Is writing by hand important?
When I was doing my undergraduate degree at the University of Ottawa in the late 1990s, and when I went back to upgrade my GPA at Trent University in 2002, I took notes in class by hand, and submitted hand-written essays and assignments. I heard somewhere that people take notes when listening to a lecture as much to have large muscles in motion as to review them later on. When I did the final written examinations for my DipTEFLA, the three essays in three hours were written by hand. In some places, the IELTS writing section is still done by hand.
I developed the ability to touch type in my 30s but I do not write as fluently as I did when I was in my 20s, writing by hand. After a decade of teaching online and using social media and email, I felt an intuitive need to go back to writing as much as I can with paper and pencils. I have adult learners who don’t even own pens or notebooks and they report being productive, effective and happy. I believe children must learn to print and write in cursive in as part of their acquisition of language. I’ll be collecting articles on this interesting question on this page, as more research is done.