The development of handwriting quality and speed of 407 primary school children was followed from Grade 1 to Grade 5 in a longitudinal experiment. Performance was analyzed to enquire into the extent and bases for handwriting dysfunction. 27% of the children were classified as dysfunctional at the end of Grade 1. At the end of Grade 5 only 13% were so classified. Most children have adequate perception and motor abilities to develop functional handwriting. Dysfunction of handwriting speed can usually be traced to dysfunction of its quality. Dysfunction of quality can be traced to insufficient individualization in the primary instruction in handwriting which leads to a mismatch between the time allocated to teach certain letters to certain children and the time required for these children to learn the form of these letters.

The efficiency of two different instructional methods for improving the growth of handwriting quality in the upper grades of primary school was investigated in field experiments using a control-group design. No improvement in mean quality was found for a group of 38 children using a method based on copying exercises. A substantial improvement in mean quality, corresponding to about 1.4 SD, was found for 23 children using a method based on reintroduction of the letter forms explaining each form visually and verbally. It was concluded that the bottleneck in the development of handwriting quality in primary school is a mismatch between the instructional methods used and the perceptual ability of the children.

Correlations among letter naming, word reading, letter writing, and visual-motor integration scores at school start in Grade 1 and reading, spelling, and handwriting scores at the end of Grades 2 and 5 obtained in a longitudinal design for 217 boys and 190 girls entering Grade 1 at the age of 7 years are reported. The correlations between letter naming, word reading, and letter writing and reading and spelling in Grades 2 and 5 fall in the ranges .51 < or = r < or = .62 and .43 < or = r < or = .50, respectively (alpha = .01). For all other correlations (r < .40) alpha = .01.

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