JOURNAL OF SCIENCE OF HNUE
2011, Vol. 56, N◦ . 1, pp. 113-122
ON THE DISTRIBUTION OF ERRORS IN TRANSCRIPTION
OF PRIMARY SCHOOL STUDENTS IN VIETNAM
Nguyen Thi Cam Huong
(∗)
Hanoi National University of Education
Yusuke EDA
Wakayama University, Japan
Nguyen Thi Hoang Yen
The Vietnam Institute of Educational Sciences
(∗)
E-mail: nch19381@yahoo.com
Abstract. In this paper we study the development of handwriting ability of
primary school students by investigating the number of errors appearing in
their transcription. More precisely, 1557 primary school students were asked
to copy a paragraph in a period of time and then the errors in their samples
were collected and statistically analyzed. The results yielded that: The frequency of errors in the transcriptions tended to increase in grade; the upper
grade students tend to make more errors than the lower ones, in particular,
among all students, the number of students who made errors in grade five is
the most and the number of the ones in grade two is significantly the least.
Furthermore, there is a gender discrimination in the transcriptions. Among
the second, fourth and fifth grades, the proportion of boys who made errors
are significantly more than that of the girls. Our results imply the necessity
to consider the relationship among handwriting errors, speed and legibility
in Vietnamese language.
Keywords: transcription, error, handwriting, primary school students.
1.
Introduction
The development of writing ability is considered as an essential ingredient for
success in school and the failure to attain handwriting competency may affect both
academic success and self-esteem of students [2].
A lot of previous researches on handwriting have focused on the two most
important factors in handwriting performance - speed and legibility. ( quite right)
They reported that the handwriting speed increased along with the age and grade of
students; however this relationship was not linear [14,6,10]. Graham et al. [6] also
indicated that the student’s handwriting legibility improved during the primary
grades. While Blote & Hamstra-Bletz [1] who studied handwriting legibility of
students in primary grades demonstrated that the legibility of handwriting tended
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Nguyen Thi Cam Huong, Yusuke EDA and Nguyen Thi Hoang Yen
to decrease with the speeding up of handwriting and students tended to simplify
their handwriting in higher grades. Furthermore, in consideration that handwriting
error is an aspect which affects the legibility of handwriting, Kono [10] did a study
on handwriting errors of students in primary schools and his results indicated that
the errors did not increase with the grades of students.
On the other hand, the effect of gender on handwriting was also studied and indicated as an important factor in handwriting development. Spear [13] who studied
the elements differing with the written work of boys and girls reported that girls’
work tends to be neat and well presented while that of boys is often untidy and
poorly presented. Harley [7] afterwards found out that this difference was clearly
recognized in seven to eight year-olds. Moreover, Graham et al. [6] with their study
on handwriting of students in Grade 1 through to Grade 9 indicated that girls could
write not only faster but also more legible than boys. So once again, the gender
discrimination between boys and girls was also supported by a study of Demie [2]
which showed that girls tended to perform at higher levels than boys in educational
achievements.
Vietnamese language is a phonetic symbol language, thus, there is an one-toone relationship between phonetic and letters/signs in writing. The current Vietnamese language uses a writing system which is an adapted version of the Latin
alphabet with additional diacritics for tones and certain letters. There are 29 letters
and five intonation marks being used in the Vietnamese writing system. Besides the
difference in phonology, language variation, grammar, the characteristic of writing
system should have made Vietnamese handwriting different to English handwriting
by using more scripts in writing. On the other hand, although like Korean and
Japanese, in Vietnamese there is a lot of Chinese vocabulary and grammatical influence, the current Vietnamese writing system uses no Chinese scripts but only
Romanized styles.
Handwriting skills are practiced every week in every grade of primary school.
The models of letters and writing speed in primary education level are issued by
the Ministry of Education and Training. For example, students at grade 1, 2, 3,
4, 5 are required to be able to write 30/15, 50/15, 60-70/15, 80-90/20, 100/20
words/minutes, respectively. Nguyen Thi Hanh [11] investigated the relations of
handwriting errors and dictation rules and found that most errors were of following
types: incorrect, omitted and misplaced letters. Additionally, Do Xuan Thao [3]
reported about 60% of students at grade 1 who took the test made mistakes in their
writings. 25% of them wrote the letter in incorrect size and/or form. The main
types of errors were omitted stroke and extra stroke.
However, to the best of our knowledge, it is still lack of quantitative information and objective studies about the development of Vietnamese primary students’
handwriting. The concrete analysis on the differences in handwriting with respect
to gender and age of students is still omitted.
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On the distribution of errors in transcription of primary school students in Vietnam
In order to build up more understanding of handwriting ability of primary
school students in Vietnam, in this study we investigated the distribution of their
handwriting errors. More precisely, students from first to fifth grades in regular
classes were asked to copy a sample paragraph in a fixed period of time. We collected
the data concerning the errors in their products and then performed a statistical
analysis.
