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Helping them to acquire steady hand is his chosen vocation

After years of trial and error, Mohanakannan claims he can change anyone's handwriting, no matter how illegible. He speaks to Susan Muthalaly about his academy and the importance of a good and steady hand.

Mohanakannan is a campaigner for the written word. He has taken up the task of changing illegible squiggles into evenly spaced traditional cursive handwriting.

He says that the value of a legible steady hand cannot be discounted even in the computer era with pen-based input technology such as Palm Pilot taking over the market.

Growel Skills, his handwriting academy that operates from home, came into being when his son Hariharan ran into trouble with teachers because of bad handwriting. "This led to psychological problems, so we took him to a learning disability centre," says Mr. Mohanakannan, adding that in school your writing speed and legibility could affect your reading, learning and comprehending the coursework.

That is when he started reading up on and formulating methodologies to improve handwriting. "My son was my first project, it was trial and error with him," smiles Mr. Mohanakannan. Now 11, Hariharan is one of 400 students that Mr. Mohanakannan and his wife Lalitha have helped. They include a medical student and one doing MA Communications.

"I can change anybody's handwriting in six weeks flat," he declares. His method involves an assessment of individual needs using a computer-based evaluation. Students' reading, hand-to-eye coordination, attention, cohesiveness and comprehension are assessed. "It is like rebottling with clean water. First, you have to remove the bad handwriting habits," he says.

Handwriting depends on the way the pen is held, the slant of the book, slant and height of letter and spacing of words.

Posture is a major problem with left-handers in our country, who are not acknowledged as different, says Mr. Mohanakannan. About four per cent of his students are left-handers and need to be taught the basics such as how to slant the book at a mirror image angle as right-handers and hold the pen properly.

The exercises undertaken involve practising the correct hand movement.

Mr. Mohanakannan makes the student write out passages in other languages such as in Latin: "Post emensos insuperabilis expeditionis eventus languentibu partium animis... "

The focus is primarily on copying the letters and not comprehending the text.

He has a list of Pangrams - sentences that use all the letters of the alphabet. Example: "Crazy Fredericka bought many very exquisite opal jewels."

For details about Growel Skills, call 98408 18050.