Re: OT More pens (was Re: Phoneme winnowing continues)

Re andreas:
>Does 'cursive' mean connected?
Yes, and printing is the unconnected, more similar to computer and printed
writing. A lot of people call curisve handwriting too, though I say cursive
to mean cursive and handwriting to mean penmanship.

Re Christophe:

>"Handwriting was hardly taught"? To me, it's identical to say "writing was
>hardly taught". In France, when we learn to write, we learn handwriting! We
>learn no other way to write than in cursive! And we learn that in first
>primary school year, age 6 thus. Reading has usually been taught a year
>before in the last year of kindergarten. But I fail to understand how you
>can be taught to write otherwise...
I know, it always seemed rather backwards to me. Why hassle us so much about
good penmanship and writing in cursive if they hardly ever made us do it? I
write in cursive because I like the way it looks but mainly because I think
too fast to write in printing (the excrutiating slowness gets to me after a
few lines,) but most people don't even know how to write in cursive anymore.

>>I'm curious though, what kind of drills did they make you do? Did you just
>>have to copy things down perfectly or something?
>Indeed. That's how we learn to write. Pages and pages of small and capital
>cursive letters.
Ah, I see. We only had to do those in third grade, on that massive paper I
referred to.

>!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! again!
>We learn to write with normal lined paper, which is 8mm high per line in
>France.
The first few grades of school, at my school at least, everyone wrote on
MASSIVE paper. I hated it, it seemed so inefficient, and hard. It's hard to
write a good-looking letter that large.

As for the 4h long exams, the only exam we had that was that long were APs,
and we had two hours to write three essays. I have absolutely no problem
writing that much, but I do a lot of drawing and writing anyway, so I guess
that's why. Whenever we wrote essays in class it was just during the class
period (~50 minutes.)

Re Roger Mills:

>Every elem. schoolroom had the ideal forms of the letters, cap and small,
>posted above the blackboard (another antique term) in the front of the
room.
>Ordinary schoolwork was done in pencil, but on penmanship day, after
teacher
>doled out the ink, and our points were firmly in their holders, we set to>
>work-- push-pulls, essentially  /|/|/|/|/|/|/| (connected) for line after
>line, then loops, interlocking OOOOOOs-- everything had to be neatly within
> the lines of the paper, you had to hold the pen just so, at just the right
> angle etc. etc. (actually there was a reason for that-- you learned
control
> and a light touch; if you didn't, the point could snag in the poor-quality
> paper......); then practice the letter forms, write words etc. etc. As an
> additional complication, sometimes spelling tests were done in ink (points
> off for crossing out!).
Yes, I remember having the letters up above the board. Though never for the
lower grades, those all had the block printing ones. And when we learned
cursive we used pencil!! I don't think we were ever allowed pens except for
the dreaded Final Drafts.

I admit that now I'm kind of a pen snob. I hate writing in pencil unless I
absolutely must (I always write on yellow paper, so that may be why; plus
pencil inevitably fades and smears.) I don't really like ballpoints either,
though I like drawing with them. I remember when I was little (like, 2-3) I
refused to draw with pencil and my mom gave me pens :) I wish penmanship had
been more enforced in school, someo f my peers have atrocious (or legible
but obnoxious) writing, printing or otherwise. And actually, I was taught
how to write calligraphically in fourth grade, but only because I was in
GATE (a 'gifted' program, which was actually extremely lame.)

Though now I am wondering, do people in countries that still drill you on
penmanship and cursive have better writing than we do? I would assume yes,
but you never know. I think my writing's pretty good but almost nobody can
read it. I think the last vestiges of penmanship lie in elementary teachers
like my aunt, who got quite indignant when she saw that my friend Jeff had
written his "J" the wrong way. :)

Sorry for all the re's by the way, outlook is being lazy and not putting >s
in front of everything I reply to, grr.

-Kendra
http://refrigeratedcake.com
"We que sont adieu....uh...la toilette..." - Amy's
shining moment in French poetry writing

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