This is Steve Ember with the VOA Special English EducationReport.

People who have unusual difficulty with skills like reading,writing, listening or working with numbers may have a learningdisability. We talked last week about dyslexia, a reading disorder.Today we discuss a condition with writing, called dysgraphia.

Writing is not an easy skill. It is both mental and physical. Aperson must be able to move the muscles in the hands and fingers toform letters and numbers. Some people are not able to move thesemuscles easily.

Experts say teachers and parents should suspect dysgraphia ifthey see handwriting that is unusually difficult to understand.Letters may be formed or spaced incorrectly. Capital letters may bein the wrong places.

Children with dysgraphia often hold their writing tools in anunusual position. They may also place the paper in an odd positionfor writing. The disorder generally appears when they first learn towrite. Children continue to write wrong or misspelled words evenafter their teacher tries to show them the correct way.

Experts at the National Institutesof Health say the cause of the disorder is not known. Some peoplewith dysgraphia are able to improve their writing ability. Butothers are not. As with other disorders, the most important part oftreatment is for someone to first identify the problem.

There are some simple interventions that can help students withdysgraphia. For example, schools can give them more time to completewriting activities and provide help taking notes. Students might bepermitted to type their work instead of having to write by hand.Teachers can also permit students to take examinations by speakingthe answers instead of writing them.

Dysgraphia often appears with other learning disabilities. Somestudents may not be able to organize their thoughts and think abouthow to write at the same time. So a teacher might advise them totype their ideas first, without thinking about writing skills.

Experts say people with dysgraphia may be able to write well ifthey work slowly and develop their skills. Technology can help. Oneway to avoid the problems of handwriting is to use a computer.Students can use the computer spell checker to help make sure everyword is correct.

We continue our series about learning disabilities next week. Ourprograms are on the Internet at WWW.51VOA.COM.

This VOA Special English Education Report was written by NancySteinbach. This is Steve Ember.