Russian handwriting in US classrooms in the computer age

[Stephanie Briggs]

My Mom saw my Russian cursive handwriting once, and though she couldn't read
it, she said, "It looks like your English handwriting!" Funny how certain
recognizable patterns persist across languages and alphabets, eh?

Stephanie

*****************************
~Stephanie D. (Sures) Briggs
http://sdsures.blogspot.com/

Come have a look at my handmade knitted afghans and scarves!
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On 10 September 2010 03:08, Patricia Chaput <chaput at fas.harvard.edu> wrote:

> Response to:
>
> "But for all written work I accept printed (печатные буквы) Russian. I send
> 4-6 students a year to Russia and I've never heard a complaint."
>
> It seems to me very odd to accept (and thereby encourage) a form of writing
> that not even Russian children are taught.  Once Russian children enter
> школа they are taught cursive; печатные буквы are only for дошкольники and
> essentially for letter recognition (pre-reading).
> I also think we should be concerned about the possible smirking, that when
> students are not taught to write in the form that educated native adults
> command, then they are not themselves perceived as educated adults.  In a
> worst-case scenario, they will be seen as incompetent and perhaps incapable
> of learning anything very complicated, deprived of respect for the abilities
> they have.  Students who "signal" incompetence may never be offered
> challenges that they are perfectly capable of meeting, if their teachers or
> employers do not believe them capable.  We also have to consider that these
> students may be unaware of what they are signaling, since printing is
> acceptable in North America and increasingly common.  These students may not
> be complaining because they may be unaware of the impression they are
> conveying.  Or, if their friends tease them, they may simply accept it as
> teasing and believe it unimportant (if their native language experience is
> that printing is a non-issue!
> ).
>
> For students who print in English, there is an easy compromise for Russian
> cursive.  Many Russians put breaks between letters when they write (picking
> up the pen and then starting a new letter without having every letter
> connected).  If students who are printers use the cursive shapes of the
> letters, but aren't required to connect all letters, they can produce a very
> legible and acceptable form of writing that looks like cursive and doesn't
> carry the negative associations of printing.  Since students have to acquire
> some form of writing, it is not much more trouble for them to learn the
> cursive shapes, and they will in fact be able to write faster.
> We used to have students begin with printing, then learn cursive, but years
> ago we cut out the printing stage and just have them learn cursive letter
> shapes.  It is my impression that they learn to write the cursive shapes
> more quickly, perhaps because the cursive shapes are in many cases easier to
> write, with fewer strokes.  Certainly their "printed cursive" is easier for
> me to read than the odd block letter shapes they used to come up with.  And
> since most printers do in fact connect letters, letting the pencil drag to
> the next letter, they tend to do the same with the "printed cursive" and end
> up producing cursive.
>
> When we began with printing and moved to cursive, learning cursive seemed
> to some students to be a burden, but when we eliminated the printing stage
> and just started students with "printed cursive" the burden seemed to
> disappear.
>
> As to the technology argument, we are far from living in a world in which
> the technology is always working, computers never crash, batteries never
> die, the printer is always working (and we have the right printer software),
> and we all have our electronic writing devices at hand and turned on--if we
> would even want that.
> Pat Chaput
> Harvard University
>
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