Handwriting speed students of lower grades of elementary school

Abstract

Writing as one of the most complex human activities is the ability to properly graphic formatting of letters, the quality of which is viewed through the speed of writing and the legibility of written text. The main aim of this research is to investigate the writing speed of elementary school students. The survey was conducted in Belgrade, 2016 in eight elementary schools. The sample of research was formed from 1156 elementary school students, students from I to IV grade. The McMaster Handwriting Assessment Protocol was used as the measuring instrument. The obtained data show that the average writing speed of the students of lower grades of elementary school is the highest in the writing task to mind (40.86 letters per minute] and the lowest when the text is transcribed from a longer distance (36.31 letters per minute]. Consequently, there is a difference in the average writing speed of the students in the classroom, with respect to the class of students, with a significant effect of the type of task on the writing speed (F (2.778, 3208.02] = 466.34, p = 0.000]. The speed of writing increases with age, that is, with class, both on individual and total tasks. Inadequate writing speed, when looking at average speed on all four tasks, occurs in 78 (6.7%] students. Since most of the school activities are based on the writing process, and the existing results show that a number of students face a problem of writing speed, special attention must be paid to the adaptation of the educational process to these students. In addition to the difficulty of achieving a satisfactory writing speed, these students very often achieve worse school achievement, so this problem may also affect the emotional aspects of the students.