According to the teachers, the writing difficulties which are experienced

by the students are issued in thirty five topics. The causes of writing difficulties
faced by the students are, according to twelve of the teachers, shapes of the
letters; according to eight of them, conjoining; according to eight of them,
italics; according to seven of them, difficulty at writing some letters; according
to six of them, difficulties at handwriting; according to six of them, difficulty
which is suffered from at the beginning; according to five of them, physical
development; according to five of them, directions of letters; according to four
of them, spaces between letters; according to three of them, difficult letters;
according to three of them, improper usage of the spaces; according to three of
them, writing by the rules; according to three of them, exhaustion; according to
two of them, the use of hands; according to two of them, writing speed;
according to two of them, boredom; according to two of them, writing
continuously; according to one of them, the letters that resemble each other;
according to one of them, changing the notebook; according to one of them,
course books that have book letters; according to one of them, writing upright;
according to one of them, fine writing; according to one of them, forgetting the
letters; according to one of them, difficulties at separating words into syllables;
according to one of them, habitual misuses caused by lack of control; according
to one of them, the understandability of the text; according to one of them,
spaces between words; according to one of them, lack of proper tools;
according to one of them, students’ early age; according to one of them,
displeasure against writing; according to one of them, local accent; according
to one of them, inner drives; according to one of them, habits remaining from
kindergarten; according to one of them, guide lines. Teachers of the first grade
report that the difficulties experienced by the students are the shapes of
letters, conjoining of the letters, italics, difficulty at writing some letters,
difficulties at handwriting, difficulty on their first days', physical development
and the directions of the letters.

The teachers explain the difficultes the students face in the process of
learning how to write, in short or in a detailed way. According to the teachers,
the difficulties which are experienced by the students during the writing
education are conjoining, fine writing, hasty start in the writing lessons at the
beginning of the school year, weak hand muscles, not to like writing, lack of
comprehension in writing the letters and italics. The examples of complications
teachers endure during the writing education are mentioned below:

Conjoining, fine writing (e.g.4).

“The writing conditionings are not gained, if the introductory lessons are
very swift at the beginning of the school year .“(e.g. 14)

“They had difficulties as small muscles have not developed, it was hard for
them to write italic. They want to write upright.” (e.g.41)

“They do not like writing. At first, it took so much effort to understand and
implement the directions of handwriting for them.” (e.g.31)

“The letters which require rolling and bending of fingers and wrists are difficult
for the students. Some of the children give up as they cannot turn the lines on
the necessary point. They are asked to read aloud while writing. Because, the
reading skill is expected to improve together with the writing skill. Those who
are unable to pronounce cannot manage to do both at the same time. They
learn later and with a little more difficulty.” (e.g.16)

Table 7.
Other notes teachers want to add

Item
F
Affects learning to read. 5
Family 2
kindergarten 2
Teacher 2
After second grade, handwriting should be tahught 1
Having difficulty at the beginning 1
Hand must be strong 1
Understanding fine writing 1
Young age 1
Reading/Writing book should be detailed 1
Haste at education 1
Affects the technic of learning to write 1
Direction of the writing 1

Lastly, teachers stated that they wanted to add their thoughts about the
education of writing. Five of the teachers told that it affects learning to read,
two of them uttered the importance of the family, two of them of the
kindergarten and two of them of the teacher. In addition to these, teachers
emphasized that, handwriting should be taught on second grade because they
mentioned that students are having difficulties at the beginning, and their
hands have to be strong, and they also emphasized the relation between
understanding and fine writing, the effect of the early age and the level of the
books of reading and writing. Furthermore, according to them, the haste in
education affects the technique of learning and writing, which is an important
point. There are also other examples of first grade teachers' comments on the
education of writing.

“The students of the first grade learning the technique of correct and fine
writing always have a potential to write in a fine and correct way. Because of
this, it is particularly important to pay special attention to writing during the
first grade.” (e.g.23)

“I think, a teacher who wants to make children gain the habit of fine writing
should first, him/herself, write finely on the board and in the notebooks. One
should be a good model. One must encourage to write. One should appreciate
the successful students and even should reward them.” (e.g.44)

“An educated and peaceful family makes the writing of the student ordered and
neat.” (e.g.46)

“In teaching how to write, writing direction is significant. We should pay

attention especially on that in nursery.” (e.g.54)

