- Writing Disabilities:
An Overview
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The words are all tangled up inside my head. I'm confused. I get tangled up in writing
the words and I stop. - Fifth -grade girl with learning disabilities (LD)
Writing is difficult. Most writers could relate to the frustration expressed by this girl.
Writing is a complex process that draws on:
.our knowledge of the topic
.our ability to anticipate what readers will need
. our ability to logically organize information
. our skill at finding the right words
.our ability to evaluate our efforts
.the perseverance to keep working
Writers must set goals, integate the many cognitive and social prosses involved, and monitor their
own success. Students with LD are not the only ones who struggle with writing. In fact, the National Assessment of Educational
Progress rated only 28% of fourth-grade, 31% of eigth-grade and 24% of twelfth-grade students as proficent. (1) However, for students with LD, the difficulties are greater. In comparison to their normally
achieving peers, students with LD have:
. less knowledge about
writing
. less skill with language
.substantial difficulties with spelling and handwriting
. less effective stratergies for writing.
Consequently, their compositions are shorter, less organized and coherent, more marked by errors
in spelling and grammer, and lower in overall quality. (2)
Parents often wonder to what extent reading and writing disabilities are connected. Reading and
writing are closely related language skills; research shows substantial correlations between reading and writing achievement.
(3) Most poor readers also struggle with writing. However, the reverse is not necessarily true. All of the following can produce
writing problems, independent of reading problems:
. fine motor problems that affect handwriting
. attention and self-regulation problems that affect
persistance and organization
. limited motivation
. limited instruction
In addition, some students who overcome their reading problems will continue to struggle with spelling
and writing. Thus, it is important that your child's writting problems be assessed, in addition to any reading problems,
so that she is provided carefully designed writing instruction.
Writing Development and Writing Problems
"Good writing is writing one, maybe two pages, and having periods, capital letters,
indenting, paragraphs, spelling everything right-and that's all I'd say about that".
Student with LD
As the quote illustrates, many student's with LD are so concerned with the mechanics of writing
that they educate good writing with lack of errors. Schools must take care not to make that same mistake in accessing a student's
writing problems or planning writing instruction. Although problems of spelling and mechanics are highly visable problems,
in fact, students with LD struggle with all aspects
of writing. In this section Charles A. MacArthur, a professor in the school of Education at the University of Deleware and
author of this single report, outlines the knowledge and skills that students must master to be good writers, and discusses
writing problems in each area. The Hayes and Flower model (4) provides a framework for considering the components of writing.
The model includes:
. the social context of writing
. the writer's knowledge
. planning what to write
. text production
. evaluating one's own writing
. self-regulation of one's writing process
Social context
Writing is a social process as much as it is a cognitive one. Outside
of school, people write primarily to communicate with others, and with some purpose in mind. Both the contexts in which people
write and the forms of their writing are determined by social purposees and conventions. We share news and tell personal stories
in letters to friends, seek to persuade others in letters to the editor, and register our complaints in letters to businesses.
At home, children may write stories, send e-mail to their friends, and chat online. Most of these typesof writing are interactive
just like conversation; that is, we get responses from the people we write to.
Proficent writers are aware of their audience and purpose and try to adept to their content, organization, and language to communicate effictively. Students with LD and other struggling writers often ignore the audience and approach writting as simply a matter of
writting what they know about a topic. One partial explanation for ignoring audience is that the struggle to get words on
paper takes all their attention. Another explanation is that they may not have had enough experience in writing to real people
who respond to them.
A lot of school writing is directed to an audience of one-the teacher- with the purpose of displaying
what the student has learned (e.g. , tests, sentences with spelling words). To learn to write well and to develop motivation
to write, students need opportunities to write and publish their writing for people other than a teacher to read.
Knowledge about content and writing
Just as in reading comprehension, content knowledge is a major factor
in writing. One reason that some students with LD have difficulty in writing is that they have not read as much as other students
and have less general knowledge to draw on. Also, given assignments that require the student to read for content and then
write about it, those with LD have more difficulty gaining knowledge from reading. In addition, proficent writers know a great
about writting itself. For example, they know about the various forms or generenes for writing, and they use this knowledge
to generate content and organize their writing. Students with LD and other struggling writters have less knowledge about
the common purposes and forms of writing. (5)
Transcription Skills
Text production, in the Hayes and Flower model (4), includes transcription
and language generation. We deal with them seperately here because of their importance for struggling writers. Transcription
skills include all the processes involved in getting sentences onto paper- spelling, handwriting or keyboarding, and punctation.
