Benefits of Handwriting

This week’s article summary is Why Handwriting is Still Essential in the Keyboard Age

As our dependence on technology increases, many ask the logical question about whether or not elementary schools should continue devoting classtime to the formal teaching of handwriting and cursive.

The article below shares research that connects the importance of handwriting practice with brain development.

Some of you may have read articles over the past year or so of college students benefitting (in terms of their final grades) from handwriting notes in class rather than typing them on their laptops (also confirmed in the article below) or of emerging readers benefitting from reading hard copy books versus digital ones.

Despite our increasing dependence on technology, the need remains to learn handwriting and to develop fine-motor finger skills and coordination.

Who knows, maybe someday old-fashioned letter writing will become vogue again!

Joe

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Do children in a keyboard world need to learn old-fashioned handwriting?

There is a growing body of research on what the normally developing brain learns by forming letters on the page, in printed or manuscript format as well as in cursive.

Executive function and language development: A 2016 article in the Journal of Learning Disabilities found that for grade 4-9 students writing letters and words is helpful to brain development. Handwriting – forming letters – engages the mind, and that can help children pay attention to written language.

Better grades in school: In an article in The Journal of Early Childhood Literacy, Laura Dinehart (Florida International University) said there could be two reasons for this: first, neatly written student work is more pleasant for teachers to read, and second, children who struggle with writing may be devoting so much attention to the mechanics of writing that content suffers.

The link between cognitive and motor brain processes: Handwriting is a complex task coordinating cognitive, motor, and neuromuscular processes. We use motor parts of the brain, motor planning, motor control, but what’s very critical is a region of our brain where the visual and language come together, the fusiform gyrus, where visual stimuli actually become letters and written words. Children have to see letters in their “mind’s eye” to produce them on the page, and brain imaging reveals that learning to write letters activates this area of the brain.

Messy is okay: Karin James (Indiana University) says of primary-grade beginners, “The letters they produce themselves are very messy and variable, and that’s actually good for how children learn things. That seems to be one big benefit of handwriting.”

Cursive: One study suggests that teaching cursive writing starting around grade 4 improves spelling and composing, perhaps because the connecting strokes help students make connections between letters and words.

Classroom note-taking: Dinehart says that studies comparing keyboarding to hand-written notes in college classrooms show that “students who are writing on a keyboard are less likely to remember and do well on the content than if writing it by hand.”

Touch-typing: Learning the keyboard and being able to type without looking takes advantage of cross-communicating fibers in the brain. There’s the additional brain-stimulation advantage of using both hands, whereas handwriting uses only one.

This may be another case where we should be careful that the lure of the digital world doesn’t take away significant experiences that can have real impacts on children’s rapidly developing brains. Mastering handwriting, messy letters and all, is a way of making written language your own, in some profound ways. To develop “hybrid writers,” these are the best steps:

• Teach manuscript writing in the primary grades for its links to reading and word recognition
• Introduce cursive around grade 3 for spelling and composing
• Teach touch-typing in the late elementary grades for speedy and brain-efficient writing