Conclusions and Recommendations

The first grade of elementary school has an important part at the

education of writing. The writing of the individual is parallel with the quality of
this education, the effort of the form teacher and the student’s individual
qualities. According to Hagin (1983), script is a task which is neither only visual
nor motor, a writing program should consider all the process. In the education
of writing, the situation which we are in must be considered carefully. At the
first and the second grades, a statistically evident difference between a good
and a bad writer is observed (Graham, Struck, Santoro & Berninger, 2006).
Also, Rosenblum, Dvorkin and Weiss (2006) states that neither students who
are inadequate at writing can be fully successful in the process of automation
nor their writing will go clearly and in a sufficient pace. During writing, it's
important to automate or to write fluently. “The automatic production of
strokes, letters and words frees up mental resources for the process of
composing or the understanding of the content of texts or lessons” (Tucha,
Tucha & Lange, 2008, p.). Writing is a skill that one uses throughout his life,
once it is gained improperly it's very difficult to correct it. From this point of
view, the aim of this study is to gather the opinions of first grade teachers on
the education of writing and the difficulties in it.

Most of the first grade teachers spare two hours of their active courses
for writing lessons. Schoenfeld (2009) observes that, 43% of teachers spare 5-
15 min., 45% of them 15-30 min., 5% of them 30 min. and 6% of them spare no
time for daily writing lessons, while Addy & Wylie (1973, Peck, Askove &
Fairchild, 1980) state that daily writing studies take 11-20 min. Beside this, it is
revealed that first grade teachers spend most of their times on writing lessons.
Hammerschmidt & Sudsawad (2004) report that, teachers save at least one
day of every two weeks for writing lessons or writing applications. According to
Graham et al. (2008), teachers spare an avarage of 70 min. for writing lessons.
Those who give writing courses once a week spare 25 min. of one session.
Those who apply writing courses daily spare 20 min. each day and those who
teach writing in variable schedules spare an avarage 19 min. of the session.

According to first grade teachers, students write cursive italic letters “e,
c, ı, i, o, ç, ö, u, l, y, ü, a” easily, but writing cursive italic letters “f, k, r, h, b, z,
s, m” is troublesome for them. In his study, Turan (2010) observed that
students write “f, s, r, ş, k, b, h, z” with difficulty. Likewise, in both works,
subject students endure difficulty at writing letters: “f, k, r, b, s, z”.

It's noted that, teachers apply following methods of preparation in order:

the training of the directions, conditioning of the muscles and the training on
lines. Teachers teach how to write by making students write. Their writing
trainings are simulating the act of drawing letters on air, on desks, by making
students observe the act of writing and letting them try to imitate the teacher,
on the letters, on soil and sand. The training on letters is applied by drawing on
the letter itself which was drawn with dashed lines and drawing other variable
sample letters. As we study on the instructions given by first grade teachers,
we elicit that teachers use individualistic teaching methods. Graham et al.
(2008) report that schools or local school unions ask teachers to teach how to
write and 90% of teachers teach to write. During the lessons, teachers use the
methods of individual teaching, teaching to small groups, teaching to the whole
class (Graham et al.; 2008; Schoenfeld, Coppola, Kertis & Barnes, 2009) and
homework assignments method (Schoenfeld et al., 2009) to teach how to write.
In his study, Graham et al. discover that the most frequent methods of
teaching how to write are to show how to write the letter (embodying a model),
to flatter the students' performance and for the students to draw the letter as
an application or simply to copy it. Other methods of teaching the letters are
letting the student to choose the letter he can draw the best and to revise the
distorted letters, for the student to use the arrows, numbers and signs as a
guide during the act of drawing and physically enrouting the student's hand to
shape the letter.

Teachers use the same methods which they use to teach writing as
methods for improving the students who could not manage to write. First grade
teachers apply the methods by the same previous order: to repeat, to walk
through the letters, writing on the board, to practice, to physically enrouting by
holding student's hand, and walk through the dashed lined letters. Yıldırım &
Ateş (2010), observed that the difficulties encountered at the teaching process
of attached bent writings are tried to be solved by teachers via more practicing
on the problem, taking care of each individual student and sparing more time
for students to learn.

The student who has difficulties at writing should be assissted. In order to

improve the writing abilities of the students, methods of walking through
letters, directing by narration, working through dots, having proper samples of
writing hanged on the classroom walls and also the use of computer
applications (Akyol, 2009). According to neuropsychologists, while approaching
to the education of writing, the style of writing should be appropriate for the
level of the child’s motor control. Then it becomes possible to educate the child
by teaching the graphical formula of the letter. Plus, the method should be
applied by visualisation or revisualisation of the graphical formula of the letter.
The teaching process should be direct and should occur on an individual basis
for it is necessary to teach the student to reflect the working procedure and to
correct, according to the feedback (Hagin, 1983).

