Friday, October 7, 2016

On Writing: Interesting Bit of Research

I was showing my students how to use EBSCO and used “typewriters” (of course) as a search topic. Among other things, EBSCO came up with an article from the Nov. 2016 British Journal of Psychology about a study testing “transcription fluency” (typing speed) against essay-writing skills.  According to the study, “decreased fluency can actually benefit cognitive processing.” The poor typists showed better “lexical sophistication,” sentence complexity, and essay cohesion than the speedy ones. 


It made for an interesting conversation with a few students who insist on typing essays on their phones, with their thumbs, and, as a two- to four-fingered typist, it made me feel somewhat better about myself. 

3 comments:

  1. I hesitate to share this with my writing group, as there's a woman there who's unbelievably fast.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. She could be the exception that proves the rule.

      Delete