The importance of handwriting

[Debbie_Hepplewhite]

Dr Kerry Hempenstall, member of IFERI's Advisory Group, kindly provided some findings of studies involving handwriting:

“Writing is an immensely important and equally complex and sophisticated human skill commonly ascribed a fundamental role in children’s cognitive and language development, and a milestone on the path to literacy. Nevertheless, compared to the vast field of reading research, there has been less scientific attention devoted to the act and skill of writing. … A large body of research in neuroscience, biopsychology and evolutionary biology demonstrates that our use of hands for purposive manipulation of tools plays a constitutive role in learning and cognitive development, and may even be a significant building block in language development. Furthermore, brain imaging studies (using fMRI, i.e., functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging) show that the specific hand movements involved in handwriting support the visual recognition of letters. Considering the fact that children today or in the near future may learn to write on the computer before they master the skill of handwriting, such findings are increasingly important. In this article we present evidence from experiments in neuroscience and experimental psychology that show how the bodily, sensorimotor – e.g., haptic – dimension might be a defining feature of not only the skill of writing but may in fact be an intrinsic factor contributing to low-level reading skills (e.g., letter recognition) as well, and we discuss what a shift from handwriting to keyboard writing might entail in this regard (p.386).
Mangen, A., & Velay, J-L. (2010). Digitizing literacy: Reflections on the haptics of writing, Advances in Haptics, In Mehrdad Hosseini Zadeh (Ed.), InTech. DOI: 10.5772/8710. Retrieved from: http://www.intechopen.com/books/advance ... of-writing


“Writing helps in many ways. First the physical act of forming the letters forces the child to look closely at the features that make one letter different from another...Second, writing letters (left to right) trains the ability to read left to right. Third, saying each sound as the letter is written helps anchor the sound-to-letter connection in the memory” (p.239).
McGuinness, D. (2004). Growing a reader from birth: Your child's path from language to literacy. New York: W.W. Norton and Co.


Thus, replacing handwriting by typing during learning might have an impact on the cerebral representation of letters and thus on letter memorization. In two behavioral studies, Longcamp et al. investigated the handwriting/typing distinction, one in pre-readers (Longcamp, Zerbato-Poudou et al., 2005b) and one in adults (Longcamp, Boucard, Gilhodes, & Velay, 2006). Both studies confirmed that letters or characters learned through typing were subsequently recognized less accurately than letters or characters written by hand. In a subsequent study (Longcamp et al., 2008), fMRI data showed that processing the orientation of handwritten and typed characters did not rely on the same brain areas. Greater activity related to handwriting learning was observed in several brain regions known to be involved in the execution, imagery, and observation of actions, in particular, the left Broca’s area and bilateral inferior parietal lobules. Writing movements may thus contribute to memorizing the shape and/or orientation of characters. However, this advantage of learning by handwriting versus typewriting was not always observed when words were considered instead of letters. In one study (Cunningham & Stanovich, 1990), children spelled words which were learned by writing them by hand better than those learned by typing them on a computer.
Mangen, A., & Velay, J-L. (2010). Digitizing literacy: Reflections on the haptics of writing, Advances in Haptics, In Mehrdad Hosseini Zadeh (Ed.), InTech. DOI: 10.5772/8710. Retrieved from: http://www.intechopen.com/books/advance ... of-writing


“In a series of studies, Hulme and Bradley (Bradley, 1981; Hulme & Bradley, 1984; see also Prior, Frye, & Fletcher, 1987) demonstrated the superiority of the Simultaneous Oral Spelling method, in which children learn to spell a word by pronouncing a word written and spoken for them, pronouncing the name of each letter while writing the word, and then repeating the whole word again (see Bradley, 1980, 1981). In a test of the efficacy of the components of the Simultaneous Oral Spelling method, Hulme and Bradley (1984) found that for a normally achieving group of young children, the motoric element of the method seemed to be the important factor (children performed better when writing the words than when using letters on cards to spell them); whereas for an older group of reading-disabled children, the combination of writing and letter naming seemed to be critical. Hulme (1981; Hulme, Monk & Ives, 1987) has carried out an extensive series of studies demonstrating that the motoric activity involved in tracing or writing various stimuli can facilitate young children's memory performance (see also Endo, 1988). These results are congruent with the work on word learning and led Hulme et al. (1987) to tentatively conclude that "It is, perhaps, not unreasonable to speculate that the motor activity involved in learning to write may be beneficial to the development of basic reading skills’” (p. 159).


