Teaching Initial Writing Using Standard School Letters Ten Years After the Establishment of the Standards

Kolar Billege, Martina

doi:10.31724/rihjj.50.1.5

Rasprave Instituta za hrvatski jezik, Vol. 50 No. 1, 2024.

Review article

https://doi.org/10.31724/rihjj.50.1.5

Teaching Initial Writing Using Standard School Letters Ten Years After the Establishment of the Standards

Martina Kolar Billege orcid.org/0000-0002-4013-9141 ; Učiteljski fakultet Sveučilišta u Zagrebu

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APA 6th Edition

Kolar Billege, M. (2024). Teaching Initial Writing Using Standard School Letters Ten Years After the Establishment of the Standards. Rasprave Instituta za hrvatski jezik, 50 (1). https://doi.org/10.31724/rihjj.50.1.5

MLA 8th Edition

Kolar Billege, Martina. "Teaching Initial Writing Using Standard School Letters Ten Years After the Establishment of the Standards." Rasprave Instituta za hrvatski jezik, vol. 50, no. 1, 2024 https://doi.org/10.31724/rihjj.50.1.5. Accessed 20 Jul. 2026.

Chicago 17th Edition

Kolar Billege, Martina. "Teaching Initial Writing Using Standard School Letters Ten Years After the Establishment of the Standards." Rasprave Instituta za hrvatski jezik 50, no. 1 https://doi.org/10.31724/rihjj.50.1.5

Harvard

Kolar Billege, M. (2024). 'Teaching Initial Writing Using Standard School Letters Ten Years After the Establishment of the Standards', Rasprave Instituta za hrvatski jezik, 50(1). https://doi.org/10.31724/rihjj.50.1.5

Vancouver

Kolar Billege M. Teaching Initial Writing Using Standard School Letters Ten Years After the Establishment of the Standards. Rasprave Instituta za hrvatski jezik [Internet]. 2024 [cited 2026 July 20];50(1). https://doi.org/10.31724/rihjj.50.1.5

IEEE

M. Kolar Billege, "Teaching Initial Writing Using Standard School Letters Ten Years After the Establishment of the Standards", Rasprave Instituta za hrvatski jezik, vol.50, no. 1, 2024. [Online]. https://doi.org/10.31724/rihjj.50.1.5

Abstract

Ten years after the establishment of initial writing standards, the standardisation of school letters in the Croatian Orthography of the Institute for Croatian Language and Linguistics (2013), and the implementation of school letters in the curriculum, textbooks, and teaching in the Republic of Croatia, this paper provides an overview of pertinent scientific research concerning early teaching of writing in the Croatian language and assesses the current state of initial written production among pupils in primary education. We have investigated the application of teaching methodology guidelines for the position of the hand, body, and pen during the initial teaching of writing in the first grade of primary education and the number of words in the lexical associogram on the subject of ‘childhood’ by fourth grade students in order to monitor the implementation of initial writing standards. Based on the lexical associogram, we determined the number of mistakes in writing related to the type of letter and the legibility issues. The results show that less than 50% of first-grade pupils (N = 606) hold their pencil and hand correctly when writing, but a higher percentage (70%) hold their body correctly. Teachers declare that they always instruct the students regarding the correct hand-and-pen position and the proper direction of writing letters and very rarely allow deviations from the prescribed direction of writing letters and the default appearance of school letters. Notwithstanding this, 34.4% of fourth-grade students (N = 356) who wrote in handwritten letters exhibited legibility issues.