The scene is right out of the 1950s with students pecking away at manual typewriters, the machines dinging at the end of each line.
Once each semester, Grit Matthias Phelps, a German language instructor at Cornell University, introduces her students to the raw feeling of typing without . No screens, online dictionaries, spellcheckers or delete keys.
The exercise started in spring 2023 as Phelps grew frustrated with the reality that students were using and online translation platforms to churn out grammatically .
鈥淲hat鈥檚 the point of me reading it if it鈥檚 already correct anyway, and you didn鈥檛 write it yourself? Could you produce it without your computer?鈥� said Phelps.
She wanted students to understand what writing, thinking and classrooms were like before everything . So, she found a few dozen old manual typewriters in thrift shops and online marketplaces, and created what her syllabus calls an 鈥渁nalog鈥� assignment.
It might be premature to say that typewriters are making a comeback beyond Cornell’s campus. But the revival is part of a national trend toward like in-class pen-and-paper exams and oral tests to prevent AI use for assignments on laptops.
Typewriters bring 鈥榦ld days鈥� taste of doing one thing at a time
Students arrived for class on a recent analog day to find typewriters at the desks, some with German and some with QWERTY keyboards.
鈥淚 was so confused. I had no idea what was happening. I鈥檇 seen typewriters in movies, but they don鈥檛 tell you how a typewriter works,鈥� said Catherine Mong, 19, a freshman in Phelps’ Intro to German class. 鈥淚 didn鈥檛 know there was a whole science to using a typewriter.鈥�
Like a rotary phone, the manual typewriter appears simple but is not intuitive to the smartphone generation. Phelps demonstrated how to feed the paper manually, striking the keys with force but not so hard the letters would smudge. She explained that the dinging bell signifies the end of a line and the need to manually return the carriage to start the next line. (鈥淥h,鈥� said one student, 鈥渢hat鈥檚 why it鈥檚 called 鈥榬eturn.鈥欌��)
鈥淓verything slows down. It鈥檚 like back in the old days when you really did one thing at a time. And there was joy in doing it,鈥� said Phelps, who brings in her two children, aged 7 and 9, to serve as 鈥渢ech support鈥� and ensure no one has their phones out.
Students welcomed having fewer distractions
The assignment carries lessons beyond simply how to use a typewriter, which is the whole point.
鈥淚t dawned on me that the difference with typing on a typewriter is not just how you interact with the typewriter, but how you interact with the world around you,鈥� said computer science major Ratchaphon Lertdamrongwong, a sophomore, whose class had to write a critique of a German movie they鈥檇 watched.
In the absence of screens, there are no notifications to distract you as you write. Without every answer readily available at his fingertips, he asked his classmates for help, which Phelps heartily encouraged.
鈥淲hile writing the essay, I had to talk a lot more, socialize a lot more, which I guess was normal back then,鈥� Lertdamrongwong said, referring to the typewriter era. 鈥淏ut it鈥檚 drastically different from how we interact within the classroom in modern times. People are always on a laptop, always on the phone.鈥�
Without a delete key and the ability to correct every mistake, he paused to think more intentionally about his writing.
鈥淭his might sound bad, but I was forced to actually think about the problem on my own instead of delegating to AI or Google search,鈥� he said.
Manual machines were a workout for pinky fingers
Most students found their pinkies weren鈥檛 strong enough to touch-type, so they typed more slowly, pecking at the keyboard with their index fingers.
Mong, the freshman, faced the added challenge of a recently broken wrist, requiring her to use just one hand. The self-described perfectionist was initially frustrated with how messy her page looked with odd spacing between certain letters and misspellings. (Phelps told students to backspace and type 鈥榅鈥檚 over errors.)
鈥淭his thing I handed in had pencil marks all over it and definitely did not look clean or finished. But it鈥檚 part of the process of learning that you鈥檙e going to make mistakes,鈥� said Mong, who found the assignment of typing a poem 鈥渇un and challenging.鈥�
She embraced the odd spacing and played with the visual boundaries of the page to indent and fragment lines in the style of poet E.E. Cummings. It took several sheets of paper and many mistakes, all of which Mong saved.
鈥淚鈥檓 probably going to hang them on my wall,鈥� Mong said. 鈥淚鈥檓 kind of fascinated by typewriters. I told all my friends, I did a German test on a typewriter!鈥�
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