“ … spelling is usually conceived of as a task that requires a more complete and precise orthographic representation than that required by reading (see Ehri, 1987; Stanovich, 1992). Thus, it may be that reading does not expose subtle differences in the quality of the orthographic lexicon in the same way that spelling does, perhaps because the advantages of redundancy are greater in the former task and thus the existence of precise orthographic representations is less critical” (p.162).
Cunningham, A. E., & Stanovich, K. E. (1990). Early spelling acquisition: Writing beats the computer. Journal of Educational Psychology, 82, 159-162.


“In this debate about the importance of motor conditions when learning to read and write, the results of the present study are in agreement with those showing that writing letters facilitates their memorization and their subsequent recognition (Hulme, 1979; Naka and Naoi, 1995)” (p. 75).
Longcamp, M., Zerbato-Poudou, M.T., & Velay, J.L. (2005). The influence of writing practice on letter recognition in preschool children: a comparison between handwriting and typing. Acta Psychologia, 119, 67-79.


(Traditional spelling programs) do not focus on making the spelling image of a word memorable through the use of all senses by simultaneously presenting grouped words orally, visually and through the motor movements of writing (Hulme 1981; Montgomery 1981; Moats & Farrell 1999) (p.328).
Post, Y. V., & Carreker, S. (2002). Orthographic similarity and phonological transparency in spelling. Reading and Writing. An Interdisciplinary Journal, 15, 317–340.


“A cursory and cross-disciplinary glance at the current state of writing research yields the impression that writing is mainly, if not exclusively, a mental (e.g., cognitive) process (MacArthur, Graham, & Fitzgerald, 2006; Torrance, van Waes, & Galbraith, 2007; Van Waes, Leijten, & Neuwirth, 2006). Cognitive approaches to the study of writing focus predominantly on the visual component of the process, and how it relates to cognitive processing. However, as evidenced by research in neuroscience, and as phenomenologically experienced by the writer him- or herself, writing is a process that requires the integration of visual, proprioceptive (haptic/kinaesthetic), and tactile information in order to be accomplished (Fogassi & Gallese, 2004). In other words, the acquisition of writing skills involves a perceptual component (learning the shape of the letter) and a graphomotor component (learning the trajectory producing the letter’s shape) (van Galen, 1991). Research has shown that sensory modalities involved in handwriting, e.g., vision and proprioception, are so intimately entwined that strong neural connections have been revealed between perceiving, reading, and writing letters in different languages and symbol/writing systems. (James & Gauthier, 2006; Kato et al., 1999; Longcamp, Anton, Roth, & Velay, 2003, 2005a; Matsuo et al., 2003; Vinter & Chartrel, 2008; Wolf, 2007) Current brain imaging techniques show how neural pathways can be differentially activated from handling different writing systems (p.389).
Mangen, A., & Velay, J-L. ((2010). Digitizing literacy: Reflections on the haptics of writing, Advances in Haptics, In Mehrdad Hosseini Zadeh (Ed.), InTech. DOI: 10.5772/8710. Retrieved from: http://www.intechopen.com/books/advance ... of-writing


Current brain imaging techniques show how neural pathways can be differentially activated from handling different writing systems: logographic writing systems seem to activate very distinctive parts of the frontal and temporal areas of the brain, particularly regions involved in what is called motor perception. For instance, experiments using fMRI have revealed how Japanese readers use different pathways – when reading kana (an efficient syllabary used mainly for foreign and/or newer words, and for names of cities and persons), the activated pathways are similar to those used by English readers. In contrast, when reading kanji – an older logographic script influenced by Chinese – Japanese readers use pathways that come close to those used by the Chinese. (Wolf, 2007) (p.389).
Mangen, A., & Velay, J-L. (2010). Digitizing literacy: Reflections on the haptics of writing, Advances in Haptics, In Mehrdad Hosseini Zadeh (Ed.), InTech. DOI: 10.5772/8710. Retrieved from: http://www.intechopen.com/books/advance ... of-writing


