From the canary in the coal mine…er —Writing Center.
By virtue of our role as Writing Specialists, we work shoulder to shoulder with many students as they grapple with their assignments. We’re with them for the myriad difficulties that they encounter and sometimes, unfortunately, we may be the last to see them before they succumb academically.
We’ve learned a lot from this unique vantage point and, periodically, I’ll be sharing some of these insights with you here. Here’s one thing that we’ve noticed.
Over the past few years, there has been an increase in the number of students who struggle to read their instructor’s feedback, specifically when it includes cursive or “print-script” hybrid handwriting.
Students who grew up using other alphabets or characters (e.g., Arabic, Burmese, Chinese, etc.) find it difficult to read anything that isn’t typed or carefully printed. When they learned English, they memorized the Latin print alphabet used to write it. This alphabet looks vastly different from their own systems of writing and when they encounter substantial deviations from it, reading English becomes doubly difficult.
This is even true for students whose first language shares the Latin alphabet (e.g., Spanish, French, German, etc.). Deciphering handwriting, even a familiar cursive style, requires another act of decoding in addition to the translating of the language itself.
Students with certain learning differences may struggle, too, as their assistive technologies often won’t work as well (or at all) with handwritten text.
Additionally, because New York State stopped requiring the teaching of cursive handwriting in 2010, the Writing Center has also begun seeing American-born students who cannot read their instructor’s comments… or the Declaration of Independence.
Finally, students of all backgrounds struggle with abbreviations, acronyms and symbols (e.g., proofreading marks) both in print and handwriting unless they have been actively taught them.
Hopefully, these insights are helpful to you in your teaching.