We predicted that the frequency of errors changed through five grades and
the proportion of students who made errors changes from the one grade to another.
Furthermore we conjectured that there would be a difference in making errors in the
transcription between boys and girls.
2.
Content
2.1.
2.1.1.
Methods
Participants
There were 1557 students from grade 1 to 5 of the three primary schools
participating in the study during February and March 2010. These schools were
randomly selected among all the primary schools located in the centre of Hanoi and
the surrounding area.
Among 1557 students, six of them (four boys and two girls) did not properly
participate as guided, so their performances were eventually removed from our samples. The final data contained samples from 1551 students: 793 boys and 758 girls.
There are about 150 boys and 150 girls in each grade. The concrete information
about the number of participated students in each grade is shown in Table1.
Table 1. The number of participants categorized by gender and grade
Unit: person
Grade
Male
Female
Total
1
163
146
309
2
159
159
318
3
151
167
318
4
138
170
308
5
182
116
298
Total
793
758
1551
In addition, out of the 1551 students, there was only one left-handed student
(0.06%). It is thought that in Vietnam, most left-handed children are trained to
write with their right hand at home before attending school or at a very early stage
in the first grade.
2.1.2.
Sample paragraphs for transcription
For each grade, we selected one paragraph from the corresponding textbooks
Vietnamese Language, which was used in primary schools until 2003 (old programme), to make a sample for transcription. The fact that students did not have
any memory about the contents of the selected paragraphs was taken into consider115
Nguyen Thi Cam Huong, Yusuke EDA and Nguyen Thi Hoang Yen
ation. Besides, other aspects such as grammar, dictation rules and theme were also
considered in order that the chosen texts were suitable for the knowledge of students
who were studying the current programme. All sample paragraphs for transcription
are shown in Table 2.
Table 2. The topic, theme and source
of model sample paragraphs and their length
Grade
1
2
3
4
5
Theme
Source
Duoi anh trang
Vietnamese Language Grade 1(II)*
Canh dong lua chin
Vietnamese Language Grade 2(I)**
Duong len ban Hmong
Vietnamese Language Grade 3(I)
Nhung canh buom ben
Vietnamese Language Grade 4 (I)
bo song
Buoi sang o thanh pho
Vietnamese Language Grade 5 (I)
Ho Chi Minh
*: II is the text book used in the second semester
**: I is the text book used in the first semester
The letters in model paragraphs were printed in a similar font-style to the ones
in the current textbooks. More precisely, the chosen font-styles were VnAvant for
grade 1 and VnArial Narrow for all the others. All of the model paragraphs were
printed in size 14 font and placed at the top of a lineless A4 paper.
2.1.3.
Procedures
Students were asked to copy a short model paragraph in two minutes as quickly
as possible and without making any mistakes. Students wrote on standard papers
which are being used in daily learning at school (the paper with vertical - horizontal
4 lines and 2.5mm × 2.5mm square). Students were allowed to use their most
favorite pen (not pencils) while sitting at their usual seat in the classroom. They
were asked to not use an eraser, if there was a mis-spelling they had to leave it as
it is and write the correct letter next to it.
2.1.4.
Measurement
The 1551 samples of students were checked to find out the errors. Any sign (a
letter, an intonation sign, a punctuation sign, a word, etc...) in the transcription of
each student which is different to the sample is considered as one handwriting error.
Furthermore, in order to count errors properly, we classified them into various types
and sub-items (see Table 3). Errors in type 1 are any letters which had mistakes
relating to their formation. In type 2, errors concerned misspelled words whose
mistakes were related to letters. Errors in type 4 and 5 were mistakes in mark
intonation and the punctuation marks. Thus, errors in type 1, 2, 4, 5 were counted
by the number of mistakes in letters and signs. However in the transcriptions,
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On the distribution of errors in transcription of primary school students in Vietnam
students, for some reason, repeatedly, took out some of the words. The letters in
these words were in correct formation, the spelling of these words was also correct
but these letters made students’ copied sample different to the model one. These
mistakes were counted for errors in type 3. Therefore when counting the errors in
type 3, it was not necessary to be concerned about the number of letters but the
number of words. The unit of errors in type 3 was not the same as the other types.
