'E-writing' is shorthand for 'e-writing as primary, handwriting as secondary' (电写为主, 手写为辅). It is an innovative approach to L2 Chinese teaching which is quickly gaining interest in scholarly and practitioner communities worldwide. 

"The simple fundamental principle underpinning the e-writing approach is that L2 Chinese reading and writing proficiency (literacy) should be developed and measured primarily using digitally-produced texts. In other words, the four skills of ‘听说读写’ (listening, speaking, reading, writing) should be reconceptualized as five skills: 听说读打 + (手)写: listening, speaking, reading, typing, and hand-writing. Within this approach, Hanzi are generally first encountered and learned as whole un-analyzed (not decomposed) units in the words, phrases, and chunks in which they appear in meaningful textual contexts through a combination of intentional and incidental learning. By engaging in receptive, productive, and interactional practice and communicative tasks, learners develop reading and writing skills using Hanzi and are able to engage in meaningful communication in and outside of class in both oral-aural and written modalities. Hand-writing, in turn, occupies a secondary supporting role for a limited and purposefully selected subset of Hanzi. E-writing is compatible with a variety of models of L2 instruction, including various instantiations of Communicative Language Teaching (or proficiency-oriented language teaching), Task-Based Language Teaching, and approaches based on Skill Acquisition Theory." (Coss, 2024a)

The e-writing approach prioritizes:

• Holistic chunk-based initial learning of characters (字不离词 or 词本位) rather than component- or character-based learning

• Pinyin-based typing as the primary form of written production

• Systematic but selective analytical character learning using 'functional components' (see Henson, various or Coss, 2024b)

• Secondary roles for handwriting, including possibly for (a) communicative purposes; (b) character-learning purposes; and/or (c) cultural/experiential purposes (see Chu, 2024; Coss, 2024a)