Learning to write in primary year one: Why cursive handwriting is better
Antonella Paoletti
This research paper derives from over thirty years’ experience in the field of Speech Therapy Rehabilitation for Disorders of Oral and Written Language, and from considering two fundamental facts: on the one hand, the ever more frequent exponential growth of handwriting problems, in other words problems with writing in its graphomotor component (dysgraphia and/or bad writing in general); on the other hand, the enormous amount of work needed for rehabilitation, both from the point of view of the therapist, and from that of the children, who are generally in their last term of Primary Year Two or at the beginning of Primary Year Three, where fine hand motor behaviour is already highly automated. In light of these considerations, as regards dysgraphia, or bad writing, the only really effective treatment would be prevention, which should start right from the initial phases of learning to write in Year One.The research compares written production, towards the end of Year Two, of two different groups: «cursive handwriting natives», in other words children who have been exclusively or primarily exposed to cursive handwriting since the beginning of Year One, and «manuscript handwriting natives», in other words children who have been exposed since the beginning of Year One to the four scripts, but who have primarily used «manuscript handwriting», as occurs in the large majority of Italian schools.
Keywords
Dysgraphia, rehabilitation, prevention, cursive handwriting, manuscript handwriting.