Poor handwriting undermining LC students

gaiscioch

I'm nearly finished almost 100 LC mock exam papers (JC afterwards) and I'm just nodding my head at the really poor handwriting of about 10 of the students. It's incredibly time-consuming to mark them and I know they're good students, so I haven't much faith at all in the examiner in June to put this much time into an anonymous paper when they have another 200 or so scripts to read.(this correcting experience at each mock makes me grateful that I never have to correct LC exams)

What is the requirement these days for a student to be able to use a laptop? These students are not diagnosed with any SEN and I haven't been aware of how poor their writing is as work has always been submitted to me electronically. They are all hardworking students, but I think this will undermine the result they get.

More immediately, is there any solution to this? More long-term, is there any possibility that the SEC could some day allow all students a choice of doing their exam on paper or laptop?

spurious

Unless they have a deformity of the hand, ten minutes a day for three weeks with a headline copy will sort that out. If they are not bothered to spend that long fixing it, well they deserve nobody to bother with their paper.

Just had the same problem correcting JC.

pandoraj09

Just correcting LC mocks here myself and thinking the exact same. Its really difficult to make out what some of them are writing. I find its generally the boys who are worse than the girls and that's based on years of doing this. Apart from homework, students don't seem to use a pen to write much anymore. We introduced handwriting classes for Juniors a while back. I think its something that teachers need to name in the classroom and make parents aware that the illegible handwriting is going to have an adverse affect on their results. We can't give marks for something we can't read...

TheDriver

And we shouldn't make excuses either. Its difficult making a point tho when another teacher spends 4 hours deciphering their other exam. How did they get this far without being sat down in primary and trained into better hand writing?

BlinkingLights

It's a common issue in 3rd level because 99% of the time, people are typing on keyboards and then all of a sudden they're expected to handwrite a 20 page exam. It will inevitably, come out like utter garble after a few pages when your fingers get sore.

In a university context, it would be incredibly rare to be permitted to hand-in an assignment in handwriting. They're expected to be typed, and also usually submitted online through Turnitin or similar software to check for plagiarism.

At this stage, the vast majority of departments would point blank refuse a handwritten assignment.

Yet for some reason, we are expecting people to be able to produce large quantities of accurate handwriting once a year?

I have seen university exam scripts that are quite literally gibberish. They usually start out legible but, say 4 or 5 pages in you can see that the person no longer has the muscle control to make the pen do what they want to do and it just ends up looking like squiggly lines.

If we are going to be realistic, handwriting is secondary to typing now and that's the way it's going to stay. We need to keep it as a skill, but at the same time I think we need to perhaps not get overly shocked when we discover that the quality of handwriting is rapidly decreasing as more and more of our lives move over to typing and swyping.

Perhaps we should be moving to a situation where exams are just done on computers.

pandoraj09

Or without the primary educators, their parents, sitting down with them and practising writing... I read somewhere that in Finland they are no longer teaching handwriting anymore. Maybe its time to think about having students type the exams. I'm so frustrated trying to work out what students are writing all afternoon today...their words aren't even written on the lines...!

Zaph

This is an issue that has long since moved beyond the academic world. I wouldn't say I have the greatest writing in the world, but at least it's legible. However I can say almost without exception that the handwriting of any staff I have taken on in the last 10 years has either been close to illegible or a childish spidery scrawl. I can make allowances for the guy who is dyslexic, but to be fair to him there are others who have far worse writing than he does and can't claim any learning disabilities as an excuse. Obviously these days the vast majority of what we do is typed and so the quality of a person's handwriting is less important than it once was, but there are still occasions where writing is necessary and producing an illegible scrawl can come across as massively unprofessional looking.

And don't get me started on the syntax, grammar and punctuation of what they actually write/type...

BlinkingLights

It's the same all over the world though. I regularly get items sent with hand written labels from continental Europe and they look like they were written by toddlers.

I think humans are just losing the ability to handwrite.

spurious

Having spent my entire career teaching what would be seen as the lower-achieving groups, I'm very used to poor handwriting.

These mocks were the first ones ever that I had to give up on papers and just return them with 'I cannot mark what I cannot read' on them. You have some chance in the short answer questions where you know what they should be writing for a correct answer and can maybe half-recognise an appropriate capital letter, but looking at pages of squiggles with no discernible letter shapes in the so-called essay answers is soul destroying.

As for the rainbow colours of biros and those god-awful highlighter pens daubed over every second word of an answer - as if they were not already difficult to read...

BlinkingLights

Unless you're doing regular note taking and hardwiring essays and assignments on an on going basis this is inevitable.

byhookorbycrook

Fine and gross motor skills are suffering due to students spending a lot of time on IT and not on activities that would strengthen these skills.

BlinkingLights

The lack of PE facilities in many Irish schools and the bad weather compounds that too.

endacl

spurious wrote: »

Unless they have a deformity of the hand, ten minutes a day for three weeks with a headline copy will sort that out. If they are not bothered to spend that long fixing it, well they deserve nobody to bother with their paper.

Just had the same problem correcting JC.

Couldn't agree more. Easily fixed if the student can be bothered. As an adult, mine went to pot, having no requirement to write regularly. I'm in the process of fixing it. I have no need to fix it, but it's a basic skill that practically all of us can and should have.

Grolschevik

BlinkingLights wrote:

Unless you're doing regular note taking and hardwiring essays and assignments on an on going basis this is inevitable.

