New to Japanese and needed help

I think people underestimate written production in general, and literal written production in particular, because since the modern separation of language into 4 skills (written/oral - comprehension/production) it's hard to make a (quantified) case that written production has any influence on the others, though I'm convinced it affects the global language learning. The fastest J-learners I've ever met where all people majoring in Japanese, who (at least here) write things by hand all the time. I don't think it's a coincidence since my own learning of English involves early production too.