Abstract: Apparatus to teach students to write includes a housing having a generally horizontally disposed, dielectric, translucent plate having a flat face over which a scribe can be moved and which receives a sheet of translucent, tracing paper. The same housing derives control signals in response to an instructor moving a metal scriber across the face or as an output device for visually reproducing the scriber movement. To derive control signals for X and Y axes movement of the scriber, orthogonally positioned antennas couple orthogonal electromagnetic fields having differing frequencies to the plate. The characteristics of the electromagnetic fields are changed in response to movement of the scriber within those fields, hence the signal received by a receiver for each of the frequencies depends on the scriber movement. The detected variations in signals received by the receivers are fed to a multi-track magnetic tape recorder for future playback.