In fact, it has been reported that learning by handwriting facilitated subjects’ memorization of graphic forms (Naka & Naoi, 1995). Visual recognition was also studied by Hulme (1979), who compared children’s learning of a series of abstract graphic forms, depending on whether they simply looked at the forms or looked at them as well as traced the forms with their index finger. The tracing movements seemed to improve the children’s memorization of the graphic items. Thus, it was suggested that the visual and motor information might undergo a common representation process. Various data converge to indicate that the cerebral representation of letters might not be strictly visual, but might be based on a complex neural network including a sensorimotor component acquired while learning concomitantly to read and write (James & Gauthier, 2006; Kato et al., 1999; Longcamp et al., 2003; 2005a; Matsuo et al., 2003). Close functional relationships between the reading and writing processes might hence occur at a basic sensorimotor level, in addition to the interactions that have been described at a more cognitive level (e.g., Fitzgerald & Shanahan, 2000) (p.395-6).
Longcamp, M., Zerbato-Poudou, M.T., & Velay, J.L. (2005). The influence of writing practice on letter recognition in preschool children: a comparison between handwriting and typing. Acta Psychologia, 119, 67-79.


“The implication of the direct path finding is that instruction in word recognition skills will transfer more to handwriting than instruction in handwriting skills will transfer to word recognition. Instructional research is therefore needed to evaluate whether covariances or direct paths best characterize the relationships between handwriting and word recognition in literary instruction. This research is especially needed because multisensory approaches to language remediation (e.g., Birsch, 1999) tend to assume that integrating handwriting with word recognition instruction facilitates the learning of word recognition. However, the results for the direct paths in both structural models yield evidence of bidirectional, reciprocal relationships between word recognition and spelling. Training spelling should influence word recognition and training word recognition should influence spelling” (p.45).
Berninger, V.W., Abbott, R.D., Abbott, S.P., Graham, S., & Richards, T. (2002). Writing and reading: Connections between language by hand and language by eye. Journal of Learning Disabilities, 35, 39-56.


“This phenotypic study (see Berninger, Abbott, et al., 2001, for additional details about method and findings) provides additional support for the claim that reading and writing systems draw on common as well as on unique processes (cf. Berninger et al., 1994; Fitzgerald & Shanahan, 2000). This study also lends support to the hypothesis that strong links between the reading and writing systems exist at the word level (word recognition - spelling) and at the text level (comprehension composition)” (p.48).
Berninger, V.W., Abbott, R.D., Abbott, S.P., Graham, S., & Richards, T. (2002). Writing and reading: Connections between language by hand and language by eye. Journal of Learning Disabilities, 35, 39-56.


“The present study adds to the growing literature showing strong orthographic learning resulting from spelling practice (Conrad, 2008; Shahar-Yames and Share, 2008; Ouellette, 2010). The question remains, beyond individual modality differences, what explains the strong orthographic learning that occurs through spelling practice? Ouellette and Sénéchal (2008) have suggested that the benefit of spelling lies in its highly analytical nature that forces the child to consider each and every sound in a word. In producing the spelling, the child then must focus on each and every letter in their production. The result is that children attend to both the phonology and orthography of the word in more detail than they would need to during reading. Consequently, orthographic learning through spelling may result in representations that are more complete than would be created through reading (Conrad, 2008). As discussed by Perfetti and Hart (2002), while reading may proceed with partial representations, accurate spelling cannot. The analytic nature of spelling also promotes student engagement which can further benefit learning (Ouellette et al., 2013)” (p..
Ouellette, G., & Tims, T. (2014). The write way to spell: Printing vs. typing effects on orthographic learning. Frontiers in Psychology, 5(117), 1-11.
http://journal.frontiersin.org/Journal/ ... 7/abstract

[Debbie_Hepplewhite]

Interestingly, there are references above to spelling whilst 'letter-naming' (Hulme and Bradley) and spelling whilst saying the 'sounds' of the components of spelling (Diane McGuinness).

