Tracing Words Exercises in Cursive Form to Develop Handwriting Skills of Grade II-Acacia

Abstract

INTRODUCTION

Writing is a content area where many children experience challenges throughout their educational year. It is one of the important skills that learners acquire and use throughout the school year as part of their job as students. Cursive form is one of the style of handwriting. It is a style of writing in which all the letters in a word are connected. It is written with rounded letters that are joined together. There are learners that deficient in cursive writing skills. Some Grade 2 students have difficulty writing long item using the cursive form due to their transition from Grade I writing a printed form. That why, pupils in Grade 2 pupils experience poor handwriting problem in cursive. Cursive handwriting not only allows one to write with speed, but also makes it easier to recognize words, and is in line with the body and muscle development of students (MEB, 2010). According to Duran and Akyol (2010), Writing is not a skill we are born with, but one developed only through education. Handwriting curricular, multi-sensory activities and regular direct instruction of handwriting can improve students' handwriting skills (Case Smith, 2011). Poor handwriting is a â—deficiency in the ability to write primarily handwriting, but also coherence (Chiver, 1999). Children with poor written forms may struggle with completing assignment and have self-esteem dueto their due to their inability to express themselves (Crouch & Jakuber, 2007). There are students who deficient the ability to write cursive form. A student who has poor cursive handwriting is not able to write neatly and legibly, unable to copy from blackboard fast, slow in writing, not able to copy information legibly in his/ her notebook, and unable to complete his/her note during lessons. The researcher found out that most of Grade II-Acacia's pupils have poor penmanship in cursive. The activities to be observed in this study should focus on tracing words exercises in cursive to develop handwriting skills of Grade II-Acacia.

METHODS

In this study aiming to determine the tracing words exercises, helps improve the pupil's cursive handwriting skills. The research employed the descriptive design. The respondents of the study were taken from the 31 Grade 2-Acacia of Bagumbayan Elementary school. Writing samples will be scored using rubrics.

RESULTS

A review of the cursive handwriting of Grade II-Acacia reveals that 80% of them improved their cursive handwriting ability. The more times that pupils do these cursive tracing exercises, the more improved their handwriting skills.

DISCUSSIONS

The purpose of this study is to increase the number of pupils in Grade 2 Acacia develop handwriting skills in cursive. They were asked to trace the words exercises given by the researcher and to copy words, using cursive handwriting. The cursive handwriting of 31 Grade 2 Acacia was analyzed using the" Tracing Words Exercises and Copying Words Exercises" provided by the teacher. The findings of this research show that tracing words exercise helped to improve cursive handwriting of Grade 2-Acacia.