Role of mechanics in composing of elementary school students: A new methodological approach.

Abstract

The authors used multiple-group structural equation modeling to analyze structural relationships between latent factors underlying separate measures of handwriting, spelling, and composing in Grades 1-6. For compositional fluency, the paths from both handwriting and spelling were significant in the primary grades, but only the path from handwriting was significant in the intermediate grades. For compositional quality, only the path from handwriting was significant at the primary and intermediate grades. The contribution of spelling to compositional quality was indirect through its correlation with handwriting. Handwriting and spelling accounted for a sizable proportion of the variance in compositional fluency (41 % to 66%) and compositional quality (25% to 42%). These findings show that the mechanical skills of writing may exert constraints on amount and quality of composing. Theoretical and educational implications of the findings are discussed.Mechanical requirements for producing text have been hypothesized to contribute to individual differences in writing performance in several important ways (Berninger et al., 1992;Graham, 1990;Scardamalia, Bereiter, & Goleman, 1982). For persons who have not yet mastered the mechanics of writing, having to attend to the lower level skills of getting language onto paper may "tax" a writer's processing capacity in working memory, interfering with higher order skills such as planning and content generation. Having to switch attention during composing to mechanical demands, such as figuring out how to spell a word, may lead the writer to forget already developed ideas and plans. Simultaneously allocating attention to mechanical concerns while trying to plan the next unit of text may further interfere with the planning process, affecting the complexity and coherence of content integration. If attention is occupied with mechanical concerns, the writer may also have less opportunity to make expressions more precisely fit intentions at the point of translation. Finally, the writer's fluency with handwriting (or typing) may not be fast enough to keep up with his or her thoughts, interfering with content generation and recall of ideas or text already planned and held in working memory. However, the empirical research on the relationship between the mechanics of production and the composing process has yielded mixed results, depending on age and

Examining the transcription-writing link: Effects of handwriting fluency and spelling accuracy on writing performance via planning and translating in middle grades

“…This spelling measure has been used extensively in prior research with good evidence for validity Limpo & Alves, 2013a;Mackie & Dockrell, 2004;Nelson & van Meter, 2007;Wagner et al, 2011). Additionally, other studies have found that spelling in text is moderately correlated with spelling-to-dictation measures (Graham et al, 1997;Limpo & Alves, 2013a). It should also be noted that, in a structural equation modeling study that modeled spelling via two measures of spelling in text and one spelling-to-dictation measure, the researchers ended up removing this latter indicator, which was creating fitting problems in Grades 7-9 (Limpo & Alves, 2013a).…”

“…Anytime a student stopped writing he or she was prompted once to continue. Brief 5-minute writing tasks have been used extensively in prior writing research (Berninger et al, 1996;Connelly, Dockrell, Walter, & Critten, 2012;Graham et al, 1997;Kent, Wanzek, Petscher, Al Otaiba, & Kim, 2014), including curriculum-based measurement research (Espin et al, 2000), with proven validity (Dockrell, Connelly, Walter, & Critten, 2015;Lembke, Deno, & Hall, 2003). To control for potential prompt effects, half of the classes wrote the essay without planning to the prompt "Do you think teachers should give students homework every days?"…”

“…Such differences were expected because some research suggests that handwriting and spelling rely on distinct processes (Abbott & Berninger, 1993) and have independent growth trajectories (Abbott, Berninger, & Fayol, TRANSCRIPTION-WRITING LINK 10 2010). Moreover, the impact of handwriting fluency and spelling accuracy on the writing process (Alves & Limpo, 2015a) and on the writing product (Graham et al, 1997) is different. Overall, stronger effects have been reported for handwriting fluency than for spelling accuracy.…”

“…The relationship between transcription and writing performance is mostly noticeable in novice writers, who still struggle with the process of putting language onto the page. Graham et al (1997) investigated the shared and unique relations of handwriting fluency and spelling accuracy to writing in Grades 1-3 and Grades 4-6. They showed that, respectively, in primary and intermediate grades, these two transcription skills, together, accounted for 41% and 66% of the variance in writing fluency, and 25% and 42% of the variance in writing quality.…”

“…Though a fluency aspect can be measured in spelling (e.g., latencies; cf. Delattre, Bonin, & Barry, 2006), spelling is typically assessed in terms of accuracy, such as the number of correctly spelled words in isolation or in text (e.g., Graham, Berninger, Abbott, Abbott, & Whitaker, 1997;Limpo & Alves, 2013;Wagner et al, 2011). Handwriting draws on the integration between orthographic and motor skills (Christensen, 2004) and it can be assessed in terms of fluency or legibility (Graham, Weintraub, Berninger, & Schafer, 1998).…”