I think this is an important difference and whilst I am not a researcher but I am an experienced practitioner (former teacher, teacher-trainer and programme author), I would recommend calling upon the 'sounds' when spelling in preference to letter-naming as a general principle.

It would be interesting for readers of this forum to think about their own 'private' processes when typing out longer and/or less commonly used words to identify whether the tendency is to 'think' in letter names or, in the main, the sounds identifiable in the spoken word.

The question for teachers, then, is whether to promote letter-naming whilst spelling or saying the 'sounds in one's head' (or aloud) when teaching spelling.

Please, then, feel free to add a 'reply' to describe your personal findings - or any further research information you may know of on this topic.

[Dick Schutz]

All of the research that Kerry cites here supports the contention that "handwriting helps" something-or-other. None of the research indicates that handwriting is a necessary prerequisite to any of these things. I don't know anyone who contends that "handwriting is harmful," and it is "important" in its right without needing any justification for its [dubious] transfer value.

However, it doesn't require "research" to conclude that handwriting is less "important" today than it was before the ubiquity of mobile phones and other devices connected to the internet where the communication interface is via "keyboard." Irrespective of "research,"many little kids are txting before they reading, and their small little fingers seem better adapted to the task than my big fat fingers.

And we ain't seen nuthin yet. Automated voice communication is already that makes both handwriting and keyboarding unnecessary for many purposes. Amazon's Alexa and Apple's Siri will "tell" you the spelling any of the words that I've used so far in this post. I'm sure there are words that would stump them, but the spelling would likely stump me as well. Google is coming out with a competitor (called Google) and all the devices can be expected to become even more versatile and ubiquitous over time.

Anecdotally, there was a time when I relied exclusively on a pencil with an eraser and a lined pad of yellow paper to compose anything of any substance. I had WordPerfect on a computer before the advent of Microsoft Word, but I "couldn't think" using a word processing program. Now I wouldn't think writing anything of any length "by hand." The quality of my handwriting has deteriorated somewhat in the interim, but that's likely as much a function of natural ageing as it is lack of practice.

My "spelling ability" has changed more than my handwriting. I've come to rely on SpellCheck so heavily that I've become more careless in my initial spelling, and I "forget" how to spell words that I formerly would have "remembered" (I think. But that too could be a function of age.)

Before written language was invented, "research" would have shown the "importance of Memorization" for its transfer value. Memorization is still important today in its own right, but its utility has become steadily more limited. Seem to me the same relationship holds for handwriting. Time will tell, but it won't hold its breath for "research" on the matter.

[Debbie_Hepplewhite]

Thanks for your comments and observations, Dick. I must admit that when I started to type on a computer keyboard, I too could not think and type at the same time. Now, I can type so quickly that it pretty much keeps up with my thinking and does not impede my thinking. I am an advocate for children being taught to type with the full range of fingers and without looking at the keyboard preferably before they become fast and automatic using two fingers or just one hand (for example). My own children, however, are remarkably fast with any form of keyboard, electronic gadget, and none of them do this the conventional way!

With regard to spelling, I still have concerns and questions myself, but still advocate that there are very important links with handwriting and reading and spelling. Kerry provided me with some further summaries about spelling - but none which fully addresses the question regarding letter names when spelling versus saying or thinking the letter-sounds. Various summaries, however, note phonemic awareness as supporting spelling and developing as a result from spelling see here:

