The article reviews the research on composition and transcription writing skills conducted with elementary-aged learning-disabled students and published during the last five years. Conclusions are drawn concerning the influence of: text production method, specific interventions, text structure knowledge, word presentation form, and…

Describes six remedial activities that teachers can use to help their learning-disabled students improve their handwriting. Provides a rationale and a step-by-step example to illustrate how to carry out each activity. (MS)

Analyzed 17 personal attributes of 160 undergraduate students who wrote reports on a computer or by hand, and compared differences in the quality of computer and handwritten reports with each student's personal attributes. Concludes that some attributes do relate to computer writing quality. (JMV)

This study compared 10 gifted and 10 average children in each elementary grade for higher level cognitive writing processes and lower level transcription processes. Results indicated that gifted and average children differed in the higher level cognitive processes but not in the lower level writing processes. Results have implications for…

Describes a study which sought to determine whether students would be able to identify the gender and ethnicity of the writer of an essay placement test based on the writer's handwriting and the content of the paper. The student-readers were able to guess the writers' gender 87.6 percent of the time and ethnicity 47.9 percent of the time. (DMM)

Explains the value of neurocomputing as a unique and effective new technological concept for information processing and optical character recognition. Comparisons are made to digital computing and examples of applications such as recognizing handprinted characters are addressed. Products available from various companies are described. (Contains…

Describes an objective, reliable method for functionally measuring cursive handwriting. Researchers assessed the sensitivity of a functional response-class definition to differentiate easy-to-read from difficult-to-read cursive handwriting. Results showed no overlap between the categories. There was small sample-to-sample variability with the…

Suggests that doctors may one day be able to identify healthy people who will develop Alzheimer's disease. Discusses recent studies in which characteristics of a person's writing early in life appear to predict the disease, and brain scans can highlight changes that may precede dementia. (CCM)

Provides suggestions for helping English-as-a-Foreign-Language teachers who work with students who write in a different alphabet or use a different form of script deal with the handwriting of their classes at the start of English learning. It is a way to systematically check, revise, and improve learners' handwriting through the use of dictations.…

This longitudinal interpretive case study documents the role and significance of one preschooler's name in deepening her understanding of written language. Findings highlight the importance of an authentic, purposeful, literacy-rich, supportive environment for children, that provides them time to invent, predict, and guess how written language…

Elementary children with only spelling (n=24) or handwriting and spelling disabilities (n=24) were randomly assigned to a pencil- or computer-response mode and taught 48 words of varying orders of sound-spelling predictabilities. The computer keyboard offered no overall superiority to the pencil. Children with both disabilities spelled less well.…

Examines the contribution of handwriting to learning to write in an experimental training study. First-grade children experiencing handwriting and writing difficulties participated in sessions designed to improve accuracy and fluency of their handwriting. In comparison to their peers in a control condition, participating students made greater…

The present study investigated the effects of speech recognition technology (SR) and advance planning on children's writing processes. Fluent and less fluent writers, ages 11 to 14, composed 4 narratives, via handwriting and SR, both with and without advance planning. Less fluent children's handwritten narratives were significantly inferior to…

For thousands of years, the three perfections--painting, poetry, and calligraphy--have been considered the mark of an enlightened person throughout Asian cultures. Fifth-grade students learned about these three hallmarks by studying three works from the Detroit Institute of Art's Asian collection: a nineteenth-century Japanese hand scroll, a…

This study examined whether the graphemic structure of words modulates the timing of handwriting production during the acquisition of writing skills. This is particularly important during the acquisition period because phonological recoding skills are determinant in the elaboration of orthographic representations. First graders wrote seven-letter…