Internal Structure and Development of Keyboard Skills in Spanish-Speaking Primary-School Children With and Without LD in Writing

The aim of this study was to analyze whether children with and without difficulties in handwriting, spelling, or both differed in alphabet writing when using a keyboard. The total sample consisted of 1,333 children from Grades 1 through 3. Scores on the spelling and handwriting factors from the Early Grade Writing Assessment (Jiménez, in press) were used to assign the participants to one of four groups with different ability patterns: poor handwriters, poor spellers, a mixed group, and typically achieving students. Groups were equalized by a matching strategy, resulting in a final sample of 352 children. A MANOVA was executed to analyze effects of group and grade on orthographic motor integration (fluency of alphabet writing) and the number of omissions when writing the alphabet (accuracy of alphabet writing) by keyboard writing mode. The results indicated that poor handwriters did not differ from typically achieving children in both variables, whereas the poor spellers did perform below the typical achievers and the poor handwriters. The difficulties of poor handwriters seem to be alleviated by the use of the keyboard; however, children with spelling difficulties might need extra instruction to become fluent keyboard writers.

Section: Study Limitationssupporting

confidence: 58%

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Fluency and Accuracy in Alphabet Writing by Keyboarding: A Cross-Sectional Study in Spanish-Speaking Children With and Without Learning Disabilities

Bisschop¹,

Morales

Gil

et al. 2016

“…To analyze the internal structure of EGWA and its construct validity by looking at the correlations between EGWA and the Test Estandarizado para la Evaluación de la Escritura con Teclado (“Spanish Keyboarding Writing Test” [TEVET]; Jiménez, 2012d); see also Jiménez, Marcos, González, and Suárez (2016) in this issue for more information about this assessment tool.…”

Section: Egwa: An Instrument Modelmentioning

confidence: 99%

Early Grade Writing Assessment: An Instrument Model

González

2016

Self Cite

The United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization promoted the creation of a model instrument for individual assessment of students' foundational writing skills in the Spanish language that was based on a literature review and existing writing tools and assessments. The purpose of the Early Grade Writing Assessment (EGWA) is to document learners' basic writing skills, mapped in composing units of increasing complexity to communicate meaning. Validation and standardization of EGWA was conducted in the Canary Islands (Spain) in 12 schools using a cross-sectional design with a sample of 1,653 Spanish-speaking students in Grades 1 through 3. The author describes EGWA's internal structure, along with the prevalence of learning disabilities (LD) in transcription and developmental differences in writing between Spanish-speaking children with LD and typical peers. Findings suggest that EGWA's psychometric characteristics are satisfactory, and its internal structure can be attributed to four factors responsible for a high percentage of the variance. The odds ratio indicated that 2 Spanish-speaking children with LD in transcription are identified out of every 100. A comparison between students with and without LD in transcription revealed statistically significant differences concerning sentence and text production across grades. Results are interpreted within current theoretical accounts of writing models.

“…Computers are widely available both at home and at school, letter production is not achieved solely through handwriting, and typing on a keyboard has become a widely used mode of transcription (Berninger, Abbott, Augsburger, & García, 2009). In the fourth article, “The Internal Structure and Development of Keyboard Skills in Spanish-Speaking Primary School Children With and Without LD in Writing,” Jiménez, Marcos, Suárez, and González (2016) present how the typing skills of Spanish elementary school–age children are structured. To reveal the composition of typical typing skills, Spanish children were asked to perform six writing tasks by keyboard: writing the alphabet in order from memory, selecting allographs, copying words, writing dictated words with inconsistent spelling, writing pseudowords from dictation, and writing an independently composed sentence.…”

Section: About the Articles In The Special Seriesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Writing Disabilities in Spanish-Speaking Children: Introduction to the Special Series

González

2016

Self Cite

This special issue of the Journal of Learning Disabilities focuses on studies of writing disabilities in Spanish-speaking children. The World Health Organization (2001) included writing difficulties as one of the problems considered to constitute an impediment to school participation, a significant element in the normal developmental process of the child. In this introduction, I describe the background of a larger project promoted by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). This special series offers recent findings on writing disabilities in Spanish-Speaking children within the UNESCO project. The pilot study was carried out in the Canary Islands, an autonomous Spanish region located between three continents and composed of seven islands in the Atlantic Ocean. Most of the current empirical evidence on writing disabilities comes from English, a language with deep orthography; therefore, it is very relevant to investigate the writing process in Spanish, a language with shallow, fine-grained orthography. Included are a number of articles that form a conspectus on writing disabilities in the Spanish language. Topics center on early grade writing assessment, prevalence of writing disabilities, handwriting and keyboarding, transcription and text generation, graphonomic and handwriting analysis, and instructional practices with an learning disabled population.