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Handwriting: what we know and need to know?
Jane Medwell and David Wray
University of Warwick
To appear in Literacy, Vol. 41 (1), February, 2007
Abstract
Handwriting has a low status and profile in literacy education and in recent years has
attracted little attention from teachers, policy makers or researchers into mainstream
educational processes. This article identifies a substantial programme of research into
handwriting, including studies located in the domains of special needs education and
psychology, which suggest that it is time to re-evaluate the importance of handwriting in the
teaching of literacy. Explorations of the way handwriting affects composing has opened up
new avenues for research, screening and intervention, which have the potential to make a
significant contribution to children’s writing progress. In particular the role of orthographic
motor integration and automaticity in handwriting is now seen as of key importance in
composing. Evidence from existing studies suggests that handwriting intervention
programmes may have a real impact on the composing skills of young writers. In particular,
they could positively affect the progress of the many boys who struggle with writing
throughout the primary school years.
Key words: Boys, handwriting, literacy, writing
1
Introduction
There has been little significant educational research into handwriting in England since the
work of Sassoon et al (1986) and Alston and Taylor (1987). Even the available research
reviews (Graham & Weintraub, 1996) were written over a decade ago and include little
evidence from a British context. The way handwriting is taught in English mainstream
schooling is based on research and writing undertaken during the mid-1980s and early 1990s.
During the eighties and early nineties a number of changes affected the teaching of
handwriting. Firstly, a very significant experiment took place in schools in England,
involving a fundamental change in the handwriting script taught to children in the primary
years. Peters’ research into spelling (1985) emphasised that English spelling provided a high
degree of visual regularity and highlighted the link between visual and kinaesthetic learning
of spellings. A strong theoretical case was thus made for a link between correct spelling and
the use of fluent, joined up handwriting. By learning the movements of common spelling
patterns by hand (kinaesthetically) as well as by eye, it was suggested (Cripps & Cox, 1989;
Peters & Smith, 1993) that writers improved their chances of producing correct spellings. The
popularisation of this theory in schools through spelling and handwriting schemes coincided
with (or caused) a change in the handwriting of children all over the country as handwriting
schemes based on this theory advocated the use of an alphabet including exit strokes right
from the beginning of writing teaching, and the joining of letters as early as possible (Cripps,
1988). Interestingly, there has been almost no empirical research to examine the claims about
the contribution of handwriting to correct spelling, to measure the effects of beginning
writing using different scripts or to examine the effects of early joining.
2
The importance of handwriting: writing assessment
Whilst handwriting style streamlined across schools in England during the late 1980s and
early 1990s, it was also put firmly in its place in terms of its importance relative to other
aspects of writing. The National Curriculum for England (DfEE/QCA, 2000), for example,
treats handwriting succinctly and deals with the development of movement and style, with no
mention of speed or efficiency. The attainment target for writing at level 4 (the target for 11
year olds) demands only that: “Handwriting style is fluent, joined and legible”. No mention is
made of speed.
Handwriting is statutorily assessed as part of the Standard Assessment Tasks and Tests
(SATs), the marking schemes for which allocate up to 40 marks for writing at age 7 (Key
Stage 1) and 50 marks at age 11 (Key Stage 2). At both ages, up to 3 marks can be awarded
for handwriting. The assessment for these three marks is made on a sample of handwriting
done during a composition assessment and is a product analysis. Fluency is taken to mean
evidence of the effective joining of letters and speed of writing is not included in the
assessment. In short, this is a very imprecise assessment of handwriting style, not of
handwriting efficiency.
The National Literacy Strategy also gives minimal attention to handwriting. It was included
in the word level objectives in the NLS Framework for Teaching (DfEE, 1998) from
reception year (age 4-5) until Year 4 (aged 9), after which handwriting does not appear as an
objective. The assumption that handwriting will have been mastered by this time is common
across publications about writing (e.g. Wyse, 1998; Medwell et al, 2001; Nicholls et al,
1989). In the light of research in the areas of neuroscience, cognitive psychology and special
3
needs education, it is time to question this assumption and examine how research into
handwriting can offer clues to improving composition.
The importance of handwriting: teaching writing
One reason for such a lack of attention to handwriting has been the perspectives on writing
that have been popular in schools and the emphasis (or lack of emphasis) these perspectives
have placed upon handwriting. In early years education, evidence that children can write
meaningful texts before they have mastered the writing system (Teale & Sulzby, 1986)
changed the way researchers and teachers looked at children’s early attempts at writing
(Temple et al, 1982). Analysis of children’s early writing for evidence of understandings
about the language system (Clay, 1975,), spelling (Gentry, 1981) and audience (Hall, 1987;
Czerniewska, 1992) shifted attention away from the teaching of writing through copying,
with its emphasis on correct letter formation and legibility.
