Handwriting Research and Practice: A Unified Approach

Abstract

A man walked into a New England bank and shoved a. piece of paper under one of the teller's windows. The teller carefully examined the note, then kicked the alarm button. Within minutes police officers converged on the scene and arrested the man. They later discovered that the suspect was a respected businessman suffering from laryngitis and illegible handwriting. The note was a poorly written request for a new checkbook (O'Brien, 1959).The aftereffects of malformed print are usually not so bizarre. Nonetheless, within today's schools poor handwriting has aptly been dubbed an instructional time thief (Enstrom, 1967). Students with handwriting difficulties often lose considerable time completing assignments, and teachers forfeit precious time attempting to grade papers marred by illegible letters and words. Poor penmanship is a barrier to both expressive writing and spelling achievement (Strickling, 1973). Further, regardless of content, teachers assign higher scores to papers with handwriting of good quality (

Issues in Handwriting Instruction

“…Good handwriting instruction depends on a composition program that stimulates children to write frequently. The more children write, the more their handwriting skills become automatic or habitual, resulting in a gradual increase in speed (Graham & Miller, 1980). As children write, handwriting instruction should focus on addressing individual student's difficulties and reinforcing the handwriting skills that the teacher has explicitly introduced.…”

“…In contrast, most traditional approaches to handwriting instruction provide separate and explicit instruction in how to form each individual letter. Additionally, letters are often presented in a specific order so that similarities or differences in letter formation can be emphasized (Graham & Miller, 1980). The main difference between traditional and whole language practices, however, does not lie in setting up a prescribed sequence for teaching handwriting skills.…”

A review of handwriting research: Progress and prospects from 1980 to 1994

“…The hand is turned so that it rests on the third and fourth fingers. The pen is held between the thumb and the index finger, resting on the distal phalanx of the middle finger (tripod grip), about an ineh above the point (Graham and Miller, 1980). Is this the way that children really write?…”

Handwriting – A Forgotten Language Skill?

“…Nevertheless, the research strongly suggests that boys are more likely to be identified as having a handwriting problem than girls (Hamstra-Bletz & Blote, 1993;Rubin & Henderson, 1982), and research in the 1980s and 1990s confirmed that girls are generally better handwriters than boys (Graham & Miller, 1980), both on measures of overall quality and of letter formation (Hamstra-Bletz & Blote, 1990;Ziviani & Elkins, 1984). Girls also tend to write faster than boys (Berninger & Fuller, 1992;Biemiller et al, 1993;Ziviani, 1984).…”