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C- This Article was made Tuesday, July 2, 2013. The data hasn't been touched.
R- It relates to my topic by talking about both sides of the article.
A-  The Source is AOP
A- The source supports my topic with "Students are more literate if they can read and write cursive, and it allows them to communicate with older generations, like family members." But they don't support my topic with "It can take time away from more “relevant” subjects. It can be time consuming and frustrating for parents."
P- The purpose of this article is to provide the pros and cons of cursive to the reader.

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Kids today can Skype, build a blog, and tag a friend. But how many of these modern communicators can still read and write cursive?

Fewer than ever before, studies show. Penmanship is going the way of a lost art, even in homeschools.

"Handwriting is 50 percent of literacy, but children are seeing less and less formal handwriting instruction," said Toni Schulken, a child occupational therapist who is dedicated to increasing writing literacy.

Vanderbilt University research reveals that children spend just ten minutes a day practicing print and cursive. In many homeschools, parents are simply too buried in lesson plans to squeeze in penmanship. In an effort to keep up with core subjects, some teachers are asking themselves, "What lessons can I forgo?"

With so much pressure to preserve penmanship, is the struggle worth the results? Consider the pros and cons of teaching a child to read and write cursive:
Pros of Teaching Cursive to Children
- Students are more literate if they can read and write cursive, and it allows them to communicate with older generations, like family members.
- Students can sign their names, a standard requirement as an adult.
- Students will have a tool they can apply later in life that gives them more options.
- Students can gain a practical life skill that is becoming a lost art.
- Students will be able to take notes faster in college. Printing letters, which requires raising and lowering the pencil or pen point for each letter, slows you down, as opposed to cursive, where you only have to raise and lower the point at the beginning and end of each word.

Now, let's look at reasons to skip penmanship.
Cons of Teaching Cursive to Children
- It can take time away from core or more "relevant" subjects.
- It can be time-consuming and frustrating for parents.
- If students don't use the skill regularly, they could forget it.
- Penmanship is not as valued in education and society as it once was.
- Because cursive is faster to write, it can appear less legible than print and create confusion. Every year, up to $95 million in tax refunds aren't delivered correctly because of unreadable tax forms.

Another quandary facing the fate of handwriting: If technology advances to the point that students use electronic or digital gadgets to write their names, do their school work, and communicate, will teachers eventually decide that preschoolers shouldn't bother learning to write their ABC's?
Teach Cursive in Four Steps
Schulken says penmanship is crucial to a child's education, and offers four steps to help parents teach cursive.

Step 1 - Students cut and connect dots to exercise eye-hand coordination.
Step 2 - Students practice motor patterns needed for forming capital letters, numbers, and lowercase letters.
Step 3 - Students master writing words on traditional primary paper.
Step 4 - Students work on consistent spacing, letter size, and margins.

"The idea is that each mastered skill builds on the next as children first tackle pre-writing tasks and eventually build sound writing habits," Schulken explained.

"The gap leads to frustrated kids, stressed parents, and discouraged teachers who often don't know how to help."

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The Pros and Cons of Cursive - AOP Homeschooling

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Kids today can Skype, build a blog, and tag a friend. But how many of these modern communicators can still read and write cursive? Fewer than ever before, studies show. Penmanship is going the way of a lost art, even in homeschools.

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C - It was posted January 6, 2018
R - The article relates to my topic by giving good reasons about learning cursive.
A - It was published by Iris Hatfield on Memoria Press.
A -

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Developing an attractive, legible cursive handwriting style certainly has great aesthetic value, but it also has numerous mental, physical, social, and practical benefits. Here are the Top 10 reasons to learn cursive!

1. Improved neural connections. Cursive handwriting stimulates the brain in ways that typing cannot. It improves the dynamic interplay of the left and right cerebral hemispheres, helps build neural pathways, and increases mental effectiveness. According to Virginia Berninge r, a researcher and professor at the University of Washington, "Pictures of brain activity have illustrated that sequential finger movements used in handwriting activated massive regions of the brain involved in thinking, language, and working memory. Handwriting differs from typing because it requires executing sequential finger strokes to form a letter, whereas keyboarding only involves touching a key."

2. Improved ability to read cursive. When individuals cannot read cursive, they are cursively illiterate in their own language. The ability to read cursive is required in many settings.

