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The acquisition of handwriting in the UK (1994)
- Normille 6y agoInteresting read. Just a pity the accompanying illustrations are: 1. Not actually part of the document. but linked to 2. Illegibly small GIFs with overly reduced colour palette
- Symbiote 6y agoThe web page probably hasn't changed much since it was put online in 1994, except perhaps some maintenance until around 1998-9. It says the original layout is kept "for archeological reasons": http://www.unask.com/website/biblio.htm http://www.unask.com/website/biblio.htm Even the replacement website is so old that it has a page on how to use the World Wide Web: http://www.unask.com/website/intro/beginners.html http://www.unask.com/website/intro/beginners.html
- ealexhudson 6y agoWould be interesting to track the use now. There was a return to enforced "joined up" writing as part of the national curriculum for exactly the reason outlined here : non-joined writing is seen as childish. Print script more or less goes away by age 6/7.
- maccard 6y agoAnecdotally, I went to school in ireland. Around age 9, cursive became mandatory, however I suffered from pretty illegible handwriting (to the point of multiple interventions between parents and teachers over 3-4 years). It was awful for me, and I was forced to continue with it. When I went to secondary, cursive was optional, and I returned to printing, but I was the only one. By the time I made it through university, I would hand wave it around 50-50 between cursive and printed. One interesting thing I've noted with my group of friends and my partners friends are that those who have poor handwriting tend to be better typists..
- pm215 6y agoNote -- make sure you click on the links that look like section titles as you read through it -- these are actually links to the illustrations!
- midasuni 6y agoIt’s 2021. Handwriting at scale has no business in the world. Printing letters is a legible way of conveying information if it needs to be. The amount of school time wasted on prescriptive joined up writing for kids who won’t even be adults until the 2030s is distressing.
- celticninja 6y agoSometimes we need to write. Just because we have devices that assist us there is no reason not to learn it.
- benzoate 6y agoI don’t disagree with you, but I suspect learning to write single characters accelerates learning to read. Joined up writing is totally bogus and most of the time I encounter it it makes the author harder to understand, not easier.
- jstanley 6y agoI think joined-up writing is about making it faster to write, not easier to read.
- gpderetta 6y agocan confirm. My joined-up writing is write-only.
- KineticLensman 6y ago> I think joined-up writing is about making it faster to write... Totally. If I have to record what people said in a meeting, accurately because I want to quote rather than summarise them, joined up writing is invaluable. > ... not easier to read This is the downside. At the end of a meeting where I was responsible for taking minutes, I'd usually check back through my note book to make sure I could actually interpret what I'd written. And in case people say - Why didn't I just record the meeting - there are still places where electronic recording devices are disallowed for security reasons.
- ggm 6y agoI think based on this, and learning writing in a scottish primary school in the sixties I probably did round hand. Hard to be sure: I write like the doctor I am not.
- laegooose 6y agoHaha, I just learned doctor's handwriting is universal. For unknown reason I always assumed it's my country's thing
- handwritingwhn 6y agoI've just discovered why my f is 'weird'. Partway through learning our Round Hand letters, we had a sub who knew Looped Cursive.
- pjc50 6y agoNeeds (1982) in title, or some other clarification of how long ago the research was done.
- handwritingwhn 6y ago1994 according to the footer
- bencollier49 6y agoI think things have changed rather a lot since I was young. As I understand it, a large number of UK schools have standardised on continuous cursive, a trend which has been hastened by teachers using centralised resources from websites like "Twinkl". This can cause significant problems, as schools often tell parents that their children are learning "cursive". This confuses a lot of people, as default cursive is a slightly different style to continuous, and resources provided by schools can be lacking. When I tried discussing this with my sons' school, they were not very forthcoming. See this link for an explanation of some of the issues: https://teachhandwriting.blog/2019/08/29/be-school-ready-what-letter-font-is-your-childs-school-teaching/ https://teachhandwriting.blog/2019/08/29/be-school-ready-wha...
- sitharus 6y agoInteresting, I definitely learned continuous cursive in the late 80s. Still, I have typist's handwriting.
- bencollier49 6y agoIn the early 80s I first learned a rounded style, then changed school at 8 and had to relearn writing in italic. So in one sense standardisation is a good thing, but a monoculture is always a bad thing. I love seeing different types of handwriting. The artistry in the handwriting of my parents' and their parents' handwriting is wonderful.
- ogogmad 6y agoDoes writing joined up make it easier to spell words correctly, compared to printing at least? Something about muscle memory.
- sitharus 6y agoI suspect it varies by person. I certainly spell letter by letter no matter what style I'm using.
- physicsguy 6y agoThis is interesting but ancient; some things it mentions definitely are not the case today. We don't even have 'Teacher Training Colleges' that it mentions in the same way today; the normal route now is for people to study for a degree and then do a qualification called a PGCE (or a similar but slightly different qualification called a PGDE in Scotland)
- petepete 6y agoI work in this area. The main route in for people who would've gone to a teacher training college would now be via a SCITT (School-centred initial teacher training) provider. Often SCITT courses will include a PGCE but some don't; either way once you've completed a course you'll be ready to teach. The benefit of these courses over a college-based approach is that the teachers spend a lot of time in classrooms by comparison with other methods. It gives ample opportunity to work out whether or not they're on the right path. https://www.ucas.com/teaching-option/school-centred-initial-teacher-training-scitt https://www.ucas.com/teaching-option/school-centred-initial-...
- tupac_speedrap 6y agoHa, my handwriting was so bad I had to use one of those handwriting pens instead of a fountain pen for a while. I seem to of been taught looped cursive even though I was in Primary school in the late 90s but I just print everything nowadays because my handwriting is bad, nobody cares after primary school.
- osullivj 6y agoThe article mentions the popularity of Marion Richardson in the Midlands and South. I was taught handwriting at primary in Derbyshire (Midlands) in the early to mid 70s, and can clearly remember the looping exercises, and that the method used was Marion Richardson.
- hoseja 6y ago>Books are not cheap, and the cost of providing each class, let alone each pupil, with a complete set of copybooks and replacing them whenever they disintegrate is beyond the reach of most schools. This is shocking to me. Is it still the case?