I've been learning Chinese. Learning to write the characters (not even memorizing -- just copying by sight correctly) has been a very effective way of learning

I've been learning Chinese. Learning to write the characters (not even memorizing -- just copying by sight correctly) has been a very effective way of learning to read Chinese handwriting, especially the semi-cursive script. With almost any writing instrument, the order and direction of strokes is important to reading Chinese, and the best way to learn to decode that is to learn to encode it yourself, probably. I would suspect the same is true of cursive Latin script, in the same way.