3. Increased writing speed. The connectivity of a simple cursive style is faster to write than the stop and-start strokes of printing. Speed has been shown to increase attention span during writing. This increases continuity and fluidity in writing, which in turn encourages greater amounts of writing.

4. Improved fine motor skills. "Cursive handwriting naturally develops sensory skills. Through repetition the children begin to understand how much force needs to be applied to the pencil and paper, the positioning of the pencil to paper at the correct angle, and motor planning to form each letter in fluid motion from left to right. This physical and spatial awareness allows them to write, but more importantly, builds the neural foundation of sensory skills needed for a myriad of everyday tasks such as buttoning, fastening, tying shoes, picking up objects, copying words from blackboards, and most importantly, reading." ( Cutting Cursive, The Real Cost. Candace Meyer, CEO, Minds-in-Motion, Inc.)

5. Increased retention. The act of taking notes by hand instead of on a computer encourages a student to process the content and reframe it, which leads to better understanding and retention. Studies indicate that college students remembered information better one week later when they transcribed a paragraph in cursive than when they printed it or used a keyboard.

6. Ease of learning. Printing is more difficult than cursive due to the frequent stop-and-start motion when forming letters. In addition, some printed letters look similar and are easily reversed, like the b and d, which is often confusing to children. Cursive is of particular value to children with learning challenges such as dyslexia, dysgraphia, and difficulties with attention.

7. Improved legibility and spelling ability. Cursive requires children to write from left to right so that the letters will join in proper sequence and with proper spacing, making their writing easier to read. It also aids with spelling through muscle memory, as the hand acquires memory of spelling patterns through fluid movements that are used repeatedly. This is the same phenomenon that occurs when pianists learn patterns of hand movements through continued repetition.

8. Increased self-discipline. Cursive handwriting is complex, and is inherently associated with the development of fine-motor skills and hand-eye coordination. Learning cursive prompts children to also develop self-discipline, which is a useful skill in all areas of life.

9. Higher quality signature. Cursive handwriting will improve the attractiveness, legibility, and fluidity of one's signature.

10. Increased self-respect. The ability to master the skill of writing clearly and fluidly improves the students' confidence to communicate freely with the written word. Handwriting is a vital life skill.

Top 10 Reasons to Learn Cursive by Iris Hatfield, author of New American Cursive

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Top 10 Reasons to Learn Cursive - Memoria Press

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Developing an attractive, legible cursive handwriting style certainly has great aesthetic value, but it also has numerous mental, physical, social, and practical benefits. Here are the Top 10 reasons to learn cursive! 1. Improved neural connections. Cursive handwriting stimulates the brain in ways that typing cannot.

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Suzanne Baruch Asherson is a occupational therapist at the Beverly Hills Unified School District in California and a national presenter for Handwriting Without Tears, an early childhood education company.

Putting pen to paper stimulates the brain like nothing else, even in this age of e-mails, texts and tweets. In fact, learning to write in cursive is shown to improve brain development in the areas of thinking, language and working memory. Cursive handwriting stimulates brain synapses and synchronicity between the left and right hemispheres, something absent from printing and typing.

The College Board found that students who wrote in cursive for the essay portion of the SAT scored slightly higher than those who printed.

As a result, the physical act of writing in cursive leads to increased comprehension and participation. Interestingly, a few years ago, the College Board found that students who wrote in cursive for the essay portion of the SAT scored slightly higher than those who printed, which experts believe is because the speed and efficiency of writing in cursive allowed the students to focus on the content of their essays.

Some argue that cursive is no longer relevant because it isn't included in the Common Core State Standards. But these standards only include those skills that are testable and measurable in the classroom; they don't address basic foundation skills, like handwriting or even spelling. That said, the Common Core emphasizes the importance of expository writing to demonstrate understanding of key concepts, and fast, legible handwriting is the technology universally available to students to facilitate content development. Cursive, therefore, is vital to helping students master the standards of written expression and critical thinking, life skills that go well beyond the classroom.

With all this said, does cursive need to be fancy with slants, loops and curls? Absolutely not! The emphasis should be on simplicity and function when teaching children cursive.

Regardless of the age we are in or the technological resources at one's disposal, success is measured by thought formation, and the speed and efficiency in which it is communicated. Because of this, students need a variety of technologies, including cursive handwriting, to succeed.