When a student has to pay close attention to these lower-level transcription concerns, they have less mental capacity left
for higher-level composing issues. For example, when a student stops to think about spelling or letter formation, it interferes
with her thinking about what she is trying to communicate in her writing.
For proficient writers, transcription processes are relatively automatic. In contrast, young writers
and struggling writters of all ages devote considerable attention to transcription prosses. Research demonstrates clearly
that problems with transcription have an impact on the quality of a person's writing. Spelling and handwriting fluency are
related to the quality of writing throughout the elementary school years. (6) When students with LD are allowed to dictate
their writing, so that they don't have to be concerned with transcription, they produce better compositions than when they
compose in their own handwriting. (7) Futhermore, instruction in handwriting or spelling in the primary grades increases the
quality of students'writing. (8)
Language Skills
Skilled writing requires more varied vocabulary and more complex
syntax, or sentence structure, than oral language. Both reading and writing demand knowledge of vocabulary and syntax, but
writing places higher demands on students because they must produce the vocabulary and sentences rather than just comprehend them. Expository writing, in particular, places high demands on a student's vocabulary and
syntactic knowledge. Many students with LDs in reading and writing have difficulties with sentence structure. In addition,
vocabulary develops through extensive reading, so limited reading can negatively affect vocabulary.
Planning
Proficent writers engage in substantial amounts of planning and
have well-developed stratergies for planning. The Hayes and Flower (4) model includes three important types of activities
in planning:
. First, proficient writers set goals and sub-goals for
their writing, based on the audience and purpose. For
example, in writing this piece I began with a general goal
of providing useful information about writing instruction
to parents of students with learning problems, and worked
to define subgoals about what to convey about writing
processes and instruction.
. Second they are skilled at generating content by
searching their memories and by gathering information from
reading and talking to others.
. Third they have knowledge of a variety of forms or
genres for writing. For example,
when writing a letter to
the editor, they know that they need to give reasons and
evidence for their point of view.
In contrast, struggling writers do minimal planning. (2) They give little thought to goals or audience
and do not have knowledge of forms for writing to guide them. Instead they often simply approach the writing task as one of
telling whatever they currently know about a topic, in whatever order it occurs to them. Using this approach, they often
generate little content and organize it poorly.
Evaluating and Revising
Proficent writers evaluate and revise their work throughout the writing process. The reorganize
ideas, change their mind about things, throw out whole sections of a piece of writing, and consider carefully whether they
are meeting their goals. They are supported in their evaluation and revision processes by extensive knowledge about criteria
for good writing and by good reading comprehension skills that help them detect potential problems.
Most school-age writers, even average writers, do not revise much. Students with LD engage in title
revision beyond correcting errors and making minor word changes. Often, they introduce new errors in the process of recopying
a paper to fix previous errors. (9) There are several reasons why they do
not revise more efficently.
. First, weak reading comprehension skills may limit their
ability to detect problems in the text.
. Second, they have limited knowledge of evaluation criteria
to use in revising, for example, evaluating whether the
introduction will hook the reader, whether the organization
is clear and marked with transition words, or whether enough
detail is provided.
.Finally, even when they do notice problems,they may not be
able to fix them because of poor writing skills.
SELF-REGULATION
Writing is a very demanding problem-solving task that requires a
student to consider both content and audience, plan the overall origanization of the piece, choose words and generate sentences,
evaluate the writing using multiple criteria, and maintain motivation and persistence. Even proficent writers cannot do all
of these things simultaneously, but they have self-regulation strategies, monitor their progress, and change the approach
to their writing when it is not working.
In addition, they have developed ways to cope with difficulties and to keep themselves motivated
and on-task. For example,
when I get stuck, I avoid discouragement by telling myself that writing is difficult for most people.
Sometimes, I pull out and read an old article to remind myself that I can actually write,
In contrast, struggling writers have difficulty coordinating the skills and stratergies that they
know, and are often overwhelmed by the demands of writing. Because they have so few success experiences with writing, they
are easily discouraged.
