Digital tools are an integral part of most writing communities across the globe, enhancing the criticality of gaining a comprehensive understanding of both paper and computer-based writing acquisition and development. The relationships between transcription skills and children's paper-based writing performance are well documented. Less is known…

Inaudible syntactic markers are especially difficult to spell. This paper examines how 455 fourth graders spell silent French plural markers in a dictation with real and pseudowords after one year of formal French instruction (L2). The Generalized Linear Mixed Model analysis shows first that noun plural spelling (real and pseudo) is a strong…

Aspects of the preschool home learning environment which may foster reading development have been identified, although their relationships with spelling and writing remain unclear. The present study explored associations between the preschool home literacy environment (HLE), language and nonverbal abilities and children's spelling and writing…

In the present study, we aimed to compare reading-writing relations between first-grade Native English Speakers (NESs) and English Language Learners (ELLs). Thirty-four ELLs and 35 NESs completed measures of receptive and expressive vocabulary, lexical-level reading (word reading) and writing (spelling), and discourse-level reading (reading…

Pure copying skill (copying of unfamiliar scripts) and delayed copying (copying of unfamiliar Chinese characters presented previously) can both be important correlates in learning to write Chinese. The present study tested both traditional literacy-related skills and copying skills among 267 Chinese kindergarteners (mean age = 5.52) to examine the…

Cross-language transfer happens in bilingual reading development. However, little is known about whether L1 affects L2 spelling development. In addition, longitudinal studies are needed to examine the L1-L2 relations developmentally from the beginning of literacy learning. We tested whether and which Chinese (L1) literacy-related skill(s) in…

The study explores whether foundational skills of reading and spelling in preschool (age 5-6) predict literacy skills cross-linguistically in an additional language in Grade 1 (age 6-7). A sample of linguistically diverse preschool children completed tasks of phonological awareness, letter-sound knowledge, verbal-short term memory, rapid…

Orthographic knowledge is predicted to be central in the process of children's reading development. We examined both the temporal order between orthographic knowledge and each of word reading and word spelling--effectively, which predicts which by including autoregressive controls--and cross-linguistic transfer between English and French for our…

The present study examines the concurrent relationship between morphological awareness and vocabulary breadth and depth after accounting for the effect of other potential contributors. A sample of French-speaking fourth-grade children who spoke either French at home (L1) (n = 55) or another language (L2) (n = 85) completed a number of tests…

Learning to write is one of the great challenges children face in primary grades, requiring both transcription skills (handwriting and spelling) and executive functions (EFs; working memory, inhibitory control, and cognitive flexibility). Although this claim is widely accepted, the field suffers from some limitations, including few longitudinal…

This study examined the writing skills of first-grade students who are English Language Learners (ELLs) or Native English Speakers (NESs). We examined the roles of transcription and oral language skills on contextualized spelling, writing fluency, and writing quality outcomes for ELL and NES students. Thirty-four ELLs (Mean age (A) = 78.03 months,…

We examined the contribution of a major predictor of basic literacy ability--phoneme awareness--to individual differences in two arithmetic computation tasks: a speeded task consisting of simple computation problems (arithmetic fluency) and an untimed, more complex computation task involving multi-digit operands (numerical operations). The…

The present research studied the role of the non-executive and executive components of working memory in the detection of phonological, orthographical, and grammatical spelling errors. Before performing error detection tasks, undergraduate participants completed a battery of tasks to evaluate their non-executive (verbal and visuospatial storage)…

We tested the effects of orthography on text reading by comparing reading measures in Arabic and Hebrew-speaking adults. The languages are typologically very similar, but use different orthographies. We measured naming speed of single letters, words and nonwords, and visual processing. Arabic-speakers also performed some of the tasks in Hebrew. We…

We investigated developmental trajectories of and the relation between reading and writing (word reading, reading comprehension, spelling, and written composition), using longitudinal data from students in Grades 3-6 in the US. Results revealed that word reading and spelling were best described as having linear growth trajectories whereas reading…