“The most effective spelling instruction teaches spelling as a linguistic (rather than visual) ability by directly facilitating key skills that underlie spelling development (Bourassa & Treiman, 2001). There are three metalinguistic skills that are strongly related to spelling acquisition. One metalinguistic skill that is essential to the acquisition of spelling is phonemic awareness, which refers to the ability to reflect on and manipulate single sounds within words (Gillon, 2004). A second important metalinguistic skill for learning spelling is orthographic awareness which includes (1) alphabetic knowledge, for example, ‘sh’ makes the //sound; (2) orthographic pattern knowledge, such as knowing that the grapheme ‘ck’ cannot be used in initial position in a syllable; and (3) storage of mental representations of spellings in longterm memory (Apel, Wolter, & Masterson, 2006; Apel, 2011). A third skill that is fundamental for learning to spell is morphological awareness which involves the ability to recognize the parts of words that convey meaning, such as identifying connections in words sharing the same root, such as heal-health (Berninger, Abbott, Nagy, & Carlisle, 2010).” (p.536)
McNeill, B., & Kirk, C. (2014). Theoretical beliefs and instructional practices used for teaching spelling in elementary classrooms. Reading & Writing, 27, 535–554.


“Berninger and Richards (2002) proposed that the reading brain is initially constructed as children learn to relate existing phonological word forms to orthographic word forms, and during this process create memories of written word forms. In research on learning and teaching spelling, this stage is referred to as the phonological stage of spelling (Moats, 2000 and Templeton and Bear, 1992). This phonological stage involves encoding of phonemes into graphemes (1- and 2-letter spelling units). In the process of repeated encodings, typical spellers begin to create precise representations of all the constituent letters in the written word spelling (whether or not the letters relate to a phoneme in a one-to-one way). With sufficient practice in spelling written words, these representations in long-term memory organize as an autonomous orthographic lexicon that can be accessed automatically without the intervening phonological encoding process. Mental computations of the interrelationships among phonological, morphological, and orthographic words forms create mental maps of the word-specific orthographic word forms that underlie this autonomous orthographic lexicon (e.g., Berninger et al., 2001 and Nagy et al., 2003). Thus, triple word form theory (Richards et al., in press) is relevant to understanding how the autonomous orthographic lexicon underlying automatic spelling and fluent reading emerges from the earlier phonological stage—instead of relying only on phonological–orthographic mappings, children begin to rely on phonological–morphological–orthographic mappings. When children rely on the autonomous orthographic lexicon rather than phonological encoding, they have entered the orthographic stage of spelling development (see Moats, 2000 and Templeton and Bear, 1992). However, mature spelling requires an additional stage of spelling development. Because English is a morphophonemic language (Venezky, 1970 and Venezky, 1999), English spelling relies greatly on morphological rules that require analysis of vowel and consonant patterns at the end of base words that influence whether letters are dropped or added when adding suffixes (e.g. Dixon & Engelmann, 2001). Nagy and colleagues (e.g. Nagy et al., 1993) have conducted programmatic research for nearly two decades on the typical developmental course from simple to complex morphological processing that affects word reading and spelling and have shown that the morphological processing begins to contribute in a substantial way around grade 4 but continues to develop through the high school years and possibly even beyond” (p.3). ... research is needed on whether stages of spelling development are discrete stages or overlapping, cascading phases of progression from phonological to orthographic to morphological processing and whether the progression is parallel or distinct for reading and spelling” (p.78). … Regions involved in spelling may change over development. Both good spellers and dyslexics in this study of upper elementary grade children activated the right IFG and right parietal regions including angular gyrus, whereas adults in the studies discussed earlier tended to activate the left side of these regions (p.80). … the results show that an instructional component that emphasizes orthographic strategies may be effective in changing the orthographic mapping related to spelling at the orthographic stage of spelling development. However, the child dyslexics also appear to need specialized instruction for the phonological processes involved in spelling to normalize their phoneme mapping. The benefits of morphological treatment for spelling may not be detected in brain response of child dyslexics in the upper elementary grade levels, at least not until they master or reach reasonable proficiency in the earlier phonological encoding and orthographic spelling stages” (p.82).
Richards, T., Aylward, E., Berninger, V., Field, K., Grimme, A.C., Parsons, A., Richards, A.L., Nagy, W. (2006). Individual fMRI activation in orthographic mapping and morpheme mapping after orthographic or morphological spelling treatment in child dyslexics. Journal of Neurolinguistics, 19(1), 56–86.


