It’s the first day of classes at high school. The 9th grade students enter the room with their backpacks, chatting about their summer and the new school year that is starting. The teacher greets them one after the other and invites them to sit down. Following are the presentations of the circumstances, the teacher’s expectations and the details of the course. Then, the teacher begins to write notes on the board in cursive writing, but, to his great surprise, no one copies them. The teacher looks at the class disapprovingly and reminds them that grades are an important factor for success in school.
A boy, a little more courageous than the others, raises his hand and confirms the teacher’s suspicion: none of the students can read the writing on the board since none have learned to read or write in attached letters.
One might wonder how important it is these days to teach cursive writing, also called “handwriting” or “attached letters . “
After all, many countries, including the United States and Finland, only teach script writing, which is also called “loose letters”, “block letters” or “printing letters”. Furthermore, almost all printed and digitized texts are written in script.
The benefits of cursive writing
It is the strict code of this form of writing that requires it. With attached letters, the student is less likely to make mirror letters like “b” and “d,” “p” and “q,” “u” and “n,” and even “n” and “h.”
Spaces between words are much more obvious and there are fewer errors between lowercase and uppercase letters.
More difficult at first
If, at the beginning, cursive writing is more difficult to master than script writing, once the automated gestures, spelling and knowledge of grammar rules, or “syntax”, of the students who have learned it are significantly better than those of students who only learned script writing.
Furthermore, the texts written by them are longer and of better quality than the texts produced by them
Because the emphasis is on the word and not the letter, cursive writing allows you to better understand the concept of the word, which can make learning to read easier.
The few lifts of the pencil, what we call “the sequence of gestures”, allows the child to write faster and makes the graphomotor movement more fluid, which helps the student not to lose the thread of his ideas.
Some advantages of scriptwriting…
What are the benefits of scriptwriting? First of all, it is easier to learn than handwriting. As a result, the child acquires functional writing more quickly.
In addition, this graphomotor simplicity allows the child to pause between letters to plan the next letter thanks to numerous pencil lifts.
In fact, script writing, due to its less complex movement and more flexible code, is very similar to drawing. The students reproduce the letters as they are without necessarily having to follow a precise procedure, which is not possible in the case of cursive writing.
As the emphasis is on each letter instead of each word, the child will have poorer knowledge of spelling and syntax.
Spacing between letters and words can make it more difficult to read text written in script, and mirror letters are more common.
Additionally, detached letters are slower and more energy-intensive to produce than attached letters due to all the pencil lifting, which can delay the automation of the writing action.