Poor handwriting causes failure of many children in school

The inability to write legibly is one of the main causes of the failure of many children in schools.

The diagnosis is contained in a study carried out by one of Cameroon’s educationist and researcher, Moussa Gong-Nota.

The diagnosis and therapy of the problem that has been the bane of many school children are contained in a document known as the Flores Gong-Nota Method. The method is an innovative way of teaching handwriting in a way that every child is compelled to write legibly.

According to the authors of the method, their proposal is a culmination of a 25-year teaching experience.

“We have participated in the organisation of official examinations. From this experiment, we found out that many of our children cannot write legibly. This situation is a cause of failure of many children in school. Indeed, when a copy is not readable, a teacher will not be able to mark well, consequently, he or she will simply give a zero,” partly reads the story.

The authors of the study indicate that, when they carried out an exercise at the Groupe Scolaire Bilingue les Flores in Yaounde, they discovered that most of the children there do not write well.

The problem of bad writing, according to them, is rooted in the lack of monitoring by teachers. They equally observe that teachers have no clear method to teach handwriting to children and more often use their initiatives. They said if teaching is an art, writing is its pivot.

The Flores Gong-Nota Writing Method The Flores Gong-Nota proposed method to arrest the problem of poor handwriting is the result of a research carried out by Moussa Gong Nota. It states that all the letters of the alphabet and all the figures are made from four signs or fragments.

“These signs have various geometric shapes and are easily manipulated. The four signs are: the straight line (vertical, horizontal, slanting to the left, slanting to the right), the grandfather’s walking stick,” says the study.

Using a combination of the study to teach makes writing clear in such a way that each figure and letter of the alphabet is readable. Observers have described it as an active, effective and practical teaching method.

It is a revolutionary method that provides an easy and simple way of learning and writing in a playful way. After launching a pilot phase of the project at Ecole Publique Bastos (Groupe I-B), it has been realised that the Flores Gong-Nota Method helps to improve on the quality of handwriting in only one month. It assures accuracy and speed at the same time, thereby making children’s education more effective.

The implementation of the method began recently with the presentation of the concept, then to the training of teachers and the application of the idea in schools.

It was in this perspective that its authors organised training seminars for teachers in Yaounde last July 22 and August 27 in Douala. The next training is billed for Bamenda on November 27. So far, 100 teachers have been trained in the Gong-Nota Method.

According to official statistics, 92.3 percent of them appreciate the signs used for the method, while 100 percent of them found the method advantageous for the teaching of handwriting. All of them approved the expansion of the method.