This article discusses the role that handwriting can have when writing is used as a tool for learning in English language education. Nineteen Norwegian EFL teacher training students were interviewed in focus groups about their own practices and their thoughts about writing-to-learn activities. All the students said that they prefer to write by hand. They claimed that writing by hand is fundamentally different from writing on a keyboard, and that handwriting has much greater impact as a tool for learning. However, the students had not given much thought to the didactic implications of their own preferences, and issues related to the different technologies of writing are not dealt with in their own studies. The investigation suggests that more attention should be paid to the affordances of different technologies of writing and to handwriting as a tool for learning in ELT.