“The reciprocal relationship between spelling and reading: Initially, all of their skills were bottom up, driven by phonological awareness, letter knowledge, and some kind of mapping skill. But as they became more proficient spellers they also became more proficient decoders, and then eventually it was the decoding and the word recognition skills that started to impact on their ability to complete the orthographic representations, the spellings, according to English conventions”.
Caravolas, M. (2008). Children of the Code interview. http://www.childrenofthecode.org/interv ... avolas.htm


“However, it would seem that rapid and accurate word identification is particularly crucial if the reader is to complete higher-level processing successfully. The result fits well with the idea that efficient and automatic word identification liberates resources for effective higher-level processing (Perfetti, 1985, 1992) … Recent research on younger readers has shown that the contribution of word recognition to reading comprehension can vary widely depending on the type of comprehension test used (Cutting & Scarborough, 2006; Keenan, Betjemann & Olson, 2008). … This may be because an individual’s phonological representations of words become increasingly influenced by their spelling knowledge (Ehri, 1991, 2005). Once reading is well under way, both children and adults have great trouble deleting sounds from spoken words when the phoneme is not clearly marked in the orthography, such as deleting the /w/ sound in quack or the /k/ sound in fox (Castles, Holmes, Neath & Kinoshita, 2003). People also respond that there are more sounds in spoken words containing more letters, such as pitch than in words containing fewer letters, such as rich (Ehri & Wilce, 1980; Tunmer and Nesdale, 1985). In short, literate individuals find it difficult to disregard their knowledge of the spelling of spoken words when asked to make judgments on how they sound”.
Holmes, V.M. (2009). Bottom-up processing and reading comprehension in experienced adult readers. Journal of Research in Reading, 32(3), 309–326.


“As Nagy explained it to children, words live in families just like children do; to learn to read and spell, children need to learn how families of sounds, families of word parts for meaning, and families of letter units work together harmoniously.” (p.581)
Richards, T.L., Aylward, E.H., Field, K.M., Grimme, A.C., Raskind, W., Richards, W.L., Nagy, W., Eckert, M., Leonard, C., Abbott, R.D. & Berninger, V.W. (2006). Converging evidence for triple word form theory in children with dyslexia. Developmental Neuropsychology, 30(1), 547-589.


“In scripts where at least some phonemes have alternative spellings, spelling accuracy indexes the strength of orthographic representations (Cunningham et al., 2002; Share, 1999, 2004). However, a spelling task is conservative in relation to reading in that it requires recall rather than recognition of orthographic information (Ehri & Saltmarsh, 1996)”.
Bowey, J.A., & Muller, D. (2005). Phonological recoding and rapid orthographic learning in third-grade children’s silent reading: a critical test of the self-teaching hypothesis, Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 92, 203–219.


“Spelling reflects linguistic understanding of speech sounds” (p. 137).
Edwards, L. (2003). Writing instruction in kindergarten: Examining an emerging area of research for children with writing and reading difficulties. Journal of Learning Disabilities, 36, 136-148.


“We propose that relations between phonemic awareness and spelling skills are bidirectional: Spelling influenced growth in phonemic awareness and phonemic awareness contributed to growth in spelling skills”.
Hecht, S.A, & Close, L. (2002). Emergent literacy skills and training time uniquely predict variability in responses to phonemic awareness training in disadvantaged kindergartners. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 82, 93–115.


“To acquire representations of printed words, children must attend to the written form of a word and link this form with the word’s pronunciation. When words are read in context, they may be read with less attention to these features, and this can lead to poorer word form retention. Two experiments with young children (ages 5–8 years) confirmed this hypothesis. … We believe that the benefit of learning a new word form in isolation is caused by increased attention to the word’s orthographic and phonological representations that is necessary for encoding. When beginning readers read words in context, they may fail to attend sufficiently to orthographic and phonological features of the words and instead rely on context to bolster their reading of unfamiliar words. Less skilled readers benefited from learning in the isolated condition to a greater extent than did more skilled readers. … young readers, while they are in the early stages of learning to read many new words, can benefit from reading that draws attention to word form and word decoding (e.g., the fingerpoint reading technique used by Ehri & Sweet, 1991). We do not, however, suggest that isolated word learning should replace learning words in stories; rather, we suggest that it should complement such learning, especially for less skilled and beginning readers”.
Landi, N., Perfetti, C.A., Bolger, D.G., Dunlap, S. & Foorman, B.R. (2006). The role of discourse context in developing word form representations: A paradoxical relation between reading and learning. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 94(2), 114-133.

