Do you want to crack the IELTS exam? If yes, here’s the value of handwriting reading answers for your practice. You need to go through these IELTS reading answers. The IELTS reading passage is significant for your IELTS online preparation. So, let’s go through the passage now!
The Value of Handwriting Reading Answers
IELTS Reading Answers
Part One
‘When I was in school in the 1970s,’ says Tammy Chou, ‘my end-of-term report included Handwriting as a subject alongside Mathematics and Physical Education, yet, by the time my brother started, a decade later, it had been subsumed into English. I learnt two scripts: printing and cursive, *while Chris can only print.’
The 2013 Common Core, a curriculum used throughout most of the US, requires the tuition of legible writing (generally printing) only in the first two years of school; thereafter, teaching keyboard skills is a priority.
Part Two
‘I work in recruitment, ‘ Chou continues. ‘Sure, these days, applicants submit a digital CV and cover letter, but there’s still information interviewees need to fill out by hand, and I still judge them by the neatness of their writing when they do so. Plus there’s nothing more disheartening than receiving a birthday greeting or a condolence card with a scrawled message.
Also Read:Which is the most tricky question in the IELTS Reading section?
Part Three
Psychologists and neuroscientists may concur with Chou for different reasons. They believe children learn to read faster when they start to write by hand, and they generate new ideas and retain information better. Karin James conducted an experiment at Indiana University in the US in which children who had not learnt to read were shown a letter on a card and asked to reproduce it by tracing, by drawing it on another piece of paper, or by typing it on a keyboard. Then, their brains were scanned while viewing the original image again.
Children who had produced the freehand letter showed increased neural activity in the left fusiform gyrus, the inferior frontal gyrus, and the posterior parietal cortex – areas activated when adults read or write, whereas all other children displayed significantly weaker activation of the same areas.
Part Four
James speculates that in handwriting, there is variation in the production of any letter, so the brain has to learn each personal font – each variant of ‘F’, for example, that is still ‘F’. Recognition of variation may establish the eventual representation more permanently than recognising a uniform letter printed by computer.
Victoria Berninger at the University of Washington studied children in the first two grades of school to demonstrate that printing, cursive, and keyboarding are associated with separate brain patterns. Furthermore, children who wrote by hand did so much faster than the typists, who had not been taught to touch type. Not only did the typists produce fewer words but also the quality of their ideas was consistently lower. Scans from the older children’s brains exhibited enhanced neural activity when their handwriting was neater than average, and, importantly, the parts of their brains activated are those crucial to working memory.
Part Five
Pam Mueller and Daniel Oppenheimer have shown in laboratories and live classrooms that tertiary students learn better when they take notes by hand rather than inputting via keyboard. As a result, some institutions ban laptops and tablets in lectures and prohibit smartphone photography of lecture notes. Mueller and Oppenheimer also believe handwriting aids contemplation as well as memory storage.
Some learners of English whose native script is not the Roman alphabet have difficulty in forming several English letters: the lower case ‘b’ and ‘d’, ‘p’ and ‘q’, ‘n’ and ‘u’, ‘m’ and ‘w’ may be confused. This condition affects a tiny minority of first-language learners and sufferers of brain damage. Called dysgraphia, it appears less frequently when writers use cursive instead of printing, which is why cursive has been posited as a cure for dyslexia.
Part Six
Berninger is of the opinion that cursive, endangered in American schools, promotes self-control, which printing may not, and which typing — especially with the ‘delete’ function — unequivocally does not. In a world saturated with texting, where many have observed that people are losing the ability to filter their thoughts, a little more restraint would be a good thing.
A rare-book and manuscript librarian, Valerie Hotchkiss, worries about the cost to our heritage as knowledge of cursive fades. Her library contains archives from the literary giants Mark Twain, Marcel Proust, HG Wells, and others. If the young generation does not recursive, its ability to decipher older documents may be compromised, and culture lost.
Part Seven
Paul Bloom, from Yale University, is less convinced about the long-term benefits of handwriting. In the 1950s – indeed in Tammy Chou’s idyllic 1970s – when children spent hours practicing their copperplate, what were they doing with it? Mainly copying mindlessly. For Bloom, education in the complex digital age has moved on. * A style of writing in which letters are joined, and the pen is lifted off the paper at the end of a word.
Also Read: COMMON MISTAKES IN IELTS READING
Questions Related to IELTS Reading Passage
Question Number One
Following are a few statements given from the passage above. You have to check the answers from the passage and write them correctly.
#1. The _____________, a curriculum used throughout most of the US.
Answer: 2013 Common Core
#2. A rare-book and manuscript librarian, ______________, worries about the cost to our heritage as knowledge of cursive fades.
Answer: Valerie Hotchkiss
#3. ‘When I was in school in the 1970s,’ says ______________
Answer: Tammy Chou
#4. ______________________ may concur with Chou for different reasons.
Answer: Psychologists and neuroscientists
#5. ______________, from Yale University, is less convinced about the long-term benefits of handwriting.
Answer: Paul Bloom
Question Number Two
Look at the statements below and after reading them, write TRUE or FALSE in front of them.
TRUE – If the statement agrees with the information that is given above in the passage.
FALSE – If the statement disagrees with the information that is given above in the passage.
#1. Karin James conducted an experiment at Indiana University in the US.
Answer: TRUE
#2. Berninger is of the opinion that cursive, endangered in American schools, promotes self-control.
Answer: TRUE
#3. Mueller and Oppenheimer believe handwriting aids contemplation as well as memory storage.
Answer: TRUE
#4. James speculates that in handwriting, there is variation in the production of any letter.
Answer: TRUE
#5. Paul Bloom was from Stanford University.
Answer: FALSE
Also Read: How To Improve Your Reading Skills
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