Problems in writing disability among the school children

*P.T.Kingston, K.Shanmugam, R.selvaraj, R.Anand. #R.M.Bharanitharan _________________________________________________________ Abstract: In Indian schools, many children are who cope perfectly well with the world and school in every other respect might show little progress in learning. Most of the teachers may come across the children who excel in dance or music or some other curricular activities. But on enquiring their academic performance, the teachers may complain about their poor performance in academic activities. There are many reasons for school failure, but a common one is a language difficulties. This leads to learning disabilities. Learning disabilities can be life long conditions, that in some cases affect many parts of humans life such as, work ,daily routines, family life and some times even friendships and recreation .In some people, many

overlapping disabilities may be apparent. Other people may have a single, isolated learning problem that has little impact on other areas of their lives. However this paper deals about the writing disabilities among school childrens.

_________________________________________________________ *Research scholars, Department of Tamil, Bharathiar University, Coimbatore, Tamilnadu. South India. #Research scholar, Department of Linguistics, Bharathiar University, Coimbatore, Tamilnadu. South India.

Introduction Language is often called a skill rather than subject. It is more a matter of doing than of knowing. In knowing the mother tongue the first skill that a child acquires it is the ability to understand the spoken word that is the skill of listening next he tries to reproduce these sound. Sequences to express his own desires and needs and there by acquires the skills of speaking for an illiterate person; these two basic skills constitute his language ability. The ability to read and write is matters of literacy. The skill of reading and writing are included as basic language skill of reading and writing are included as basic language skills in the school curriculum. There are two kinds of skill 1. Receptive skill-listening and reading 2. Productive skill speaking and writing. The two oral skills listening and speaking develop fairly, rapidly, and effortlessly in the course of acquiring the first language. But to communicate effectively in the written language, one needs mastery of the two skills of literally namely reading and writing. Listening and reading skills are called receptive skills, because when listening and reading the person is at the receiving end of the communication channel. Speaking and writing on the other hand are active or productive skills. Here the person, being at the transmitting end of the channel has to take the initiative. These two skills are known as productive skills. Further in schools, the academic achievements of students are being measured only through the proficiency of productive skills, rather then the receptive skills. Not only 2

the academic purposes, but also other communicative performance of an individual in being rated only by the productive skills viz speaking and writing performance. The writing performance especially is considered for rating the achievements of an individual. Hence, the present theoretical paper is focusing on writing skill of the school students. The writing skill Writing is one of the productive skills that a learner is expected to achieve in order to ensure his communicative competence. Writing is a visual Representation of speech in writing and speaking the language learner is engaged in communicating his ideas and feelings. In the case of speaking a kind of give and take situation between listener and speaker exits. But in the case of writing the message communicated has a higher degree of finiteness and this skill requires real proficiency if communication has to be effective.

The process of writing skill Writing is often regarded as the visual representation of speech. The skill of writing is considered to be one of the to active skills. The process of writing is divided into three stages. 1. Manipulation 2. Structuring 3. Communication The roughly correspond to recognition, organization and interpretation in reading. Manipulation consists of psycho-motor ability to form the letters of the alphabet. This is the most rudimentary stage in writing. The next stage is structuring, here the learners is required to organize the letters into words, and words into phrases and sentences. Communication in writing, like 3

interpretation in reading, is the ultimate goal. At this stage the learner/ students is able to select the appropriate structure and vocabulary in the overall context of the passage, keeping in view the subject matter and the audience. Development of the writing skill should therefore proceed progressively through all the three stages. It ultimately leads to the art of self expression of the student. The following flow describes the process of writing skill. Process of writing

Writing alphabets

Spell words correctly

Form a sentence using punctuation marks

Developing sentences into paragraph

Problems in writing Written language is a highly complex form of communication. It is both skill and a means of self expression. It integrates visual, motor and conceptual abilities and is a major means through which students demonstrate their knowledge of advanced academic subjects. The writing skill includes

competence in writing, spelling, punctuation, andcapitalization, and studying, making sound letter correspondences knowing the alphabet and distinguishing one letter from another. In schools, the writing skill usually begins in kindergarten or first grade. Written expression reflects a persons level of comprehension, concept development, and abstraction. It is how we organize our ideas to convey a point. Written expression requires skills in three major areas such as handwriting, misspelling, grammatical inaccuracies, and r organization can make it difficult for a reader to understand the meaning of a written piece.thus, and effective writers are skilled enough in these three major areas of written expression to communicate with minimal

misunderstanding. (Ravi.R2002) Among the three major areas of written expression, hand writing is a tool skill to improve the writing ablity.most of the learning disabled children may have problem with their handwriting. Problem with handwriting are known as dysgraphia, which refers to partial ability (or inability) to remember how to make certain alphabet or arithmetic symbols (Cicci, 1983) Handwriting problems include misformation of letters, poor spacing both vertically and horizontally, and extremely slow writing .everyone occasionally produces some illegible letters, but some children do so frequently enough that understanding what they have written is difficult. In such cases, handwriting would be considered a problem.also, most children write quite slowly when they are first learning to print or write is cursive. Slow handwriting should be considered a problem, since a childs writing speed interferes with his /her work. Although children make many different mistakes in handwriting, most of their mistakes are made on a very few letters. Anderson, (1968) observed that the letters on which errors are most common are a,e.r and t. Children with 5

disabilities may form these letters or connecting strokes in correctly, and as a result the letters look like other letters. For example, if a cursived is misformed in one way, it looks like cl. All of these problems may interfere with other aspects of writing performance. Many learning disabled students are deficient in writing skills. Moran (1981) found that learning disabled and low achieving children in primary schools are performed similarly on formal features of writing; however, the low achievers made fewer spelling errors. Smith (1981) notes that learning disabled children need direct, concentrated instruction to become proficient in written communication. Hence, writing problems of the children have to be considered by the teachers as well as parents, since the writing problems affect their Learning process and academic achievements.

Bibliography Anderson, D.W. (1968).Teaching Handwriting.Wasington, DC: National

Education Association. Cicci, R (1983).disorders of written Language. In H.r.Myklebust(Ed), progress in learning disabilities (Vol.5, Pp.207-232), Newyork: Grune&Stratton. Moran, M.R. (1981) performance of learning disabled and achieving

secondary students on formal features of a paragraph writing task. Learning disability quarterly, 4(3), 271-280. Ravi.R (2002). Psychological factors lead to learning disabilities among primary school Children-A Study unpublished Ph.D dissertation, coimbatore46: Bharathiar university. Smith D.D. (1981). Teaching The Learning Disabled, Englewood cliffs, N.J: Prentice-Hall. 6