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16

Theme 1.3

The link between

writing and

understanding

Writing is a skill and hence something that we

learn and improve upon. As children most of us

learned to read more quickly than we learned

to write, and many students say that the most

difficult things on their course are their written

assignments. Writing often leads to a significantly

deeper level of reflection than thinking alone, as

it slows our thought processes down.

Writing gives us a much sharper focus and helps

us to concentrate; it is almost impossible to write

about something without thinking about what

you are writing at the same time. So why is this

the case? Research in neuroscience shows that

writing by hand stimulates the reticular activating

system (RAS) at the base of the human brain

(Pérez Alonso, 2015). The RAS acts as a filter

for information that the brain needs to process

and ensures that we pay more attention to what

we are actively focusing on at a given moment.

Writing, therefore, sharpens our focus and is

usually a more effective way of learning than

discussion or reading. This means that you will

be much more likely to remember something you

have written down than something you have

read or discussed; and, in addition, you have

a record that you can refer back to. Having a

sharp focus is one key aspect of carrying out a

good research project.

Writing always involves making decisions

about what to write, which means processing

your thoughts and expressing yourself in words;

this helps your understanding to develop. For

example, when you take notes from reading

a text, simply copying it will not help you to

understand it, but summarising it and putting it

into your own words probably will. In pieces

of written work, you might need to explain

the approach you have taken so that you or

someone else can read it and understand what

you have written. So, the act of writing helps us

to develop our understanding.

However, we live in a world where most of us

use some kind of keyboard more than we write

by hand. In addition, most of us can type more

quickly than we can write. So, do we need

to write by hand? We know that writing by

hand slows us down and helps us to remember

things. An interesting study by Mueller and

Oppenheimer (2014) showed that students

who used laptops for taking their lecture notes

produced poorer-quality work than those who

took notes by hand. This is because those using

laptops tended to try to type the lecturer’s every

word, while those who wrote by hand had to

be much more selective about what they wrote.

This forced them to begin processing the material