Table 3. Types of error and sub-items of errors
in transcription of students
Types of
error
Type 1
1-1
1-2
1-3
Type 2
2-1
2-2
2-3
Type 3
3-1
3-2
3-3
3-4
Type 4
4-1
4-2
4-3
Type 5
5-1
5-2
5-3
Sub-items of each type and their content
Errors on letter
Collapsed letter (letter’s shape is collapsed so it is hard to read or
unreadable)
Mirror writing letters
Incorrect stroke (omitted or extra added stroke)
Errors on spelling
Extra added letter to word (repeated letter in word is included)
Omitted letter from word
Letters in the wrong order (letter is added to different position)
Errors on word
Different word
Word in wrong order (correct word but word’s position is wrong)
Omitted word
Extra added word (repeated word is included)
Errors on intonation marks
Different mark
Mark in wrong order
Omitted mark
Errors on punctuation marks
Different mark
Omitted mark
Extra added mark
The quantitative aspects of errors were analyzed by Direct Probability Calculation Methods and the Chi-square Test. Statistic software called JavaScript-Star
version 5.5.0j (Original programming by Satoshi Tanaka) was used to handle those
statistical processing.
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Nguyen Thi Cam Huong, Yusuke EDA and Nguyen Thi Hoang Yen
2.2.
Results and discussion
The number of students who made errors compared to the numbers who did
not make errors when copying a paragraph were categorized by gender and grade
and are shown in Table 4. The number of errors is shown in Table 5. Besides,
the number of students who made errors, medians number of their errors, ranges of
errors were categorized by gender and grade are shown in Table 6.
Table 4. The number of students who made error
and the one who made no error
M: Male; F: Female. Unit: person
Grade
Gender
Made error
Made no error
Total
Grade
Gender
Made error
Made no error
Total
1
F
55
91
146
4
F
60
110
170
M
74
89
163
M
71
67
138
Total
129
180
309
M
69
90
159
Total
131
177
308
M
103
79
182
2
F
47
112
159
5
F
51
65
116
Total
116
202
318
M
69
82
151
Total
154
144
298
M
386
407
793
3
F
Total
65
134
102
184
167
318
Total
F
Total
278
664
480
887
758 1551
Table 5. The number of errors categorized by gender and grade of students
Grade
Error made by male
Error made by female
Total of errors
1
110
75
185
2
142
73
215
3
125
98
223
4
153
102
255
5
166
87
253
Total
696
435
1101
Table 6. The frequency of errors on handwriting (count for one person)
M: Male; F: Female
N: number of students who made error.
Grade
Gender
N
Mdn
Range
118
1
M
74
1
1-4
2
F
55
1
1-5
M
69
2
1-7
3
F
47
1
1-6
M
69
1
1-7
4
F
65
1
1-8
M
71
2
1-11
5
F
60
1
1-5
M
103
1
1-8
F
51
1
1-13
On the distribution of errors in transcription of primary school students in Vietnam
2.2.1.
Frequency of handwriting errors and the number of students who
made errors
In order to compare the number of students who made errors and that of
the one who did not make errors, the data was analyzed by the Direct Probability Calculation Method. As a result, the number of students who made errors is
statistically significantly less than the number of the ones who did not make errors
with 99% accuracy (p = 0.0000 ** (p <.01)). It is that 42.81% of students made
errors in their transcription. More concretely, the proportion of students in the first
grade who made errors is 41.75%. This proportion is smaller than the one which
was reported by Do Xuan Thao [3].
In order to recognize the difference among the number of students who made
errors in grades, the data was analyzed by the Chi-square test and the results are
statistical significantly with 99% accuracy (χ2 (4) = 14.990, p< .01, Phi = 0.098).
The residual analysis result (see Table 7) performed that among the all students
who made errors, the numbers who made errors in grade 2 was significantly the
lowest; in contrast, the number of ones who made errors in grade 5 was significantly
the highest. This result meant that the number of students who made errors tends
to increase though the grades.
Table 7. The difference between the number of students who made
error and the ones who made no error
Unit: person
Grade
Number of students
who made error
Number of students
who made no error
1
2
3
4
5
129
116 2
134
131
154 4
180
202 4
184
177
144 2
2: statistically few
4: statistically many
Table 8. The gender discrimination of students who made error
Unit: person
Gender
Number of students who made error
Number of students who made no error
Male
3864
4072
Female
2782
4804
2: statistically few
4: statistically many
On the other hand, in order to find out whether the difference in the number
of errors in five grades was statistically significant or random we analyzed the data
by Chi-square test. It showed that the difference was statistically significant (χ2 (4)
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Nguyen Thi Cam Huong, Yusuke EDA and Nguyen Thi Hoang Yen
= 14.946, p< .01) with 99% of accuracy and then a multiple comparison shows that
the number of errors made by students in grade 1 was statistically significantly less
than the one made by students in grade 4 and grade 5 with 99% of accuracy. This
fact leads to a conclusion that the frequency of errors tends to incresase through five
grades. This is not consistent with the previous research by Kono [10] which reported
that the number of errors which occurred in transcription of primary students in
Japan did not increase together with the grade.
