Neat writing could cut your exam scores, young pupils are warned

They are better off learning to write quickly than concentrating on forming letters perfectly, say researchers.

Government-backed writing lessons are said to put too much emphasis on perfecting letter shapes at the expense of speed and efficiency.

It means the child's attention is diverted from more complex aspects of writing such as plotting storylines and selecting vocabulary.

Pupils who are able to write fast and clearly without concentrating too hard on forming each individual letter - the ability to write "automatically" in the researchers' terminology - are more likely to score highly on writing tests.

The academics, from Warwick University, say the importance of automatic writing has so far been overlooked.

Despite evidence that fast writing can boost exam performance, the Government's national literacy strategy concentrated on letter formation, they warn.

For the study, published in the Journal of Reading, Writing and Literacy, researchers gave National Curriculum test papers in writing to nearly 200 pupils at primary schools in Solihull, Coventry and Warwickshire.

The co-author, Professor David Wray, said: "If young writers have to devote large amounts of working memory to the control of lower-level processes such as handwriting, they may have little working memory capacity left for higher-level processes such as idea generation, vocabulary selection, monitoring the progress of mental plans and revising text against these plans.

"It may be that handwriting can 'crowd out' the composing processes we value so much."

Dr Jane Medwell, who also worked on the study, said: "Handwriting is not just about training the hand; it is about training the memory and hand to work together to generate the correct mental images and patterns of letters and translate these into motor patterns of letters - automatically and without effort."