Copying a text quickly and accurately is important both in school and in daily life. However, this skill has never been systematically studied, either in children with typical development (TD) or in children with specific learning disabilities (SLD). The aim of this research was to study the features of a copy task and its relationship with other…

We discuss a component-based, developmental view of text writing fluency, which we tested using data from children in Grades 2 and 3. "Text writing fluency" was defined as efficiency and automaticity in writing connected texts, which acts as a mediator between text generation (oral language), transcription skills, and writing quality. We…

This study examined the relationship and degree of predictability that the fluency of writing the alphabet from memory and the selection of allographs have on measures of fluency and accuracy of spelling in a free-writing sentence task when keyboarding. The "Test Estandarizado para la Evaluación de la Escritura con Teclado"…

Research was conducted to ascertain if an essay-writing strategy was effective at improving the achievement on essay tests for 7th- and 8th-grade students with reading and writing disabilities. Students were assigned via a stratified random sample to treatment or control group. Student scores were also compared to students without learning…

A microcomputer program features the "Diagnostic Evaluation of Writing Skills" (DEWS), in which 41 criteria are provided representing most common types of errors. An evaluation of DEW'S diagnostic ability revealed its value as a means of selecting students in need of special remediation. (CL)

To focus on the importance of concept development and metacognitive processes to the act of writing, curricular changes must be made, including shifting the emphasis from mechanics to content and meaning. Six suggestions are offered for improving the quality and quantity of the written product of learning disabled students. (CL)

An approach to teaching writing and reading to learning disabled adolescents involves controlling the vowel from the simplist word constructions to the most difficult of orthographic constructions. Teaching strategies are based on a model that views most words as regular (categorical)--some more regular (categorical) than others. (Author)

The article examines two topics important to educators working with learning disabled college writers: error patterns of college learning disabled, normal, and basic writers across different tasks and instructional approaches successful in improvng the written language skills of college learning disabled writers, such as sentence combining and…

The study found that college student writers with learning disabilities (N=35) produced better coherent written text than did underprepared non-disabled students. LD writers appeared to understand text structure like normally achieving writers but, like the underprepared writers, they experienced difficulty in the production process. (Author/DB)

Four vocabulary lists were used to generate a basic spelling list for students with learning disabilities and other poor spellers. Each word was assigned a grade placement (one through three) based on pattern of occurrence in children's writing and placement on current vocabulary lists and spelling materials. The resulting spelling list of 335…

This review of writing abilities of learning-disabled children addresses story composition, expository writing, training/intervention research, and rationales/procedures for instruction. Specifically reviewed are mechanical/syntactic fluency skills, story schema and cohesion, modes of production, effects of age and development, task importance,…

Results of the comparison of 34 learning disabled and 37 low achieving fifth grade students on curriculum based assessment of reading, spelling, and written expression found significant differences between the two groups suggesting that norm-referenced tests which find no differences may reflect an inefficient procedure for confirming teacher…

The study examined whether college students (35 normally achieving writers, 35 writers with learning disabilities, and 35 underprepared writers) differed in their ability to utilize the semantic roles and syntactic rules needed to apply cohesive referencing in written text. Among findings were that all groups made effective use of pronoun…

A computer analysis of the compositions written by university students with (N=30) and without (N-60) learning disabilities (LD) found LD students were not as fluent in word production and in the number of different words used but did produce longer sentences and T-units than nondisabled peers. (DB)

The article describes typical kinds of writing problems found in fourth grade learning disabled students and discusses ways in which the computer makes the child's planning and composing problems more accessible to teacher help. Similarly, pitfalls of such accessibility are also cited. (CL)