Yes, I write EVERYTHING! If I just read it during the lessons, it’ll just flit right out of my brain immediately. Writing it all helps me to remember. I’ve also gone back and organized sections of my notebook by kanji and wrote down all related vocab in those sections. It’s double work (sometimes triple, if it is a multi-kanji vocab item), but that’s just another part of drilling it into my brain.
I also let myself check my notes the first, maybe second time I see the item in reviews. I’ll say out loud what I think it is, and then go check, like an open book test. After two reviews, though, I’m off book.
I was actually going to make a post about this, but I guess it makes sense to post here.
You’ll often see people talking about how learning to hand-write is a waste of time, “because [sic] computers exist.” Your time is better spent learning to speak and listen, and time spent writing is a huge opportunity cost that would have benefited you more elsewhere. That may be true in a sense, but I think there’s a lot of value in the mechanical motion, even if no paper is involved.
My motor memory is much stronger than my visual memory, probably from years of playing video games, instruments, typing, learning various skills like shuffling cards, etc. I have needy hands, and I’m usually occupying them with some task or trick or skill-dependent input test.
So started using the Kanji Study app. I grinded out all my WK kanji in groups of 10 or so at a time until I was caught up, and now I just use the sort functionality to review my bottom 10% twice a day. It takes just a few minutes, but it’s been devastating to my leeches. My “visually similar kanji”-based leeches plummeted after a week or two of this.
So, for my case and method in particular, at least, the cost/benefit analysis works out to where “learning to write” actually saves me time, even though I’m never really using a pen and paper.