This. Students of all ages need to be encouraged to take written notes, not just rely on printouts and handouts. Serves as a recall advantage, too, I believe, so two birds etc.

spurious

Grolschevik wrote: »

This. Students of all ages need to be encouraged to take written notes, not just rely on printouts and handouts. Serves as a recall advantage, too, I believe, so two birds etc.

..and make their own notes, not pay money for so called 'A standard' notes.

Owryan

Not just LC/JC, some of the exam scripts submitted for 3rd level exams can be totally illegible.

endacl

Owryan wrote: »

Not just LC/JC, some of the exam scripts submitted for 3rd level exams can be totally illegible.

Don't.
Get.
Me.
Started.
:mad:

Mycroft H

Not just a problem in Education; it's a pain in the arse in the health care world, some people just need to be told to write in block capitals for clarity.

evolving_doors

The SEC will need to draft in some pharmacists ASAP.

Permabear

This post has been deleted.

gaiscioch

Permabear wrote: »

This post had been deleted.

Perhaps. On the other hand maybe the technology is already there to facilitate it. As far back as 8 years ago I was in a school computer room where the teacher was able to look at his computer and see what each student was doing on his/her computer. You could have the screens of all students simultaneously on your own screen, and then zoom in on particular screens if the student is looking at stuff unrelated to their work.

Furthermore, there are thousands of students each year in schools and colleges across Ireland who sit all their exams via computers and it doesn't seem to be an issue. Putting alerts and blocks on computers if bluetooth or whatever is being used to transfer data shouldn't be too difficult either.

mtoutlemonde

gaiscioch wrote: »

Perhaps. On the other hand maybe the technology is already there to facilitate it. As far back as 8 years ago I was in a school computer room where the teacher was able to look at his computer and see what each student was doing on his/her computer. You could have the screens of all students simultaneously on your own screen, and then zoom in on particular screens if the student is looking at stuff unrelated to their work.

Furthermore, there are thousands of students each year in schools and colleges across Ireland who sit all their exams via computers and it doesn't seem to be an issue. Putting alerts and blocks on computers if bluetooth or whatever is being used to transfer data shouldn't be too difficult either.

As an aside to this - I have used this system - it's great and you can even message a student to pay attention I think changing exams to computers would lead to the same problems as implementing the IT curriculum that is being discussed - infrastructure e.g. up to date computers, strong broadband etc.

doc_17

As far as early childhood education goes I wouldn't class myself as an expert. But I'd have preferred to never have been taught that cursive handwriting bulls**t. I'd like to know if it's compulsory in other countries.

I wasn't a tidy writer but when I stopped cursive it helped a lot in improving my handwriting. But, maybe there's a very good reason for teaching kids, who aren't tidy writers yet, a more complex form of handwriting style before they can even write on the lines yet.

mtoutlemonde

doc_17 wrote: »

As far as early childhood education goes I wouldn't class myself as an expert. But I'd have preferred to never have been taught that cursive handwriting bulls**t. I'd like to know if it's compulsory in other countries.

I wasn't a tidy writer but when I stopped cursive it helped a lot in improving my handwriting. But, maybe there's a very good reason for teaching kids, who aren't tidy writers yet, a more complex form of handwriting style before they can even write on the lines yet.

Yes this was the bane of my life in primary. I remember my first day in third class with the principal and going home with a red jaw after my writing didn't match the example. I worked a lot on my writing at home and today, most people say that I have very neat handwriting

2xj3hplqgsbkym

doc_17 wrote: »

As far as early childhood education goes I wouldn't class myself as an expert. But I'd have preferred to never have been taught that cursive handwriting bulls**t. I'd like to know if it's compulsory in other countries.

I wasn't a tidy writer but when I stopped cursive it helped a lot in improving my handwriting. But, maybe there's a very good reason for teaching kids, who aren't tidy writers yet, a more complex form of handwriting style before they can even write on the lines yet.

Cursive is now taught in junior infants! I don't get it either , only that maybe it's quicker , but still would use it very little.

happywithlife

doc_17 wrote: »

As far as early childhood education goes I wouldn't class myself as an expert. But I'd have preferred to never have been taught that cursive handwriting bulls**t. I'd like to know if it's compulsory in other countries.

I wasn't a tidy writer but when I stopped cursive it helped a lot in improving my handwriting. But, maybe there's a very good reason for teaching kids, who aren't tidy writers yet, a more complex form of handwriting style before they can even write on the lines yet.

I see the two sides of this coin. My handwriting is very poor if cursive so I avoid it. On the other hand my daughters handwriting was so poor initially her SI teacher queried dsypaxria it was that bad. It was only when she switched to cursive it improved no end and she's lovely handwriting now. I hate my handwriting though and find it very much depends on the pen I use

picturehangup

As a teacher at second level for almost thirty years, I have noticed a significant decline in the standard of my own handwriting over the last ten years or so. This has happened since I started using Word to type almost everything. Having 'trained' with the famous Mavis (Beacon), I can type so quickly now, almost twice as fast as I could write manually, hence all my correspondence, letters, emails, etc, are typed.

When I need to manually write a covering letter, I end with hand cramp, probably not helped by the fact that I am also a classical pianist (may have suffered some degree of tendonitis from this), and my writing is practically illegible, due to poor muscle control, despite presenting the most beautiful handwriting in my younger days.

When in college, all dissertations and essays were presented manually. This was in the late '80s, and computers were just beginning to come into regular usage. I think young people still need to learn to write properly, perhaps until the end of secondary, and then switch over to Word or whatever, due to the large bulk of work they will need to complete in third level. Penmanship skills is probably something that could be incorporated into TY.