Handwriting: Val's Shorthand Suggestions

[Valerie Sutton]

SignWriting List
December 27, 2008

On Dec 24, 2008, at 2:58 AM, Sandy Fleming wrote:
> Just as in learning an alphabet-based system, we could teach  
> children to
> read and print first, and then teach cursive writing at a certain age.



Yes, that is exactly what is happening, Sandy...Andre sent us his  
curriculum for Deaf children and he was proposing teaching SignWriting  
Printing in the early grades and then slowly starting to write in a  
more "handwriting" form later, no matter what we call it ;-)

so this is good advice...thanks for the message below...it is very  
interesting about Chinese! Val ;-)


-------


On Dec 24, 2008, at 2:58 AM, Sandy Fleming wrote:

> On Mon, 2008-12-22 at 19:31 -0800, Valerie Sutton wrote:
>> Hi Andre - and everyone -
>>
>> Well, maybe in time, with the right instruction materials, the
>> Shorthand will not have to be only for professional jobs but could be
>> changed or adjusted to be usable on a daily basis by children who are
>> at an advanced writing level...I think the idea of using it for
>> professional court stenography may be more unrealistic....I think it
>> may be better as a daily handwriting for advanced writers, and if you
>> have a curriculum for children learning at different levels, then the
>> more advanced children might enjoy the Shorthand...so I wouldn't
>> assume that kids can't learn it too...
>
> Val,
>
> There seems to be a direct analogy between this and modern Chinese.
>
> Professor Reinhard Hahn who runs the Lowlands-L mailing list was
> explaining recently that traditional written Chinese has so many  
> strokes
> that a simplified form is now used. This simplified form is similar to
> the older forms but has fewer strokes.
>
> Reinhard was explaining that the older forms are more informative and
> thus easier to understand, though harder to write. This means that
> students find the simplified form harder to learn, so that there's
> something to be said for the older form.
>
> The older characters with many strokes are still used decoratively and
> so on.
>
> I'm not a great fan of having to learn everything twice, but perhaps
> with writing there is a justification for this: computers or printing
> presses should produce stuff that would be hard to write but are  
> easy to
> type and read, while we still need an easily written form (even if  
> it is
> harder to learn) for when we're writing on paper.
>
> Just as in learning an alphabet-based system, we could teach  
> children to
> read and print first, and then teach cursive writing at a certain age.
>
> Sandy Fleming
>
>
>
>
>
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