[Dick Schutz]

The question for teachers, then, is whether to promote letter-naming whilst spelling or saying the 'sounds in one's head' (or aloud) when teaching spelling.


In the case of reading, any uncertainty about a given Correspondence in a word is in the sound, not the letter(s)--the letters are what you are looking at. So it makes sense to say something like "The sound here is ___."

In the case of spelling, any uncertainty is in the letter(s). So it makes sense to cue with the letter names. The child has no problem saying the word, so telling kiddo the sounds is no help at all. What s/he has to do is come up the letters. With words involving Advanced Correspondences, I don't understand how "saying the sounds in one's head" would be anything but misleading. What am I missing?

In the case of spelling, morphology is an important consideration. Children have "morphological awareness" via their spoken language expertise, but learning how to spell the elements of word structure--affixes, suffixes, verb tenses, and such-- is as relevant as using the Alphabetic Code for spelling root words.

Incidentally, and anecdotally, the spelling "research" Kerry compiled doesn't do anything for me, and I don't see how it would do anything for any teacher. Again, I could well be missing something.

[Debbie_Hepplewhite]

When teaching by the systematic synthetic phonics approach which is evolving in England, the spelling routine starts with 'oral segmenting' which is identifying the sounds all through the spoken word and then allotting graphemes (letters or letter groups) that are code for the identified sounds.

Learners may, or may not, know the specific letter or letter group for the sounds dependent on the word.

This approach, however, is not letter driven - it is still 'sound' driven.

Learners are taught from the outset that an identified sound can be accounted for by more than one letter - a letter group, or a digraph some teachers would say, or a trigraph - and so on.

Again, this is sound driven and not letter driven.

So, for example, even if the learner was spelling 'boat', he or she would not have to think in terms of letter names, but sounds, and then know that (or be provided with the information) the letter group 'oa' is code for the sound /oa/ in this particular word. Following that, ideally, the learner should be taught, or supported, to learn a spelling word bank of words all spelt with 'oa' as code for the /oa/ sound.

Of course not all teachers teach the same, and not all systematic synthetic phonics programmes have the same content, or are delivered identically - but, in the main, phonics for spelling is sound-based.

The only time that we, arguably, need to use the letter names is when relaying a spelling for a word, letter by letter, by saying the letter names. There is no other reliable way to RELAY the spelling than with the letter names. This is not the same, however, as actually spelling the word for one's own purposes in which case there need be no letter naming at all.

I know that guidance for some phonics programmes does promote saying letter names when spelling, but this is not my guidance in the main.

In other words, there are clearly different ways of teaching spelling even through various phonics programmes, but I'm personally closer to Prof Diane McGuinness's suggestion of calling upon the sounds of the word-to-be-spelt rather than the letter names.

[Dick Schutz]

Learners may, or may not, know the specific letter or letter group for the sounds dependent on the word.

Aye, there's the rub. This is the "spelling problem" for everyone, not just for "Learners." It's no problem if you can recall the Correspondences, but it's a "real problem" if you can't. The fact that you know that an identified sound can be accounted for by more than one letter , doesn't help at all, even when you know what these alternatives are. The question is "which alternative letter(s)"? That answer can't be conveyed by "segmenting the sounds." Recourse to letters is inherent.

The Alphabetic Code is neither "sound driven" nor "letter driven." The "driving" is in the Correspondences, not in either sound or letter.

Diane McGuinness compiled the Alphabetic Code via an analysis of Phoneme-Grapheme Correspondences and so viewed the Advanced Code as "Spelling Alternatives." But the Correspondences are also "Reading Alternatives." The one-and-the same Code works for both reading and spelling; it works through the Correspondences--Phoneme-Grapheme for spelling and Grapheme-Phoneme for reading.