Emergent writing (Hall, 1987; Teale & Sulzby, 1986), placed the focus of attention firmly on
the meanings children were able to create in their writing. Children were encouraged to write
freely and to use their emerging, but incomplete, understandings of language and writing
skills to express themselves in writing. This was a corrective to earlier emphasis on neatness
and correct letter formation, which undoubtedly hindered the composition of beginning
writers.
The teaching of writing to older children has been strongly influenced by theoretical
perspectives that emphasise the difference between composing text and transcribing text.
Graves’ (1983) account of the writing process as a series of stages has been highly significant
for theorised pedagogies of writing, even if these theories have not quite had the practical
4
effects that have been claimed for them (Medwell, 1998). Cognitive models of the writing
process, such as that of Hayes and Flowers (1980), also stress the planning and self-
monitoring required by the writer, but these too have had limited influence on mainstream
school practice. More recently, a genre focused approach to writing, emphasising the direct
teaching of the structures of socially significant texts, was popularized by the work of Wray
and Lewis (1997) and included in the requirements of the National Literacy Strategy (1998).
In none of these perspectives on writing and its teaching does handwriting play a significant
role. Indeed, current perspectives often explicitly assign handwriting to a peripheral role in
writing success.
A composition-led view of the writing process is very much part of the mainstream culture of
literacy teaching in England. The National Curriculum for English (DfEE, 2000) requires that
children be taught to plan, draft, revise, proof-read and present their work, a direct reflection
of the process approach, and this is sustained in the National Literacy Strategy (DfEE, 1998).
Emphasis upon composing may, at times, have drawn attention away from handwriting.
The importance of handwriting: the research evidence
Despite its empirical rigour and replication, and its central concern with how children learn to
write, the substantial body of cognitive psychological research on the writing process has had
little impact on classroom practice. This may be because the largely experimental and non-
naturalist design of such research makes its direct classroom application problematic.
However, in psychology, neuropsychology and special needs education the substantial
research into handwriting that has taken place in the last decade may offer insights into the
composing processes of mainstream children. It may also ensure that the role of handwriting
in composition is reconsidered and even the nature of handwriting itself reconceptualised.
5
A considerable amount of this research has focused on explorations of the role of working
memory in writing. Working memory denotes the temporary storage of the information
necessary for carrying out tasks. Long-term memory can store virtually unlimited amounts of
material for many years, but working memory can hold only a few items for a short time - it
is a limited resource. Kellogg (1996; 1999; 2001) and Hayes (1996) have both given a central
role to working memory in their very influential models of the writing process.
Understanding the ways in which different writing processes draw on the same limited
working memory resources could explain why some writing processes are more difficult than
others and how these processes may interfere with each other.
Identifying the role of working memory in writing may help us to understand the interference
among memory processes that contend for the same scarce memory resources, in this case,
the way handwriting may actually affect composition. The findings of Gathercole et al (2004)
suggest that working memory is particularly associated with the literacy scores of younger
children. If young writers have to devote large amounts of working memory to the control of
lower-level processes such as handwriting, they may have little working memory capacity
left for higher-level processes such as idea generation, vocabulary selection, monitoring the
progress of mental plans and revising text against these plans.
Individuals can generally conduct only one cognitive task requiring attention at a time
(Sweller, 1988; Sweller & Chandler, 1994). This means that the way an individual manages
cognitive resources to facilitate all the different, attention-requiring aspects of a writing task
is crucial to their success at writing (Saada-Robert, 1999). Christiansen (2002) identifies two
main strategies to limit the demands on working memory. The first is to sequence tasks so
that only one task is undertaken at a time. This has been a popular way to manage writing
6
processes in classrooms and planning, drafting, revising etc. have been sequenced as steps in
the writing process for many children, in an attempt to reduce their competing demands on
young writers. However, models of writing (e.g. Hayes & Flower, 1980) suggest that writing
processes are recursive and that writing is not a step-by-step linear process at all. In this case,
sequencing tasks so that only one is undertaken at a time is unlikely to be a successful
strategy for limiting demand on working memory at a cognitive level, since writing simply
does not proceed that way. Moreover, in writing it is hardly possible to isolate or defer the
handwriting element, since without it, nothing would actually be written!
An alternative solution to the problem of limited working memory capacity is to make some
processes, such as handwriting, automatic, in order to free up cognitive resources to deal with
higher level processes. La Berge & Samuels, (1974) define automaticity as having been
achieved when a process can be effected swiftly, accurately and without the need for
conscious attention. The development of skill in writing may require the automatisation of
lower-level skills so that they use less of the available working-memory resources.
