In a valuable new book, Virginia W. Berninger and Beverly Wolf challenge the often heard but simplistic charge made against children with learning disabilities: They’re just not motivated. This, Berninger and Wolf argue, is often false:
Many teachers and psychologists have complained that students who do not complete their written assignments are not motivated. However, teaching, clinical, and research experiences suggest otherwise—many of these students are highly motivated to write but emotionally traumatized that others cannot read their writing or they cannot write adequately to succeed in school…. Many of these children also suffer from emotional problems (e.g., impaired self-esteem, self-efficacy, or heightened anxiety) due to undiagnosed and untreated dysgraphia, rather than emotional or motivational problems causing incomplete work. After continually failing to keep up with the written assignments or written tests at school, some children with dysgraphia will begin to avoid written work and are described as writing avoidant…. The important point is that emotional problems are often the consequence, not the cause, of writing disabilities. Gifted children with intellectual talent often have significant handwriting and/ or spelling disabilities that compromise their ability to express their ideas in writing and complete written assignments even though they excel at learning with oral language. (Teaching Students with Dyslexia and Dysgraphia: Lessons from Teaching and Science, Paul H. Brookes Publishing, p. 131, references omitted; italics added)
Much of what Berninger and Wolf say about writing applies to reading and other subjects. For more information about motivation, a topic that many schools ignore, see our posts of June 4th and June 7th. For information on diagnosing composition problems (not handwriting), see our posts of June 2nd and June 19th.
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