In addition, although the medians of the number of errors made by boys in
second grade and fourth grade was both 2, the medians of other grades were 1;
moreover, the ranges of errors were spread through one grade to the next (see Table
6). Those results mean that among the students who made errors most of them
made only one error in two minutes, furthermore in the same period of writing time,
the number of students who made many errors tended to increase with grades. The
above findings matched our prediction about the change of the frequency of errors
and the proportion of children who made errors.
One likely explanation for why upper grade students tend to make more errors
than the lower ones involves how frequently students practise their handwriting.
Handwriting is not taught as a seperate subject from grade four onwards and time
for practicing handwriting is less than before. It may also be assumed that the less
students are instructed on how to write and modified their handwriting, the looser
their attention to handwriting is, resulting in an increase in errors, although their
handwriting skill becomes more habitual, organized and is available as a tool to
facilitate the development of ideas.
Siegel [12] demonstrated that working memory of students developed from the
age of 6 through to 19 years of age, as a straight line and following a report by
Igarashi and Kato [9], the capacity or efficiency of management of working memory
relating to language rises rapidly by the age of 10. In our present study, we observed
that most of the first grade students looked at words one by one and spelt out words
while they were writing letters one by one carefully, however, the ones in upper
grades such as grade 4 and 5 looked and remembered a group of words then wrote
them down without spelling them out. Those representations of students expressed
their development of working memory. This characteristic of cognitive processes in
writing could explain why the students at lower grades wrote fewer letters but made
less errors than the ones at higher grades. However, according to Hoang Van Thung
[8], when making a transcription, if students spelt words while they were writing,
their handwriting speed might be slowed down and easily lead to mistakes. He also
suggested that based on reading quickly without analyzing words to spell, students
have to perceive words with letters in sequence as a complete block of image. His
theory and our above conclusion may bring up a hypothesis that there should be
other aspects besides working memory and reading mechanism affecting students’
handwriting. One of those aspects should be dictation rules in Vietnamese which
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On the distribution of errors in transcription of primary school students in Vietnam
were reported that they made a lot of effect on handwriting errors [3,11]. Another
aspect should be handwriting speed which were reported by Kono [10] that the more
letters made, the more errors appeared in students’ handwriting. This implies that
it is necessary to find out the relationship between the handwriting error and writing
speeds in Vietnamese language.
Additionally, in our study, broken-unreadable letters are considered as handwriting errors. This kind of error may affect handwriting legibility. As our observation, the unreadable letters which were made by students in grade 1 were mostly
the letters with miss-strokes. This seems to be that the students still did not easily
recognize forms of letters and/or how to write those letters so they wrote them with
incorrect strokes. Meanwhile the unreadable letters which were made by the older
students were mostly the letters with simplified strokes. Blote & Hamstra-Bletz
[1] reported that with the increasing of grades, the students tend to simplify the
scripts in order to speed their handwriting up; therefore their handwriting becomes
more illegible. In other words, the students’ handwriting becomes illegible with
the increasing of their handwriting speed. As a consequence, it is necessary to put
more concentration on the relationship of handwriting errors, speed and legibility
in Vietnam.
2.2.2.
Gender discrimination among students who made errors
In order to find out if there is a difference in gender among the students who
made errors in transcription or not, we use a Chi-square test to analyze the data.
The results show that the difference in gender is statistically significant with 99%
accuracy (χ2 (1) = 22.796, p < .01, Phi=0.121). The results of residual analysis
are shown in Table 8. The difference in gender at each grade is analyzed, and it
is statistically significant at grade 2 (χ2 (1) = 6.568, p < .05), grade 4 (χ2 (1) =
8.133, p < .01) and grade 5 (χ2 (1) = 4.524, p < .05). It can be inferred that boys
made more errors than girls did, and among the second, fourth and fifth grades,
the proportions of boys who made errors are significantly more than that of girls.
This finding supports our hypothesis that there is a difference in making errors in
the transcription between boys and girls. It is also consistent with the conclusion
of previous research by Kono [10] which reported that at all levels (lower, middle
and upper level) in primary schools, the proportions of boys who made errors are
significantly more than that of the girls. Our findings are also congruent with other
previous researches demonstrating that girls tend to perform at higher levels than
boys at educational achievement [6,13].
3.
Conclusion
In summary, by investigating the number of errors appearing in their transcription in this present study, we found out some quantitative information about
the development of Vietnamese primary students’ handwriting. The frequency of
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Nguyen Thi Cam Huong, Yusuke EDA and Nguyen Thi Hoang Yen
errors in students’ transcriptions tended to increase in grade in this study. Students
in the fifth grade produced more errors and the ones in the second grade produced
significantly less errors. The proportion of students who made errors was less than
the ones who copied correctly. Furthermore, there was a gender discrimination in the
transcriptions. Among the second, fourth and fifth grades, the proportion of boys
who made errors were significantly more than that of girls. Additional research is
needed to identify the relationship among handwriting errors, speed and legibility
in the Vietnamese language.
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