The relationship between scores on objective tests of language skills and on free writing tasks was analyzed for third and eighth graders. Correlations between scores were of the same magnitude as reported for college students. Differences in relationships between free-writing performance and objective test scores are discussed. (Author/RD)

The relationship between children's performance on a standardized achievement battery and compositional writing performance was examined. One hundred thirty-eight writing samples were collected from fourth-grade students. Compositions were scored for both mechanistic and holistic qualities. Four subscores on the Metropolitan Achievement Test were…