Development of children's writing performance: some educational implications

Performance of school‐aged children on a Chinese handwriting speed test

“…This is in accordance with empirical evidence that indicates continual progress in coordinated handwriting movements by age and schooling (Meulenbroek & Van Galen, 1986Søvik, 1993). These improvements in coordination can largely explain why older children are able to write significantly faster than younger ones.…”

“…As to overall handwriting performance, teachers pay much attention to both the quantitative (speed) and the qualitative (legibility) aspects of children's writing when testing and observing children's progress in this skill (Søvik, 1993). Even so, speed is probably the simplest overall measure of proficiency in writing.…”

Perceptual-Motor Function of School-Age Children With Slow Handwriting Speed

“…Further, according to Sovik and Arntzen (1991), fluent writing is produced by an integrated pattern of coordinated movements subject to visual monitoring and sensorimotor feedback. In support of this range of requirements, visual-motor integration was found to be the best predictor of legibility for both American and Norwegian children (Sovik, 1975) and for a group of Chinese school-age children (Tseng & Murray, 1994). Visual-perceptual skills, including visualspatial perception, visual size discrimination, visual retrieval and left-right orientation, enable children to distinguish visually among graphic forms and to judge their correctness (Sovik, 1975;Thomassen & Teulings, 1983).…”

“…It follows that before more systematic ways of teaching children to write can be developed, the constellation of skills that are necessary for efficient writing will need to be better understood. Competent handwriting depends on the maturation and integration of cognitive, visual-perceptual, and fine motor skills (Maeland, 1992;Rubin & Henderson, 1982;Sovik, 1975;Tseng & Murray, 1994;Weil & Amundson, 1994;Ziviani, Hayes, & Chant, 1990). Handwriting requires finely graded manipulation of pencils to produce letter forms, in a fluent and ballistical manner, with a specific orientation and size, in a specific serial order, and in specific positions on a writing surface (van Galen, 1993).…”

Using Writing Instruments: Invariances in Young Children and Adults

“…In the case of reaching, for example, infants evidence striking individual differences in how they master their body dynamics as they develop the ability to reach . In the case of handwriting, there are stable individual differences in the grip patterns that adults habitually use (Sovik, 1993).…”