The materials used most frequently during the process of teaching how to
write by the teachers are; notebook, Cd, image, books-magazines, blackboard
and projection unit. Yıldırım & Ateş (2010) observe that teachers use notebooks
with guide lines, worksheets, and blackboards as the main materials. According
to the research of Graham et al. (2008), teachers prefer special pens or pencils,
pencil grips, and wide-lined papers to speed up the learning procedure.
Teachers train the students by means of using a pen and a paper as a model
him/herself, of using reminders properly, and of flattering with observations
and corrections.

Teachers use (from most to least) the following items as criteria for
examination: the shapes of the letters, whether they write on the lines or not,
the finesse of the handwriting, order, and spaces. In the recent study of
Yıldırım & Ateş (2010), it is confirmed that teachers examine the student scripts
by checking. What teachers take into account in the writing of students as the
components of writing are letter formation (% 99), uniform letter size (% 97),
space (% 97), letter allignment (% 91), pencil grip (% 86) and speed (% 68)
(Schoenfeld et al., 2009). According to Hammerschmidt & Sudsawad (2004),
teachers give importance to correctly drawn letters and proper spaces the
most. Zviani & Elkins (1986) report that speed and legibility is the key to the
writing performance. The difficulties students endure at writing are indicated
by means of their scripts' legibility. Addy & Wylie (1973, cited in: Peck et al.,
1980) report that, the evaluation of the scripts are made by teachers'
observations much more frequently than by comparing the scripts with certain
standard refence charts. 89.5% of teachers compare the writings of the
students with classmates and the rest (10.5%) do no evaluation at all
(Hammerschmidt & Sudsawad, 2004). According to Graham et al. (2008),
teachers use informal and subjective techniques in their judgement. In addition
to these, very rarely, teachers may prefer to use standardized test sheets. And
to highten the level of motivation, teachers use the best examples of student
scripts.

It's observed that first grade teachers state the difficultes that students
are facing as (in order) shapes of letters, conjoining the letters, writing italic,
trouble at writing certain letters, difficulty at handwriting, trouble with beginner
days, lack of physical development and the directions of the letters. The data
brought by Yıldırım & Ateş (2010) supports this research's output data. During
the process of teaching how to write, students have difficulties at writing some
letters and conjoining them together. In the study of Schoenfeld et al. (2009),
which consists of a survey with 270 first grade teachers, 88% of the students
are found incapable of writing. And 31% of teachers report that 4 of 8 students,
and other 35% of teachers report that more than 4 of 8 students have
difiiculties to write the letters. Two of the most important reasons behind this
failure are motor problems and visual perceptual problems. In addition to
these, other problems can be listed as follows; low writing motivation, to start
attending school without necessary preparations, general academic difficulties
and low IQ (Graham et al., 2008). Also, as Brown & Conti-Ramsden (1989)
state,
the high population of classrooms prevent teacher from taking care of each
student’s training individually and from guiding them properly. Another claim
by Reis (1989) asserts that teachers are not capable of possessing the
minimum theoretical repertoire for writing problems.

In order to watch the improvement or to indicate the problems at writing,

it is important to use standard techniques of evaluation. Beside most traditional
techniques, there are also well developed holistic rating systems or true/false
indication methods. These techniques help the teachers to evaluate and to
diagnose the writings and the problems, the improvement, the weaknesses of
students and the effectiveness of education in a much more efficient way
(Graham, 1986). And through the growing number of evaluation methods and
writing indicators and their use by teachers, it will be easier and more accurate
to watch the students' improvement at writing.

Teachers highlight that, the education of writing affects learning and

reading (Goldberg and Simner, 1999), so this leads to the result that family,
kindergarten and teachers play a very important role. Also teachers underline
that handwriting courses should be given in the second grade for the students
have many troubles with it, the student should have strong hands, should be
capable of understanding the relations of fine writing, should overcome the
effects of the early age and the course books should be detailed. Moreover, any
haste at education may affect the writing technique and the child's ability to
learn to write, and the writing direction is also important.

For the students to express themselves truly by script, teaching and

learning handwriting is vital. For the education of writing to be improved, it is
possible to prepare experimental or descriptive works. The courses of the first
grade teachers could be observed. Teachers could be informed of the
difficulties that student suffer from at writing and of the methods of co-
operation with the student. While the students are in the first grade, it is
possible to implement interferent programs before they are conditioned to
writing difficulties. Also, it's also possible to develop interferent programs for
middle grade students.