Not so neat solution to literacy
Updated on 24 October 2007
How a focus on neat handwriting could damage the development of literacy in UK schools.
Scientists, who've recently studied six and seven-year-olds in the Midlands, have found startling evidence the concentration on neatness may actually be damaging the development of literacy.
The scientists believe the physical act of writing and the mental act of composing the words both compete to use the same short term memory in the brain.
Concentrating on getting handwriting neat, they argue, takes up brain power at the expense of thinking properly and creatively.
The study found a strong correlation between the children's ability to write the letters of the alphabet quickly and their compositional skills. The results, it seems, confirming what some teachers at one of the schools in the study knew instinctively.
The physical act of writing and the mental act of composing the words both compete to use the same short term memory
The Warwick team says learning to type on a computer doesn't necessarily hinder literacy - as long as handwriting skills are also taught. Indeed, they say there's some evidence that teaching children to type well has the same benefit as actively teaching them to write fluently.
So they suggest changing policy - to actively teach children to write without thinking about it.
The policy mistake, they argue, is that the National Curriculum assumes handwriting becomes automatic at an early age, when there's evidence from elsewhere it doesn't.
The Warwick team is now designing such a test, part of a simple programme for teachers to give extra help to those children whose writing isn't automatic enough, and which would improve their literacy as a result.
