Handwriting and Performance in Imaginative Essays

Many students in secondary schools in Kenya register poor grades in English essay questions. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to establish whether the scores of the students who registered poor grades would improve through interventions in their handwriting. The study aimed to find out the extent to which specific aspects of handwriting such as legibility and learner sitting position hindered the learner’s work presentation. The research was carried out in Malava Boys High School, Kakamega County in Western Kenya. A sample of 48 learners from a target population of 160 who had scored below 10 out of 20 in the imaginative composition was purposively selected. The researcher administered written compositions to 8 learners across the six streams in the school. The writing tasks were conducted weekly for four months from September 2021 to December 2021. The baseline study established that most of the sampled learners scored below 10 out of 20 due to problems of poor punctuation and illegibility. It was also observed that the furniture that most learners used was not in good condition and this hindered their sitting posture when writing. The study revealed that the problems of handwriting could be remedied through the learner’s proper sitting position, proper punctuation, and proper shaping of letters such as a, d, h m, n, k, s, and w. The study concluded that handwriting had a bearing on the performance of imaginative writing tasks. Therefore, it was recommended that the teachers of English should strive to detect causes of illegibility early enough and overcome the obstacles by regularly exposing learners to writing tasks.