Handwriting: Ergonomics, Assessment and Instruction

Handwriting is a skill which must be taught. The aim in teaching handwriting is for each child to develop a personal style which remains legible at speed. This objective requires the systematic teaching of handwriting. Teachers need to ascertain what are the important factors to consider when teaching handwriting and how to assess pupil performance. Chris Bailey reviews research on some of the factors affecting writing – pencil grip, finger pressure, writing implements and writing paper – and the literature relating to the assessment of legibility and speed. The author is headteacher of a primary school in the London Borough of Enfield.     

Handwriting isolated cursive letters in young children: Effect of the visual trace deletion

This study assesses the handwriting of isolated cursive letters in five-year-old children and the effect of a modification in visual feedback. Sixty-four children copied twelve cursive letters with an inking pen and a non-inking pen. Reducing visual feedback decreased the mean number of penlifts, and increased mean velocity and fluency. However, it increased the size of the letters (trajectory length) and reduced their quality. We suggest that processing visual feedback of the emerging visual trace may interrupt the fluency of the movement, while writing without seeing the trace may place greater emphasis on motor control and the use of somatosensory feedback. This study supplies reflection about sensory feedback and the moment when it should be provided in handwriting instruction. Practitioners should be aware that variation in the writing environment (surface, tools …) modifies sensory feedback and affects handwriting learning (gesture and outcome) in different manner.     

Shorter Method for Computing the Coefficient of Correlation

ABSTRACT

Handwriting is used throughout the school day and is important to demonstrate knowledge. This research evaluated how handwriting instructional practices and intrinsic and extrinsic factors in actual classroom settings impacted learning handwriting over the course of the school year. Findings indicated that extrinsic factors (educational instructional practices, spatial constraints) and intrinsic factors (task cognitive complexity) influenced handwriting performance, but not always in the same way for writing product and process measures. In addition, stronger relationships were found between writing process measures and handwriting fluency than legibility. Even though handwriting improved over the school year, some instructional practices resulted in a widening performance gap as the school year progressed. The impact of these findings for implementing and differentiating handwriting instruction and guiding future research is discussed.     

Video self-modelling as an intervention for remediating dysgraphia in children with autism spectrum disorders

Abstract

A severe deficit in handwriting is known as dysgraphia, a problem frequently associated with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Video self-modelling (VSM) has been proven effective for children with ASD in the strengthening of social skills, verbalizations, and daily living skills. Because VSM has demonstrated success in the acquisition of many types of skills, it may prove similarly effective for remediating dysgraphia in children with ASD. Utilizing a single-subject design with three 7–8 year old children diagnosed with ASD, this study examined VSM as a treatment for improving handwriting legibility and proficiency. All participants’ legibility data showed a large effect sizes and high Percentages of non-overlapping data from baseline to treatment and maintenance phases, indicating that VSM is an effective treatment for improving and maintaining handwriting legibility in children with ASD. Results are discussed in terms of applicability of VSM as an intervention with academic skills deficits in children with ASD.     

Does Poor Handwriting Conceal Literacy Potential in Primary School Children?

Handwriting is a complex skill that, despite increasing use of computers, still plays a vital role in education. It is assumed that children will master letter formation at a relatively early stage in their school life, with handwriting fluency developing steadily until automaticity is attained. The capacity theory of writing suggests that as automaticity develops, the proportion of working memory dedicated to the mechanics of handwriting is reduced, releasing capacity for the planning, composing and editing of content. This study examined the handwriting ability of 284 mainstream primary school children and explored possible associated factors. Correlations were found between poor handwriting, lower cognitive and literacy scores, and a longer duration for handwriting tasks. Giving children the opportunity to practise their handwriting sufficiently to increase the level of automaticity may release working memory to be applied to the cognitive demands of the task and may potentially raise their level of attainment.     

智慧课堂教学新形态：纸笔数字书写技术教学应用

纸笔数字书写是指对手持工具进行自然书写产生的轨迹或图形等视觉符号进行数字化处理的过程,具有保留传统纸笔书写行为、采集完整书写数据、实现远程共享书写空间等优势。纸笔数字书写技术是对传统纸笔书写的信息技术赋能,它与传统课堂教学的融合能为当前信息化教学“屏幕过度依赖”带来的健康和教学问题提供新的解决方案,因而也可能成为一种新型的智慧课堂教学形态。为了证实纸笔数字书写技术的教学应用潜力,以“腾讯企鹅智笔课堂”为例开展的实证调查表明:学生使用点阵笔的整体满意度较高,女生满意度水平普遍高于男生;技术自我效能感、互动学习活动、技术使用态度和感知有用性是影响学生使用点阵笔满意度的主要因素,其中技术自我效能感和互动学习活动的影响程度最大;技术接受模型中的感知易用性对学生使用点阵笔的满意度影响并不显著,因此还需要在教学实践中不断摸索以纸笔数字书写技术为支持的最佳教学策略。     

Perception of the cursive handwriting movement in writers and pre-writers

The objective of this study was to confirm the existence of knowledge relating to the cursive writing movement for French pupils in 3rd year of kindergarten, 2nd grade and 5th grade of elementary school. 141 pupils were asked to watch a visual presentation of cursive handwriting to determine whether they were able to detect violations of two rules of handwriting: continuity and sequentiality of the cursive handwriting movement. Our results showed progressive development of the understanding of characteristics of the cursive handwriting movement, with different developmental trajectories of knowledge for the different rules. The ability to detect continuity of the cursive writing movement developed earlier than the ability to detect sequentiality. Correct decisions were not always accompanied by correct justifications, which developed more slowly than detection of rule violations.     

