Developmental skills between kindergarten children with handwriting difficulties in Chinese and/or English

Abstract

Aim: This study aimed to examine the differences in developmental skills between children with and without handwriting difficulties in their last year of kindergarten education. Methods: Standardised tests on handwriting performance and developmental skills were administered to 20 typically developing children, 21 children with handwriting difficulties in Chinese and 23 children with handwriting difficulties in both Chinese and English. We used one-way MANOVA, univariate ANOVA and post hoc comparisons, to compare the developmental skills between children with and without handwriting difficulties. Multiple regression analysis was used to identify the significant predictors of developmental skills for Chinese and English handwriting performance. Results: Higher proportion of children faced handwriting difficulties in Chinese than in English. Their major problem in Chinese handwriting was on stroke formation, while the results did not indicate the key factor leading to English handwriting difficulties. The results also showed that children with handwriting difficulties had significantly poorer visual motor integration, some aspects of visual perception and fine motor skills than typically developing children. Reading skills were not a key factor contributing to handwriting performance. In addition, visual and fine motor integration and spatial relationship were the significant predictors of Chinese and English handwriting performance, which accounted for 39.7 and 43.6% of the variance respectively. Conclusion: First, the results suggested that more resources should be devoted to coaching children to learn Chinese than English handwriting. Second, besides direct repetitive practice on handwriting, there is a need to incorporate learning activities to facilitate the development of visual motor skills, visual perception, and fine motor skills as a preparation for learning to write or in improving handwriting performance among kindergarten children.Since there was no similar study, a minimum of 21 children in each category of children was suggested by using G*Power at which Cohen's d (effect size) = 0.8, type I error of 5% and power of 80%.

Children with handwriting difficulties: Impact of cognitive strategy training for acquisition of accurate alphabet-letter-writing

“…Research on handwriting is continuing to determine the exact factors underpinning handwriting acquisition (Fitjar et al, 2021) and the most effective methods for supporting children to master this skill (Engel et al, 2018). Current research supports the contribution of occupational therapy handwriting programmes which emphasise gross and fine motor skills, visual-motor-integration and visual perception to handwriting development (Lee, 2022;Tse et al, 2019). However, systematic reviews of handwriting intervention studies conclude that the most effective handwriting interventions include a cognitive approach which provides explicit instruction on letter-formations, repetitive task-specific handwriting practice and self-evaluation (Cramm and Egan, 2015;Hoy et al, 2011).…”

Evaluation of a group-based sensorimotor intervention programme to improve Chinese handwriting of primary school students

“…Handwriting performance is often evaluated based on handwriting speed and accuracy; children's abilities to write are based on various sensorimotor skills, namely, fine motor control, visual perception, oculomotor control, and visual-motor integration [ 1 , 9 , 10 ]. Motor skills for controlling the coordinated arm, hand, and finger movements are found to correlate with handwriting speed [ 11 ].…”

“…Visual perceptual skills such as space and size discrimination, visual orientation, and distinguishing graphic forms could facilitate character recognition [ 5 ]. Oculomotor skills, including saccades and pursuits are vital for visual tracking to capture useful information, thus reducing the time for copying [ 10 ]. The ability to integrate visual perceptual information and motor movement is related to handwriting legibility performance [ 12 ].…”

Reliability and validity of Handwriting Test for Preschool Children (HT-PRE): A new tool to assess the handwriting ability of preschool children aged 5–6 years old in Mainland China

“…Writing in Chinese involves complex geometric figuration and stroke arrangements within a squared-area [24,25]. Proficient writing of Chinese characters is more difficult than English, as the Chinese language places greater demands on the ability to visually discriminate between fine differences in the form and position of strokes, as well as the ability for spatial organization in order to ensure that characters are written legibly, with the appropriate positioning of strokes and proportioning of radicals [26,27]. Different compositions, proportions, and orientations of each parts of Chinese characters can lead to the formation of different characters which can produce totally different meanings and pronunciations [28].…”

“…While the literature reveals an extensive body of research that has examined English handwriting, similar studies on Chinese handwriting are relatively limited [1,26,[29][30][31]. The Tseng's Handwriting Speed Test is the most commonly used evaluation tool to assess primary school students' handwriting speed [32].…”