The Progressive Teacher Vol 03 Issue 05

teaching
Are we
overlooking handwriting
skill in schools?
–Mohanakannan P
Some may wonder why
students should learn to
write in cursive or print in
the age of tablets and phones.
Won’t everyone just be typing
and dictating in the future?
While electronic devices have
added an element of ease to the
writing process, the evidence is
rising that putting pen to paper
has aids that typing cannot
replace. Researchers have found
ties between writing by hand
and everything from language
skills to memory to critical
thinking. The research is
important to understand
before ‘lauding and applauding’
technology and its uses.
The alarming thing about
overlooking handwriting is the
idea that by writing things out
by hand, we are unaware that we
are actually training our brain in
a way that the mere interfacing
with computers doesn’t ... and
that training, much in the same
way that talking changes the
way we think, may help us be the
people that we are.
Why is writing good for
students?
Writing dynamically engages
widespread areas of both
cerebral hemispheres. Virginia
Berninger, a researcher and
professor of educational
psychology at the University
of Washington, says that brain
Handwriting has
a physiological /
psychological link in
the brain. This link is
so solid that nothing
else done in the
classroom can begin
to associate with the
powerful influence
that continually
manipulating the
thumb and fingers
over time has on the
young brain.
scans during handwriting show
activation of massive regions of
the brain involved in thinking,
language, and working memory.
In ‘The Pen is Mightier than
the Keyboard’, researchers Pam
Mueller and Daniel Oppenheimer
found that students who take
notes by hand perform better
on conceptual questions than
students who take notes on
laptops. They concluded that
students who type their notes
tend to transcribe the lecture
and process the lecture only on a
shallow level. Students who take
notes by hand actually digest
the content and reframe it in
their own words - a process that
increases both understanding and
recall. Children learning to read
for the first time, or as adults
picking up a second language
with new characters— retain the
information best when writing
the letters by hand, according to
research by neurophysiologist
Jean-Luc Velay, University of
Marseilles.
The physical act of holding a
pencil and shaping letters sends
feedback signals to the brain.
This leaves a motor memory
which later makes it easier to
recall the information connected
with the movement, according to
the study.
Writing and reading
comprehension are neurally
connected, and better readers
often have more academic selfconfidence.
If kindergartners
are reading at a first-grade level,
they do better academically,
which means they have more
confidence in their ability to
perform. The more children
write the easier it is for them
to recognize a letter. Letter
recognition is the highest
predictor of reading later on.
Prof Anne Mangen, of the
University of Stavanger in
Norway, said research had shown
different parts of the brain
are stimulated by reading and
writing. Since writing by hand
takes longer than typing on a
keyboard the temporal aspect of
the brain which is involved
in language may also influence
the learning process,
Prof Mangen said.
Research by Laura Dinehart of
Florida International University’s
college of education in Miami
indicates that four-year-olds with
strong handwriting skills of any
kind are more likely to excel in
maths and reading when they get
to elementary school.
As each letter is mastered, the
child says, ‘I can do this! I can do
this even better!’ Then it is just a
matter of moving on to mastery
of the next letter and eventually
to the relatively easy task of
joining letters. Maybe, the best
emotional boost of all is when
children learn they have acquired
this skill on their own.
Why is Cursive a better
form of writing?
Young children struggle to make
the ‘straight lines and perfect
circles’ a manuscript (print)
requires. While cursive requires
skill, it requires curved lines,
which children can easily form.
The connectivity of a simple
cursive style is faster to write
because there are fewer stops
and starts. It is like driving on a
freeway versus surface streets,
a difference especially helpful to
students to develop fluency.
The cursive connectivity
improves both speed of writing
and attention span during
writing. This increases continuity
and fluidity in writing, which
in turn encourages greater
amounts of writing.
16 The Progressive Teacher Nov/Dec 2016