A major programme of research undertaken over the last ten to fifteen years (e.g. Berninger
et al, 2006; Berninger, 1994; Berninger & Graham, 1998) has investigated the role of
handwriting in writing and its findings are extremely interesting. Firstly, it has been
established that handwriting is far from a purely motor act. Berninger and Graham (1998)
stress that it is “language by hand” and point out that their research suggests that orthographic
and memory processes (the ability to recall letter shapes) contribute more to handwriting than
do motor skills (Berninger & Amtmann, 2004).
Orthographic-motor integration of handwriting - that is the ability to call to mind and write
letter shapes, groups of letters and words efficiently and effectively without allocation of
7
cognitive attention, appears to be a very significant part of writing that has been largely
overlooked in education. It involves mentally coding and rehearsing visual representations of
these patterns and integrating them with motor patterns (Berninger, 1994). There is a growing
body of research which suggests that handwriting is critical to the generation of creative and
well-structured written text and has an impact not only on fluency but also on the quality of
composing (Berninger & Swanson, 1994; Graham et al, 1997). Lack of automaticity in
orthographic-motor integration can seriously hamper the ability of young children to express
ideas in text. (Berninger & Swanson, 1994; De La Paz & Graham, 1995; Graham, 1990).
Studies in this area have experimented with the removal of some of the competing demands
for children’s cognitive attention during writing. De La Paz and Graham (1995), for example,
found that when the children were able to dictate their texts to an adult, thus freeing them
from the task of handwriting, the quality of their composition significantly improved. Other
studies have confirmed this effect in primary aged children (e.g., Hidi & Hidyard, 1983;
McCutchen, 1996, 1998; Scardamalia et al, 1982).
Research suggests that orthographic-motor integration accounts for more than 50% of the
variance in written language performance in children. Christensen and Jones (2000) put this
as high as 67% for the 7-8 year old children they studied. Some studies have suggested that
the influence of orthographic-motor integration declines with age (Berninger & Swanson,
1994), but there are suggestions that it continues to exert an influence on writing in secondary
school pupils (e.g. Christensen & Jones, 2000) and even in adults (Bourdin & Fayol, 2002).
If handwriting can have such an impact on writers’ abilities to generate sophisticated text, it
appears critical that children develop smooth and efficient handwriting. This raises two
important questions. Firstly, for how many, and for which, children might inefficient
8
handwriting be affecting their composition? Secondly, what evidence is there that teaching
can make a difference to children’s performance in handwriting and in composition?
The importance of knowing who may have problems
Ascertaining the numbers of children for whom lack of automaticity is a problem is difficult
in Britain. Statutory assessments do not assess handwriting speed and there is no national
screening for handwriting problems. Graham and Weintraub (1996) estimate that between 12
and 20% of school aged children experience handwriting difficulties, and other estimates
have been as high as 44% (Alston, 1985; Rubin & Henderson, 1982), although these figures
are based on teacher estimates and must be viewed with caution. Barnett et al (2006) suggest
a figure as low as 5% for schools in south east England, but this is based on teacher report in
a very small survey and again must be treated with caution. But if these figures are even
approximately correct, it suggests that lack of handwriting automaticity may affect a
significant number of primary and secondary aged children. Such an unrecognised lack of
automaticity may interfere with the composing processes of these children. There is no
evidence of concern about, screening of or intervention in this aspect of writing in the British
system.
Although we do not have enough evidence to estimate what proportion of children may be
experiencing handwriting difficulties in Britain, the research does suggest a strong gender
effect. Boys are more likely to be identified as having handwriting problems than girls
(Hamstra-Bletz & Blote, 1993; Rubin & Henderson, 1982) and research in the 1980s and 90s
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;
9
Biemiller et al, 1993; Ziviani, 1984). This is an important detail if handwriting does have an
impact on children’s ability to compose. If boys are less likely to obtain the necessary
automaticity in handwriting at the expected age, it may be that this interferes with their ability
to compose.
At present, there is considerable concern in Britain about boys’ underachievement in writing
(UKLA/PNS, 2004). In the annual Standard Assessment Tests and Tasks, boys consistently
do worse than girls at writing (Bearne & Warrington, 2003) but the data that is collected
cannot reveal how handwriting is implicated in this. The issue of boys’ handwriting has not
been a focus of the projects aimed at addressing underperformance in writing by boys. A
recent project in this area (UKLA/PNS, 2004) did not mention handwriting at all, despite the
fact that the aspects of writing most often cited by the boys in the study as a reason for
disliking writing were technical – including handwriting and spelling.
