Abstract
Until children can produce letters quickly and accurately, it is assumed that handwriting disrupts and limits the quality of their text. This investigation is the largest study to date (2596 girls, 2354 boys) assessing the association between handwriting fluency and writing quality. We tested whether handwriting fluency made a statistically unique contribution to predicting primary grade students’ writing quality on a functional writing task, after variance due to attitude towards writing, students’ language background (L1, L2, bilingual), gender, grade, and nesting due to class and school were first controlled. Handwriting fluency accounted for a statistically significant 7.4% of the variance in the writing quality of primary grade students. In addition, attitude towards writing, language background, grade and gender each uniquely predicted writing quality. Finally, handwriting fluency increased from one grade to the next, girls had faster handwriting than boys, and gender differences increased across grades. An identical pattern of results were observed for writing quality. Directions for future research and writing practices are discussed.
Highlights
Skilled writing is a complex task (Kellogg, 1996)
The current study examined if individual differences in primary grade students’ handwriting fluency accounted for unique variance in the quality of writing produced by a large and representative sample of children in grades 1 to 3 in Norway after we first controlled for variance in writing quality related to students’ grade, gender, language background, motivation for writing, and the nested nature of the data
We examined the correlations of writing quality and handwriting fluency with attitude towards writing
Summary
Skilled writing is a complex task (Kellogg, 1996). It is a conscious, demanding, and self-directed activity involving the strategic use of a variety of interwoven and nested mental operations writers use to accomplish their goals (Chenworth & Hayes,1 3 Vol.:(0123456789)2001; Hayes, 2012). What is written and the acquisition of writing depends on how a community actualizes its purposes, values, norms, audiences, tools and actions, social and physical arrangements, motivations, power and responsibilities, stance/identity, and collective history, which are in turn influenced by institutional, political, social, cultural, and historical forces that operate outside of the community Those who produce writing draw upon a variety of cognitive resources, including production processes for creating text (conceptualization, ideation, translation, transcription, and reconceptualization), long-term memory resources involving knowledge (e.g., content, genre, and specialized writing knowledge) and beliefs (e.g., judgments about the value and utility of writing, competence as a writer, and why one engages in writing), as well as control mechanisms (i.e., attention, working memory, executive control, and self-regulation procedures) that enable writers to direct and regulate the writing enterprise. They are moderated by writers’ emotions, personality traits, and physiological states as well as the characteristics, capacity, and variability of the community in which writing takes place (Graham 2018a, b)
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