival of tablets and computers. Many schools are replacing the traditional use of pencil and paper with typing on these devices. This raised an important question among educators and researchers: could using technology instead of handwriting hinder learning to read?

To better understand this issue, it is important to know that learning to read involves two main steps: knowing the letters and the sounds they represent (this is called alphabetic knowledge) and understanding how letters combine to form words (called orthographic knowledge).

Children develop these skills from an early age, playing with letters, listening to stories, writing and drawing.

Studies show that writing by hand helps a lot in this process, because it requires the child to pay attention to the exact shape of the letters, the movements to write them and the corresponding sounds.

This type of learning, which involves the body (hands, eyes, movement), activates areas of the brain that are important for reading and makes it easier to memorize words and letters.

When children only type, they may not engage as much with the shape of the letters, and this can hinder the development of these skills.

To investigate this further, a recent study conducted an experiment with 50 children who were still learning to read. They were divided into groups and each group used a different method to learn letters and words: some children wrote by hand, others traced letters with their hand, and others typed letters in different styles (with different fonts or with a single font). After this, the researchers gave them tests to see how much each child had learned.

The results were clear: children who wrote by hand (either by copying or tracing letters) learned more and were more accurate in tests than those who only typed. This shows that handwriting really does help children learn to read more early on.

The hypothesis is that the act of writing, of moving the hand, of seeing and feeling the shape of the letters, helps the brain better retain the knowledge needed to learn to read and write.

Therefore, although technology has its value in education, experts warn that it should not completely replace pencil and paper, especially in the early stages of schooling. Encouraging handwriting is essential to ensure that children develop their reading skills well.

This does not mean abandoning tablets, but rather using them in a balanced and conscious way, respecting the natural stages of child development.

READ MORE:

The impact of handwriting and typing practice in children’s letter and word learning: Implications for literacy development

Gorka Ibaibarriaga, Joana Acha, and Manuel Perea 

Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, Volume 253, May 2025, 106195

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jecp.2025.106195

Abstract:

Recent research has revealed that the substitution of handwriting practice for typing may hinder the initial steps of reading development. Two hypotheses for the detrimental effect of typing are (a) reduced graphomotor activity and (b) reduced variability in the visual letter forms. However, previous studies were mostly limited to letter learning and primarily employed the visual identification of letters as a learning index. The current experiment investigated the impact of graphomotor action and output variability in letter and word learning using a variety of tasks. A total of 50 prereaders learned nine letters and 16 pseudowords made up of these letters across four learning conditions: copying the letters/words by hand, tracing the letters/words, typing the letters/words on a computer with several fonts, and typing with a single font. Posttest tasks included naming, writing, and visual identification of the trained letters and words. Results showed that children in the handwriting groups (i.e., trained through hand-copying or tracing) achieved higher accuracy across all posttest tasks compared with those in the typing groups. These outcomes illustrate the importance of handwriting experience in learning alphabetic and orthographic representations, favoring the graphomotor hypothesis. Thus, educators should be cautious about replacing pencil and paper with digital devices during the period of children’s reading acquisition.