Put Down the Laptop, Pick Up the Pen
An opinion article asking whether it is better to take lesson notes by hand or on a computer, based on research.
Tap any word to hear it · dotted words have a definition in the glossary
🎧 Listen
1Walk into almost any university hall today and you will see the same picture: rows of students hidden behind laptop screens, their fingers flying across the keyboards. Many high school classrooms look the same. Typing is fast, neat and easy to search later. It seems obvious that it is the best way to take notes. I am not so sure.
2In 2014, two American psychologists, Pam Mueller and Daniel Oppenheimer, a study that caught the attention of teachers around the world. They asked students to watch short lectures and take notes, some on laptops and some by hand. Afterwards, the students answered questions about what they had seen. Both groups did about equally well on simple questions. However, on questions that required understanding ideas, the students who had written by hand did better.
3The researchers had an explanation. Because most people type much faster than they write, laptop users to copy the lecturer's words almost exactly, without thinking about them. Students writing by hand could not keep up, so they were to listen, decide what was important and put it in their own words. In other words, the slowness of the pen made their brains work harder.
4To be fair, later studies have not always found the same strong effect, and scientists continue to the results. Typing also has real advantages. For students with certain learning difficulties, a keyboard can make the difference between taking notes and taking none at all. And notes on a computer are easier to organize and share.
5Yet there is another problem with laptops that has nothing to do with typing: . A laptop is not only a notebook. It is also a window to messages, videos and games. Even students with good find it hard to checking just one , and research suggests that a classmate's screen can distract the students sitting nearby as well.
6I am not suggesting that we throw our laptops away. But I believe that schools should encourage students to take notes by hand, at least in some lessons, and let them discover the difference for themselves. Sometimes the slower path leads to deeper understanding.
📘 Glossary
- lecture - a talk given to a group of students
- published - made public in a book, journal or website
- factual - based on facts
- tended - were likely to do something
- forced - had no choice but to
- debate - to discuss and disagree about something
- distraction - something that takes your attention away
- intentions - plans or aims in your mind
- resist - to stop yourself from doing something tempting
- notification - a short message that appears on a screen
Questions
Purpose and structure
1. What is the purpose of paragraph 1?Finding details
2. Give TWO advantages of typing that are mentioned in paragraph 1.Finding details
3. How did the two groups do on simple factual questions in the 2014 study?Reference words
4. In paragraph 3, the word "them" in "without thinking about them" refers to…Making inferences
5. Explain why "the slowness of the pen made their brains work harder".Purpose and structure
6. What is the purpose of paragraph 4?Finding details
7. Give TWO advantages of using a computer for notes that are mentioned in paragraph 4.Word meaning
8. In paragraph 5, "find it hard to resist checking just one notification" means that students find it hard to…Finding details
9. According to paragraph 5, who can be distracted by a student's laptop screen?Fact, opinion and stance
10. What does the writer recommend?
Answer every question to get a score (0/10)