Two instructional experiments used randomized, controlled designs to evaluate the effectiveness of writing instruction for students with carefully diagnosed dyslexia, which is both an oral reading and writing disorder, characterized by impaired word decoding, reading, and spelling. In Study 1 (4th to 6th grade sample and 7th to 9th grade sample), students were randomly assigned to orthographic or morphological spelling treatment but all students were taught strategies for planning, writing, and reviewing/revising narrative and expository texts. Both treatments supervised the assessment team. Margaret McShane and Doug Stock served as administrative assistants.

In Study 1 we evaluated whether each of three kinds of reading fluency (oral, silent—sentences, silent—passages) contributed uniquely to reading comprehension when children were in second grade (when oral reading is emphasized) and again when they were in fourth grade (when silent reading is emphasized). In Study 2 we evaluated the relationship of comprehension and other reading (automatic real word and pseudoword reading) and oral language (vocabulary) skills to each of the three kinds of fluency (oral passage, silent passage rate, and silent timed sentence comprehension) at the same grade levels. Results of both studies showed that contributions vary with the three kinds of fluency, as predictors or outcomes, and grade level, consistent with the view that fluency is a multidimensional construct that has bidirectional relationships with other language skills. Implications of multidimensional fluency for assessment and instruction are discussed.

During fMRI imaging, 12 good and 8 poor writers aged 11 wrote a newly taught pseudoletter and a highly practiced letter. Both letters were formed from the same components, but the pseudoletter had a novel configuration not corresponding to a written English letter form. On the first fMRI contrast between the newly taught pseudoletter and highly practiced letter, based on a group map, good and poor writers significantly activated many common regions; but the poor writers showed spatially more extensive brain activation than did the good writers. The additional regions of significant activation may reflect inefficiency in learning a new letter form. For the second contrast between the highly practiced and newly taught letters, individual brain activation analyses, based on exact clusters, showed that good and poor writers differed significantly in activation only in left fusiform. This individual fusiform activation correlated significantly with behavioral measures of automatic letter writing and expressive orthographic coding. Multiple regression in which both individual fusiform activation and individual orthographic coding were entered explained significant variance in written composition. Results are discussed in reference to the role of the orthographic loop, from internal letter form to external letter writing by hand, in writing letters and composing. The overall results are consistent with prior brain and behavioral studies of writing.