The Code is "reversible" for reading and spelling, but the acts of reading and spelling differ, in the same way that walking forward and backward are a reversible function, but the acts differ in function. Reading and spelling can be effectively taught simultaneously, and there are compelling advantages in doing so. There are also advantages in lagging spelling instruction slightly behind reading instruction to insure that the learner "knows" the Correspondences in reading before having to generate the Correspondences in spelling. Which course of instruction is better hasn't yet been investigated.

None of this has anything to do with "the importance of handwriting," other than in the "linkages"--where "everything is related to everything else."

[Debbie_Hepplewhite]

Well, in a way it is linked to handwriting because handwriting the code helps reading and handwriting is used for spelling and writing.

In England, systematic synthetic phonics is statutory in the national curriculum and teachers teach both blending for reading and oral segmenting and spelling within the same lessons. Both skills are taught from the outset - or should be!

As you're referring to the alphabetic code, Dick, I think this is timely to link to two of my websites - one of which provides free Alphabetic Code Charts (including for the American/Canadian accents) and one of which provides free Alphabet and handwriting resources, see:

http://www.alphabeticcodecharts.com

http://www.debbiehepplewhitehandwriting.com

[Debbie_Hepplewhite]

Having mentioned the national curriculum for English (for England), I thought I would also provide this link which includes in its guidance the Simple View of Reading and the teaching of handwriting - including the teaching of joined handwriting:

https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/s ... 220714.pdf

Page 5:

Writing

The programmes of study for writing at key stages 1 and 2 are constructed similarly to those for reading:
 transcription (spelling and handwriting)
 composition (articulating ideas and structuring them in speech and writing).
It is essential that teaching develops pupils’ competence in these two dimensions. In addition, pupils should be taught how to plan, revise and evaluate their writing. These aspects of writing have been incorporated into the programmes of study for composition.
Writing down ideas fluently depends on effective transcription: that is, on spelling quickly and accurately through knowing the relationship between sounds and letters (phonics) and understanding the morphology (word structure) and orthography (spelling structure) of words. Effective composition involves forming, articulating and communicating ideas, and then organising them coherently for a reader. This requires clarity, awareness of the audience, purpose and context, and an increasingly wide knowledge of vocabulary and grammar. Writing also depends on fluent, legible and, eventually, speedy handwriting.

Page 13, note that 'dictation' is actually statutory in England:

Statutory requirements

name the letters of the alphabet:
 naming the letters of the alphabet in order
 using letter names to distinguish between alternative spellings of the same sound
 add prefixes and suffixes:
 using the spelling rule for adding –s or –es as the plural marker for nouns and the third person singular marker for verbs using the prefix un–
 using –ing, –ed, –er and –est where no change is needed in the spelling of root words [for example, helping, helped, helper, eating, quicker, quickest]
 apply simple spelling rules and guidance, as listed in English Appendix 1
 write from memory simple sentences dictated by the teacher that include words using the GPCs and common exception words taught so far.

Statutory requirements

Handwriting

Pupils should be taught to:

 sit correctly at a table, holding a pencil comfortably and correctly
 begin to form lower-case letters in the correct direction, starting and finishing in the right place
 form capital letters
 form digits 0-9
 understand which letters belong to which handwriting ‘families’ (i.e. letters that are formed in similar ways) and to practise these.

Notes and guidance (non-statutory)

Handwriting requires frequent and discrete, direct teaching. Pupils should be able to form letters correctly and confidently. The size of the writing implement (pencil, pen) should not be too large for a young pupil’s hand. Whatever is being used should allow the pupil to hold it easily and correctly so that bad habits are avoided.
Left-handed pupils should receive specific teaching to meet their needs.

My personal view is that the national curriculum (link above) for England is very readable, sensible and doable. It is well worth reading by others internationally to compare with their own national curriculums for literacy.

I used the same format of diagram of the 'Simple View of Reading' for the 'Simple View of Writing' as I have personally found these diagrams very helpful for teacher-training and for considering learners' reading and writing profiles broadly. Others might find them useful too so I'm providing them here:

http://www.phonicsinternational.com/The ... _model.pdf