Do not combine unfamiliar graphomotor demands with orthographically complex words for students who have not mastered graphomotor skills¶

Strategy · All strategies
Evidence · 5 claims (5 for) · 1 study (1 causal), q2 · 1 of 1 report an effect size · 5 claims rest on one study

Description¶

This instructional strategy follows from the finding that spelling and graphomotor processes interact and compete for cognitive resources in beginning writers. The authors recommend that "teachers should be careful not to put students who do not yet fully master graphomotor skills in a situation where they have to deal both with unusual graphomotor demands while writing words that are too complex orthographically", because otherwise they risk slowing down one or both learning processes.

Design Implications¶

Context¶

Requirements¶

• Teachers need information about which letters are graphomotorly difficult for beginning writers and which words are orthographically demanding for their students

Constraints¶

• The article notes that methods modifying visual feedback have been tested only with single letters, and their extension to whole words should take the combined demands into account

Target Learners¶

• beginning writers in Grade 1 who have not yet automated graphomotor skills

Target Learning Goals¶

• handwriting fluency and spelling acquisition

Affordances¶

• Van Galen Parallel Spelling Graphomotor Model

Claims¶

• The graphomotor difficulty of the first letter affects handwriting duration, velocity, stops and size in all grades [+W]
• The lexical frequency effect on writing a difficult first letter is present only in 1st graders, indicating spelling-motor interference before handwriting automation [+W]
• Graphemic complexity of the final letters has only marginal effects, limited to letter size [+W]
• Handwriting duration of the first letter improves massively between Grade 1 and Grade 3, then plateaus [+W]
• A pre-experiment cluster analysis identified b, f, g and p as the most graphomotor-difficult cursive consonants for 1st graders [+W]

Related Strategies¶

• Incorporate typing into educational strategies to alleviate handwriting-related cognitive load and support word retention for students with dyslexia

Examples¶

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Key Sources¶

• Danna, J., Longcamp, M., Nalborczyk, L., Velay, J.-L., Commengé, C., & Jover, M. (2021). Interaction between orthographic and graphomotor constraints in learning to write. https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3596-880X