Writing In The Air To Help You Remember Characters

[chinopinyin]

Many Chinese and Japanese people say it is a good idea to write characters in the air with your fingers to help you remember them. This certainly saves on paper and ink.

Do you employ this strategy?

[Glenn]

I use the palm of my hand and walls a lot (particulary the shower wall). When I'm doing actual drilling I use a Doodle Pro.

[Hofmann]

No, but I'm sure it works. See attachment, page 5 "KINETIC INFORMATION IN KAJI [sic] WORDS."

Kanji Knowledge as Read-only vs. Write-Only - Kess, Miyamoto.pdf

[putonghua73]

I do, or rather did, whist on the tube [metro] in the morning, when I was in London. However, rote memorisation has taken a back seat because I find trying to memorise a whole bucketful of new words per day, boring, frustrating and distracting from understanding grammar structures and consolidating what I have already learnt.

That said, when I do go over new words, verbs, sentence structures, I use a whiteboard as I've found it is much more useful than paper to focus writing hanzi correctly - and more importantly, it sticks in my mind.

Writing in the air helps when you're out and about, but I've found for retention, it's a mixture of cerebral memorisation and muscle memorisation i.e. by writing on a whiteboard or paper, your hand 'remembers' the strokes for particular characters; rather like when you learn touch-typing, after a while your fingers 'remember' the correct position on the keyboard without conscious thought.

Cheers!

[roddy]

Fine in terms of remembering structure / stroke order, but (and this is after spending quite some time with a tablet and stylus over the last six months) if you want to be able to write non-ugly characters with pen and paper, you need to put the time in with pen and paper. If you'll forgive the analogy, you can't learn to play the guitar by waving a harmonica about.

[Meng Lelan]

A harmonica is not the same as a guitar so that's not an analogy, you blow the harmonica, you strum the guitar.

To answer the OP's question, yes, I do it all the time.

[roddy]

Ah, but a pen is not the same as a finger. Ha!

[SiMaKe]

...you can't learn to play the guitar by waving a harmonica about.

Or you can't learn to play the guitar by practicing on an "air guitar".

[chinopinyin]

No, but I'm sure it works. See attachment, page 5 "KINETIC INFORMATION IN KAJI [sic] WORDS."

Very nice paper. It is only quoted two times in Google Scholar, though http://scholar.google.es/scholar?hl=es&q=Kanji+Knowledge+as+Read-only+vs.+Write-Only&btnG=Buscar&lr=&as_ylo=&as_vis=0 I wonder if there are additional studies on this subject

Interestingly, the older you are the more likely you are to finger-write

Writing on surfaces is also more common than writing on the air

[Mandyding]

writing on the air is a good idea when you do not have pen on hand, its not a strategy, when you see a new character, you can write on the desk or on your thigh, its better then writing in the air

[dumdumdum]

might as well put it down on paper and you can refer back to it later.

[Meng Lelan]

I used to see children and older folks practice writing characters by tracing in the sand at the beach or tracing with water on a brick or cement surface. So sometimes the finger can act as a pen.

[Scoobyqueen]

A Japanese teacher told her class that writing characters in the air using the whole arm movement is another aid to remember characters. This is partly because muscles are involved but also the large drawing area allows you to remember where the different strokes are located . She mentioned that it is similar to remembering your pin code at a cash point - this is why the brain gets confused when the order of the pin code numbers are switched around.

[skylee]

I am not sure if it helps learning writing, but a friend of mine (native Chinese) does this a lot, even during a gathering, and I find it annoying. It is as if he finds us boring (well perhaps we are).

[Guoke]

I used to play a game of guessing Chinese characters with other kids when I was little. We would take turn to write a character on someone’s back with a finger and let them guess what the character was.

[Meng Lelan]

It is as if he finds us boring (well perhaps we are).

I don't know what is the relationship with air-writing and boredom?

[skylee]

What do you say would make a person write characters in the air during a social gathering, when everyone else is eating, chatting and having fun?

[Meng Lelan]

He air writes to himself?

[xiaocai]

I am not sure if it helps learning writing, but a friend of mine (native Chinese) does this a lot, even during a gathering, and I find it annoying. It is as if he finds us boring (well perhaps we are).

I don't know how he actually does it, but I think I will find it more weird than annoying if any of my friends does so...

[Meng Lelan]

If he's air-writing his thoughts that's really cool. I bet he's older than 35, because younger than 35 the young whippersnappers are mostly texting and typing not writing on paper and in the air.