Writing is a fundamental skill with which we can express our thoughts, emotions, and demonstrate our knowledge of the world. This skill is not only important in one’s educational stage, but also later in life. If we want to preserve writing as one of the communication types, we have to make sure it is legible and correctly shaped. Manuscript legibility and appropriate letter, word, and sign formation are enabled by the development of graphomotor skills. Research suggests that children suffering from attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) experience difficulties in the graphomotor and writing skills area. ADHD is a neurodevelopmental disorder and it can present itself in a variety of ways. Students with ADHD experience difficulties with attention, hyperactivity, and impulsiveness. The concurrence of ADHD and writing disabilities has not been researched thoroughly, neither in Slovene nor in foreign literature. There is also a lack of strategies that would help students with ADHD cope with writing difficulties. Strategies for helping with the concurrence of these difficulties have not been developed. Writing difficulties have a negative impact on learning, student development, academic success, as well as on student’s academic self-esteem. Considering all the negative factors enumerated previously, we have decided to research the topic further in master’s thesis. We carried out a study, asking special education teachers from Goriška statistical region, who offer extra support for primary school pupils with ADHD, what kind of difficulties they have been noticing in the area of writing. We examined and analysed spelling and grammatical errors, as well as graphomotor difficulties. Our study group consisted of four pupils with ADHD and twelve pupils without ADHD, all of them attending five grade of primary school. The whole study group, consisting of sixteen pupils, was asked to perform three different types of writing, namely: completing a dictation, copying a text, and writing a text of their own. They were observed while completing these tasks and their texts were later analysed for errors. The results showed that spelling errors and grammatical errors occur in both groups. Pupils with ADHD tend to make more spelling errors and grammatical errors when completing a dictation, than with the other two examined text types. Pupils without ADHD make most of the mistakes when completing a dictation and writing a text of their own. The most frequent dictation mistake, shared by both groups, is letter omission and letter substitution error, occurring due to lack of knowledge. Although pupils with ADHD seem to have fewer difficulties with dictation than their peers without ADHD, they do have more difficulties with misshaping or omitting letters, and substituting words. The results of our study have shown that pupils with ADHD tend to have more graphomotor difficulties than their peers without ADHD. These difficulties can be observed through poor body posture, poor head posture, as well through dysfunctional pencil grip and inconsistent writing speed. Furthermore, pupils with ADHD tend to put more pressure on the paper while writing. After observing ADHD pupils while writing, it can be established that graphomotor difficulties depend both on an individual pupil and type of writing task. Generalizations about ADHD-specific writing difficulties cannot be made. The analysis of texts produced for the purpose of our study has shown that ADHD pupils tend to have more difficulties in the area of graphomotor skills than their peers without ADHD. The results of our study indicate that there are differences between different types of writing. A specific type of error can be produced by an individual pupil with one text type, but not with the other text types. Special education teachers s participated in answering questions about their observations of ADHD pupils and their writing. Their answers indicated that they see spelling errors, grammatical errors, and graphomotor difficulties with ADHD pupils, regardless of the text type (dictation, copying texts, autonomous writing). Considering our study findings, interview analysis, analysis of texts produced by ADHD pupils, and literature available it can be concluded that observations from special education teachers are in line with the information found in research and scientific literature.
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