WRITING INSTRUCTION
A well-designed program of writing instruction should address all
of the above components. A sound writing program will provide a balance between opportunities for a child to engage in writing
that is meaningful to her, and to receive explicit instruction in the skills and stratergies she needs to become a proficient
writer. Students need the opportunity to write on meaningful topics for audiences other than the teacher, including their
peers, parents, and other groups outside the school. At the same time, they need explicit instruction in:
. the basic skills of handwriting, spelling, and sentence
formation
. strategies for planning and revising their writing
. stratergies for self-regulation during the writing process
A writing program that omits the social context and teaches writing to pass a test will not motivate
students, nor will it help them understand how the different forms of writing are related to specific purposes. On the other hand,
struggling writers need explict instructions instruction in order to develop basic skills and sophisticated stratergies
for writing.
REFERENCES:
1. Persky, H.R., Daane, M.C., et al. The nation's report card.
Writing 2002. Washington D.C. U.S
2. Troia, G.A. "Writing instruction for students with learning
disabilities." In C.A. MacArthur, S. Graham & Fitzgerald
(Eds). Handbook of writing research. New York:Guilford
2005.
3. Shanahan. T. (2006) "Relations among oral language,
reading, and writing development." In C. A. MacArthur.
S. Graham, et al. (Eds). Handbook of writing research.
New York: Guilford.
4. Hayes, J., & Flower. L. "Identifying the organization of
writing processes." In L. Gregg & E. Steinburg (Eds).
Cognitive processes in writing: An Interdiscipilany
approach. Hillsdale. N.J.: Lawerence Eribaum 1980
5. Englert, C.S., & Raphael. T.. "Constructing well-formed
prose: Process, structure and metacognitive knowledge"
Exceptional Children. Vol.54.
6. Graham, S. Berninger. V.W., et al "Role of mechanics in
composing of elementary school students: A new
methodological approach." Journal of Educational
Psychology. Vol. 89
7. MacArthur, C.A. "The effects of new technologies on
writing and writing processes."In C.A. MacArthur,
S. Graham, et al. Handbook of writing research, New York:
Guliford, 2006.
8. Graham, S., Harris, H.K., et al. "Is handwriting casually
related to learning to write? Treatment of handwriting
problems in begining writers." Journal of Educational
Psychology. Vol 92.
9. MacArthur, C.A., Schwatz. S.S., etal. "A model for writing
instruction: Integrating word processing and stratergy
instruction into a process approach to writing." Learning
Disabilities Research and Practice. Vol. 6
Learning to Spell- A Challenge for Elementary Students with
LD
When a child struggles with spelling, his writing is much slower
than his thinking. This makes it hard for him to clearly express his knowledge and ideas in written school assignments. Spelling
is especially difficult for students with learning disabilities (LD), so it is important that schools provide explicit, systematic
spelling instruction on a regular basis throughout elementary school for these students. In order to evaluate spelling instruction
in your child's classroom or to consider how you might help your child improve spelling skills, it helps to have some understanding
of the skills students need in order to become competent spellers, and the types of activities that promote these skills.
Fiction versus Fact
Unfortunately some popular myths about spelling may discourage parents
from trying to help their child improve in spelling. These include:
Fiction: Many
people believe that good spellers simply memorize strings
of letters to spell words correctly because English
is too unsystematic.
Fact: It's true that learning to spell in English is more difficult than in other languages
where the correspondences between letters and sounds are more predictable and less complex. But, in fact, the regularities
in English spelling outnumber the irregularities. When a student learns the regularities, he can improve his spelling skills
and minimize his dependence on role memorization.
Fiction: Manypeople regard
spelling as an isolated, outdated skill that students no longer need in a technologically advanced society with computers
and spell checkers.
Fact: First,
spelling is not an isolated skill; it's closely tied to other language skills. The relationship between spelling and reading
is extremely strong, indicating that skilled spellers are most often skilled readers. Second, spell checkers catch only
63% of spelling errors, so for a student to write words accurately, he must know the correct spellings. When a student
can write words correctly and automatically, this helps him to compose text more efficently because it frees up his attention
to focus on ideas rather than on how to spell words.
Learning Foundational Spelling Skills
When
a student begins to write a word, he first tries to locate its spelling in his memory. If this fails, he then applies his
knowledge of sound-letter correspondences, spelling patterns, or spellings of other similar-sounding words, to
devise a plausible spelling. In English, memorization plays a key role, because of the number of irregularities in English
spelling. When the same letters and letter patterns are used to represent sounds consistently in different words- for example,
"b" represents the sound /b/ in "bird," "bail," "baby", and many more words- this creates regularities. But when different
letters or combinations of letters can represent the same sound- for example, the begining sound in "farm" and "phone", or
the vowel sound in "now "and "plough"- these irregularities can prevent reading and spelling challenges, especially for students
with LD.
