Exploring individual and gender differences in early writing performance

Abstract

Boys' relatively poor progress in writing development is of particular concern in education with both cognitive and social factors proposed as possible accounts of this discrepancy. This study examined whether differences in cognitive skills such as handwriting and spelling or phonological processing abilities could explain gender differences in early writing. An opportunity sample of 116 children (52 male) ranging in age from 5:0 to 6:7 years were recruited from six UK schools. Tasks assessing vocabulary and letter knowledge, phonological awareness and phonological short-term memory skills were presented to children who were also asked to complete a number of transcription, spelling and writing tasks. Boys tended to produce shorter written compositions containing fewer correctly spelled words which were judged to be of a lower quality than texts produced by girls. However, no significant advantage for girls was identified in their vocabulary, letter knowledge or phonological processing skills, proposed as cognitive underpinnings of writing. Some relationships between phonological skills and aspects of writing differed between boys and girls and these were explored further in multiple regression analyses with gender and these phonological skills included as interaction terms. Gender predicted significant unique variance, independently of cognitive skills, in alphabet transcription and writing quality, although not dictated spelling skills. No associations between phonological skills and writing were moderated by gender. The possible role for environmental, motivational or attitudinal factors in explaining gender differences in early writing abilities should therefore perhaps be explored.

Who Benefits from An Intervention Program on Foundational Skills for Handwriting Addressed to Kindergarten Children and First Graders?

“…However, to our knowledge, previous studies have not yet addressed potential interaction effects of gender with intervention programs and the stability of changes over time, while other aspects of gender differences on writing (i.e., text quality, processes of planning and text structure) are well-documented [43]. For example, gender differences attest that 15%-19% fewer boys than girls achieve the expected standards of writing on leaving UK primary schools aged 11 years [44], consistent with other studies reporting a female advantage in writing [45,46]. Girls perform better than boys in spelling, writing essays and sentence composition measured on the Wechsler Individual Achievement Test-Third Edition [47], with a gap increasing with age during the school years [48].…”

The (non)effect of Joint Construction in a genre-based approach to teaching writing

“…Previous research shows various results regarding gender differences in writing. In some studies gender differences in written text quality have been found (Adams & Simmons, 2018;Bourke & Adams, 2011). For example, in Adams and Simmons, girls performed significantly better than boys did in written text composition, but not in transcription skills such as spelling and handwriting fluency.…”

“…It was further expected that girls would outperform boys in text length and written narrative text quality, as some of the previous research shows evidence that girls write longer texts with better text quality compared with boys (cf. Adams & Simmons, 2018;Williams & Larkin, 2013). In addition, lowproficiency students were expected to gain more from participating in the experimental group using Joint Construction compared with students of high proficiency level (cf.…”

Characteristics of the preschool home literacy environment which predict writing skills at school

“…The absence of a relationship with text spelling may appear to be at odds with this account. However, there is evidence that spelling individual words to dictation may be reliant upon different cognitive processes than those supporting spelling accuracy during text construction (Adams & Simmons, 2019;Harrison et al, 2016). The lack of a relationship between meaning-related aspects of the HLE and sentence and text level writing was unexpected given associations between such experiences and skills underpinning reading comprehension (Hood et al, 2008;Manolitsis et al, 2013).…”