For children who are slow to develop handwriting automaticity (as opposed to neatness),
handwriting is slower and demands more effort. This creates what Stanovich (1986) has
called, in reading, the “Matthew effect” whereby those who are more able, (given the above
evidence in handwriting - usually girls) achieve more successful practice and, in the case of
orthographic-motor integration, have more attention available for composing processes. In
turn, the less able handwriters have less opportunity to engage with higher order composing
processes and to make progress in writing.
The importance of interventions
If a lack of orthographic-motor integration can have such serious consequences for the
development of composing skills, it is important to know whether intervention can prevent
10
these difficulties. There have been some studies of orthographic-motor integration to try to
ascertain the effects of focused handwriting practice. Two studies undertaken in Australia
(Jones & Christensen 1999; Christensen, 2005) used a relatively simple alphabet writing task
designed by Berninger et al (1991) to measure orthographic-motor integration and to identify
children with automaticity problems. One study measured the orthographic-motor integration,
reading and written expression of 114 children in Year 2 (aged 7) before and after an eight
week long handwriting programme. The children undertaking the programme showed
significant improvement in their handwriting and, crucially, in their composing skills. More
than half the variance in scores on written expression was accounted for by orthographic-
motor integration, even when reading scores were controlled. Christensen also reports a study
of 50 older children (year 8 and 9 in secondary school) whose orthographic-motor integration
and written expression were measured before and after an intensive handwriting programme.
A matched control group did journal writing for a similar period. Although both the journal
and handwriting groups were equivalent at pre-test, the scores for the handwriting group after
eight weeks of intervention were significantly better on all post-test measures, for example,
70% higher in orthographic-motor integration and 46% higher in quality of written text than
the journal group. The handwriting group also wrote approximately twice as much text as the
journal writers. These are startling findings at a secondary level, where it might be expected
that children who have not achieved automaticity would already have experienced
demoralizing failure. These studies offer strong evidence that handwriting intervention can
make a difference to the handwriting and, more importantly, the composition of children with
poor automaticity. By improving their ability to produce letters automatically, these young
writers freed up their attention for other writing processes.
11
Conclusion
The research suggests that the role of handwriting in writing has been underestimated in
mainstream education. The concentration has been on the benefits to spelling of well formed,
joined handwriting, and the necessity for speed and automaticity has been neglected in our
handwriting pedagogy. Educators have prioritised composing processes in writing, in itself
not necessarily a bad thing. But in doing so we may have neglected a skill which makes a
strong contribution to the composing we so value. The research suggests that it is time to re-
consider.
Handwriting, and in particular the automaticity of letter production, appears to facilitate
higher order composing processes by freeing up working memory to deal with the complex
tasks of planning, organizing, revising and regulating the production of text. Research
suggests that automatic letter writing is the single best predictor of length and quality of
written composition in the primary years (Graham et al, 1997) in secondary school and even
in the post-compulsory education years (Connelly et al, 2006; Jones, 2004; Peverley, 2006).
Enshrined in our pedagogic theory, practice and policy is the assumption that handwriting
becomes automatic relatively early on in writers’ development. This assumption
unfortunately remains untested, as national testing does not assess handwriting speed or
fluency and addresses only writing style and neatness. We may be assessing the wrong
aspects of handwriting and failing to assess an aspect which is crucial.
We know that a significant number of children experience handwriting difficulties throughout
their schooling, although for most these are probably not judged as sufficiently serious to
justify remedial action. More of these children are boys than girls and their handwriting
12
difficulties are likely to impact upon their ability to compose written language. There is
evidence that intervention to teach handwriting can improve not only the handwriting of these
children, but also their written composition.
There are a number of ways forward. We need to examine in more detail whether the findings
about orthographic-motor intervention can be generalised to the British context, where the
extent of handwriting difficulty is unknown and children are taught a simpler, more efficient
script than those generally taught in America. One small study (Connelly and Hurst, 2001)
has suggested such generalisation is likely but a much larger sample and range of age groups
is necessary. We need to assess the extent and distribution of handwriting difficulties by
looking at levels of automaticity in primary and secondary school pupils. Establishing some
bench-marks for orthographic motor-integration through the school years would be the first
step towards looking for a simple screening instrument that could identify those children with
handwriting difficulties who might benefit from interventions to improve their automatic
production of letters. For such children, a short handwriting programme may be what they
need to improve their composing. A research programme to consider what intervention might
be most effective could then be undertaken. Such a programme has the potential to benefit
young writers, particularly boys, who struggle to compose throughout their primary and
secondary schooling.
Handwriting has not been an important aspect of literacy for teachers in the last decade, but it
has been the subject of important research. It is time for the research in this area to be made
more accessible to educators and for it to be considered in the planning of pedagogies for
struggling writers.
13
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