To understand the importance of fluid, legible, and automatic handwriting, try this quick activity: Grab something to write with and write your first name with your nondominant hand.
Writing your name is something you’ve been doing since childhood. When you use your dominant hand, you probably write the letters of your name without thinking about it. You have performed this action often enough that the skill is automatic. However, when you write your name using your nondominant hand, you have to think about how to form each letter. You have not performed this motor action very often, so it is not an automatic skill.
Now, using your dominant hand, jot down a few items on your grocery list. With your nondominant hand, add a couple more items to the list. Writing with your dominant hand should produce legible, effortless words. What does your handwriting look like when you used your nondominant hand? Did it take longer to write out the words? Did you find that you really needed to think about how to form each letter neatly? You are able to automatically write with your dominant hand, meaning you form the letters and words without thinking about it. However, the skill is not automatic when you use your nondominant hand. Instead, far more concentration is required to form the letters and words. Most likely, even with this increased concentration, it took longer to perform the task and the words were not written neatly. Imagine how difficult it would be to complete your grocery list if you also had to concentrate on how to form the letters.
When letter formation is automatic, attentional resources are freed up so students have more capacity to concentrate on what they want to write, not how they have to write it. Achieving automaticity in handwriting is essential for effective and efficient learning across all content areas: math, language arts, science, social studies, and foreign language studies. The acquisition of automatic handwriting skills in children is critical, and once students are able to handwrite automatically, they can proceed to more advanced process-oriented skills like spelling, sentence structure, creative writing, etc. They can also attend fully to the more content-oriented aspects of written expression, such as sentence structure, story formulation, and spelling, which increasingly become the teaching focus beginning as early as the first grade (Christensen, 2004). Handwriting is then considered in terms of its usefulness for producing words, numbers, and sentences that are meaningful and related to what is being taught in the classroom (Berninger, 1994).
The benefits of automatic handwriting include:
- Speed. When handwriting is automatic, students can complete their work in a timely manner.
- Effort. When handwriting is automatic, students expend little cognitive effort, reducing stress, frustration, and fatigue.
- Confidence. When handwriting is automatic, students have more confidence and a stronger sense of themselves as proficient.
Cognitive Load and Working Memory
Cognitive load is the total amount of working memory required to perform a task.
Working memory is a type of short-term memory that holds onto information needed in the moment to complete a given task or set of tasks. When a task is too difficult, cognitive overload occurs. When letter formation is not automatic, cognitive overload may occur when students try to handwrite. For older students who have not achieved automatic handwriting, cognitive overload may occur because working memory is required to recall proper letter formation, which can lead to decreased academic performance. For example, working memory is required to jot down the items that need to go on your grocery list. If you also need to activate working memory to recall how to form the letters that make up the words on your list, cognitive overload may occur and you might forget to include some of the items you need.
Limited Capacity for Attention
Attentional capacity refers to the amount of information a person can attend to at once. It is not infinite. In fact, the brain is only able to actively attend to a limited amount of information at any given time. To better understand attentional capacity, think about a time you’ve had to drive to a new location. In order to follow the directions, you have to really concentrate on when to turn, the name of the street, etc. If music is playing or people are talking in the car, you may need to demand quiet so you don’t make a wrong turn. When a lot of attention is required to follow directions, the brain is unable to filter out the music or people talking the way it normally might.
In elementary school, students expend a great deal of mental effort or attention when first learning how to read, spell, and form proper sentences. The emphasis is less on letter formation and more on handwriting to produce words, numbers, and sentences that are meaningful. If the student struggles with the motor aspect of handwriting, then some attention must be allocated to the motor task, decreasing the attentional capacity available. The writing will be slow and labored and the quality of the content will be less than what the student is capable of. Or the student will produce high-quality content that is sloppy or illegible.
Implications of Poor Handwriting
From kindergarten through high school, written communication is an integral part of most classrooms. When students labor too long over the motor aspect of handwriting, the overall quality of schoolwork may suffer, as studies show that legible handwriting has been linked to school achievement and success (Graham, 1992). Daniel and Froude (2010) and Markham (1976) found that students who produced high-quality work content but have sloppy or illegible handwriting received lower grades than students who produced the same work content with good handwriting.
When students have handwriting that is difficult to read, their grades are affected. For example, a sloppily formed a, o, and e may look similar, and children may receive a lower grade on a math or spelling test because their teacher cannot decipher what the poorly handwritten answer says. Additionally, when students struggle to produce letters from memory (meaning they need to concentrate on how to form letters), they may lose their train of thought, spell words incorrectly, or take too long to complete their assignments.
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