Visual–motor symbol production facilitates letter recognition in young children

Previous research has suggested that handwriting letters may be an important exerciser to facilitate early letter understanding. Experimental studies to date, however, have not investigated whether this effect is general to any visual–motor experience or specific to handwriting letters. In the present work, we addressed this issue by testing letter knowledge using three measures in preschool children before and after a school-based intervention. Participants were divided into four training groups (letter-writing, digit-writing, letter-viewing, digit-viewing) that either wrote letters or digits or viewed letters or digits, twice a week for 6 weeks. We hypothesized that the visual–motor experience of handwriting letters or digits would improve letter knowledge more than viewing experience and that this effect would not be specific to training with letters. Our results demonstrated that the writing groups improved in letter recognition—one component of letter knowledge—significantly more than the viewing groups. The letter-writing group did not improve significantly more than the digit-writing group. These results suggest that visual–motor practice with any symbol could lead to increases in letter recognition. We interpret this novel finding as suggesting that any handwriting will increase letter recognition in part because it facilitates gains in visual–motor coordination.     

古代文学创作中的书写问题

现在所见的古代诗文墨迹,人们基本将其当作书法艺术看待,其实这是一种误解。古代文人无论是记言记事,还是作诗作文,其书写的墨迹原本是应用的语言,表达思想和情感的语言,所要传达的信息借助文字予以彰显。从作者书写的动机和书写之后形成墨迹的功能来看,这些墨迹首先是文学作品的文本;其次古人将字写得好看些;再次由于印刷技术和新的媒体传播方式出现,文学作品的文本形式发生了变化,而它最初的文本——书写墨迹,则被当作另一种审美形式——视觉艺术了。因此,当代所谓书法艺术,自作诗文甚少,人们欣赏书法作品,亦基本不读文字而只看墨迹是否"好看"。如此以来,书法的文化性、文学性日渐式微,其形式美感日益流行,这是一种令人忧虑的现象。     

A longitudinal study of handwriting skills in pre-schoolers: the acquisition of syllable oriented programming strategies

Previous studies have shown the relevance of the syllable as a programming unit in handwriting production, both in adults and elementary school children. This longitudinal study focuses on the acquisition of writing skills in a group of preschoolers. It examines how and when the syllable structure of the word starts regulating motor programming in handwriting. Eighteen five year old preschoolers copied six-letter Catalan words (disyllabic and trisyllabic) on a digitiser at three different times over the academic year (January, March, and May). The words were written in uppercase letters. We measured the duration of the inter-letter intervals (ILI) to gather information on the timing of motor programming. The results indicated that from January to March the children were mostly focused on movement proficiency. The results also showed different profiles of ILI duration for the two types of words over the three sessions. For disyllabic words, the syllable regulated movement programming in January; for trisyllabic words, this happened in March. This suggests that the syllable already plays a role in the programming of handwriting movements in kindergarten.     

Effects of different types of learning on handwriting movements in young children

This experiment aimed at studying the benefits of different types of training (visual, motor, or visual-motor), in comparison to a control group, on 5-year-olds' performance in a task of writing cursive letters. The visual-motor training was shown to be the most effective training. The efficacy of visual training was clear at the letter quality level, and the impact of the motor training was shown at the movement fluency level. We assume that the visual training better contributes to learning the shape of the letter trajectory, while the motor training better contributes to improve handwriting movement execution.     

Graphonomics,automaticity and handwriting assessment

A recent review of handwriting research in Literacy concluded that current curricula of handwriting education focus too much on writing style and neatness and neglect the aspect of handwriting automaticity. This conclusion is supported by evidence in the field of graphonomic research, where a range of experiments have been used to investigate this issue from a movement perspective. The present article offers a brief introduction to a graphonomic approach to handwriting analysis and the findings of graphonomic research about handwriting automaticity. These findings indicate that attentional control to any characteristic of the writing process (e.g. direction, lexical status, movement, style) results in an impairment of handwriting automaticity. These findings support and add a new dimension to previous conclusions.     

Promoting handwriting fluency in fifth graders with slow handwriting: a single-subject design study

This study used a multiple-probe design across three participants to test the effectiveness of a handwriting intervention for fifth graders (age 10–11) displaying less handwriting fluency than their peers, but without spelling disorders. The 5-h handwriting intervention provided students with explicit instruction and intensive practice in writing cursive letters, words, and sentences, through fast-paced alphabet and copying activities. Intervention effects were examined on handwriting fluency, written composition (i.e., text length, clause extension, and story elements), and self-efficacy beliefs. Results showed that the handwriting intervention was highly effective in increasing students’ handwriting fluency. There were also improvements in written composition in terms of clause extension and number of story elements. After the intervention, students also reported strengthened self-efficacy beliefs for grammar and usage skills. Overall, this study showed that handwriting interventions can effectively help students with limited handwriting skills to become fluent handwriters. Critically, findings are in line with the proposition that achieving handwriting fluency is important to support the development of writing.     

Special Paper for Beginning Handwriting An Unjustified Practice?

Abstract

A comparison was made of the handwriting of kindergarten children who used four different kinds of paper for handwriting lessons. Results indicated that the width of the writing space lone inch or Vi inch) had no differential effect on the quality of beginning handwriting. Furthermore, paper with writing spaces with closed ends did not improve the placement of letters in the writing space. This study gives no justification for requiring beginners in handwriting to use paper which is different from the kind they will use as adults.