Join Opinion on Facebook and follow updates on twitter.com/roomfordebate.

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The Benefits of Cursive Go Beyond Writing

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Suzanne Baruch Asherson is a occupational therapist at the Beverly Hills Unified School District in California and a national presenter for Handwriting Without Tears, an early childhood education company. Putting pen to paper stimulates the brain like nothing else, even in this age of e-mails, texts and tweets.

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Cons of Teaching Cursive to Children - Penmanship is not as valued in education and society as it once was. - Because cursive is faster to write, it can appear less legible than print and create confusion. Every year, up to $95 million in tax refunds aren't delivered correctly because of unreadable tax forms.

Why is cursive a waste of time?

Cursive is a skill that should be optional to learn. Learning it in elementary school is acceptable, but in high school it is a waste of time. It is simply a different way to hand-write. They need to learn important skills that will help in all aspects of their lives, not just something they use once.

Is learning cursive useless?

No one under 50 writes in cursive anymore. The only time in my adult life I needed cursive was to sign the back of my credit card, and even that's unnecessary. It is a useless skill with an ever-diminishing role in the modern world and requiring a new generation of children to learn it is idiotic.

What are the disadvantages of cursive writing?

Cons of cursive instruction

It's gone the way of the typewriter. In our digital age of laptops and texting, some argue cursive has become obsolete.

It wastes valuable learning time.

You can get the benefits of handwriting without writing in cursive.

Most people abandon it anyway.

Should cursive be taught in schools?

Research shows that learning to write by hand is a key to good spelling and composition skills. Plus, cursive writing could be considered an art form all on its own. It's one way for students to develop the side of their brain that isn't developed by basic reading and writing skills.

Is cursive a lost art?

In fact, with many schools abolishing the cursive writing from the elementary school curriculum, it has become a dead art form. In earlier times, handwriting was highly valued by society.

Is cursive beneficial?

Researchers found that elementary students who learn cursive are usually better spellers. That may be because kids who write in cursive are often able to grasp how letters fit together to form words much quicker than those who write in print. Your child could become a better writer overall.

Is cursive necessary?

Learning cursive handwriting is important for spelling skills, enabling children to recognize words when they read them later. Typing doesn't have the same effect on the brain, as it doesn't require the same fine motor skills and simultaneous activity.

What age should you start cursive writing?

Cursive writing is usually taught in third grade, when students are about 8 years old. At this age, most children are assumed to possess the skills necessary to master cursive writing.

What are the pros and cons of cursive?

Pros and cons of cursive writing

Cursive writing stimulates the brain.

Cursive writing may promote focus.

Cursive writing may help students with dyslexia.

Cursive writing is only used in signatures.

Typing on a keyboard should take precedence.

Digital texts make it obsolete.

Is print or cursive better?

Studies show that children who learn cursive instead of print writing score better on spelling and reading tests. Children who can write in cursive have an easier time reading print as well whereas children who only learn print can't read cursive.

Who invented cursive?

Our modern form of cursive writing is usually credited to 15th-century Italian Niccolo Niccoli. His unique script evolved over time into what we now call italics. However, forms of cursive writing had been in use long before.

Is cursive writing banned in India?

In India, with the exception of few traditional institutions, most have stopped insisting on cursive writing. Till Class 3 or so, children are allowed free hand with their writing styles.

What's the point of cursive?

The original purpose of cursive handwriting was supposedly that you could write more quickly. Another reason is that in old times, when people wrote with a quill, cursive writing meant that they did not need to lift their quill from the paper, thereby avoiding smudges and spots on the page.

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Often asked: Why Kids Shouldn'T Have To Learn Cursive? - MOPS OF MACON/FORSYTH

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Cons of Teaching Cursive to Children - Penmanship is not as valued in education and society as it once was. - Because cursive is faster to write, it can appear less legible than print and create confusion.

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Why Cursive? The importance of teaching students to write in Cursive - How to Write in Cursive in 4 Simple Lessons | CursiveLogic

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How to Write in Cursive in 4 Simple Lessons | CursiveLogic

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Why Cursive? The importance of teaching students to write in cursive - How to Write in Cursive in 4 Simple Lessons | CursiveLogic