Englisch BHS, Maturatraining mit Audio-CD

40 Reading Learning a lost art Read the text about handwriting. Complete the sentences (1–8) using a maximum of four words. Write your answers in the spaces provided. The first one (0) has been done for you. 16 Learning a lost art With a pencil still in his hand, eight-year-old Mitchell takes a break from an exercise he’s working on to explain why it’s important to have good handwriting. “When you’re older, if you’re writing some- thing really important, and your writing is really sloppy, you don’t know how to write, people might not understand what you’re writing,” he explains. Mitchell is taking a handwriting class at Ruth Rumack’s Learning Space in Toronto. Considering the pace of technological change, there’s no guarantee any of us will use pens and pencils a decade from now. You don’t have to be a clairvoyant to know that in many people’s eyes, pencils already look like feather quills compared to keyboards and touch screens. Schools around the world are either minimising time spent teaching cursive writing or eliminating it all together as a relic, arguing there are more impor- tant skills to teach students in the 21 st century. Not all of us however are willing to write it o. Sandra Wong enrolled her daughters, eight-year- old Felicity and seven-year-old Chloe, in a new cursive writing class at Wonder Pens, another store in Toronto. “I see it as an opportunity from two vantage points,” she says. “Academically it’s inspiring because it will help them with learning, but it’s also a lost art.” She’s not alone. Wonder Pens’ owner, Liz Chan, says the class was created a er parents kept asking if children could attend the store’s adult calligraphy classes. ere were ten kids in that rst class, who spent an hour learning how to write letters with the same shape – like a, c, and d – in £owing script. “ e kids we get in our handwriting class are just printing. ey have no real concept of how to form cursive letters. Just teaching the idea that you form it all in one stroke was a little bit new. For kids who are just learning, they need a lot more time,” says Liz. e time needed to teach cursive may explain why it’s being marginalised, if not outright ignored, in public schools. South of the border, at least 41 US states do not require public schools to teach cursive writing. Finland made headlines around the world when it announced that cursive would be dropped in favour of teaching typing as of 2016. In Canada, the trend is following in the same direction. In Quebec, cursive is no longer an expectation in the curriculum. In Ontario it’s still in the curriculum from grades 3 to 5, but individual teachers o en say they don’t have time to teach it. It’s not on the syllabus in Halifax and earlier this year a Winnipeg school asked parents if teaching looping letters should be dropped (more than 90% said it’s a skill still worth teaching). Cursive is still a staple at private schools and many parents turning to Wonder Pens said that their interest wasn’t purely aesthetic. Some expressed concern that as cursive becomes less of a priority in public schools, good handwriting may become a marker of a higher class of education. “It really goes deeper than just legibility of writing,” says Ruth Rumack. ‘It goes into self- esteem and academic success. If you don’t have legible handwriting, that’s denitely going to hamper your ability to be a productive adult.” Even if the importance of good handwriting diminishes with every text sent and emoji searched for, legible cursive is still an important mode of communication. “I have a very strong interest in the beauty of penmanship,” says Sandra Wong. “ ere is nothing like getting a hand-written note. It is personal in a way that email never can be.” Nur zu Prüfzwecken – Eigentum des Verlags öbv