How are correct spellings stored in memory, and what skills does a student need to commit spellings
to memory? A student remembers the spelling of a word when its letters become connected in his memory to its"phonemes."
Phonemes are the smallest distinct sounds that we hear when a word is spoken. For example, s-t-o-p
has four phomes, and ch-e-ck has three phonems. Each of these phonems is represented in the written word by a single letter
or by a two-letter "digraph,"such as "ch,"or "ck."A student who learns the most common letter- phoneme connections- and some
common letter-phoneme connections - and some common letter combinations such as prefixes and suffixes (for example, un-, dis-,
-ful, -able) - has aquired the foundation for learning to spell.
At the phonemic level, memorizing correct spellings requires
that:
. When a student hears a word, he can figure out how to
to segment it into the phonemes that comprise its
pronunciation.
. When a student writes
a word, he knows which letters
might represent its phonemes.
. When he looks at a written word while saying
the word, he can figure out how the
letters represent
each phoneme in its pronunciation and whether some
letters are silent.
When a student performs these steps at the phonemic level
to learn the spellings of smaller words, he is building a
foundation for learning the spellings of longer and more complex words.
Segmenting Words into Phonemes
The first step in this process, segmenting words into phonemes,
is not so easy because when a student hears a word spoken out loud, he doesn't perceive any break between phonemes- the points
where one sound in a word ends and next begins.
Parents can help a student distinguish each phoneme in a word by helping him notice the activity in his mouth as he pronounces a word. For example when a student says "spot", first the air hisses over his
tongue to say "s", then his lips close to say "p", then his mouth opens to say "o", then the tip of his tongue taps the
roof of his mouth to say "t." Instructional programs such as Lindmood-Bell's Lips program provide extra help with this by
teaching a student to monitor his own mouth movements by watching in a mirror as he pronounces a word.
Knowing Which Letters Might Symbolize the Phonemes
A young child at risk for LD may be slow in mastering the alphabet,
including the shapes, names, and sounds of letters, so he will need to be provided more opportunities to practice.
You can tell whether your child needs more practice if, by about age six or the end of kindergarten,
he cannot name capital and small letters and cannot write these letters from memory.
Instructional programs such as Letterland (c) published by Wendon, offer help by providing special
"mnemonics," or memorization aids. In this type of program, the student is shown a picture of a familiar object that he can
name, such as a snake. The snake is drawn in the form of a letter "s," and is shown making a "Ssssss"sound. Another example
might be a "Kicking King," drawn in the shape of "k." The mnemonics are effective because children can look at the letter's
shape and be reminded of the picture whose name begins with the sound of that letter.
Linking Letters with Phonems in Specific Words
A student with LD may have trouble figuring out how letters are
linked to phonemes, in the pronunciation of a specific word. This is because students with LD have more than average difficulty
distinguishing each phoneme in a word when they hear it spoken. When a student is experienceing this difficulty, it
can be helpful for him to say the word out loud while looking at its spelling. Assuming he has some understanding of
letter-phoneme correspondence, the letters can tell him what sounds to listen for in consonant clusters such as the "s-k"and
"n-k" in "skunk"are hard to hear. However, looking at the spelling draws the students attention to their presence.
Some Common Spelling Difficulities
In order to help a student
overcome spelling difficulties, a teacher must first understand exactly what the student's particular problems are. One way
to figure this out is simply to ask the student to spell words. His errors should provide the teacher valuable insights. For
example:
- When a student has trouble remembering some letters in
a word that he can read easily, it may indicate that he "slights" those letters
when he reads the word, relying instead on the initial letter and context in which the word appears, to "read"the word. Or
it may be the letters used to spell the word don't conform to his knowledge of letter-sound correspondences, so they are hard
for him to remember.
- When a student has trouble figuring out a plausible spelling
of a word he can say, it may indicate that he has trouble hearing each seperate
phoneme, or that he lacks sufficent knowledge of letters that represent those phonemes, particularly vowels.
When students have not mastered the system of letter-sound correspondences, they often try to
compensate by using reading and spelling stratergies that may make things worse. For example When
he reads, he will tend to guess an unfamiliar word based on context
cues and by reading just some of the letters in the word. As a result, he doesn't notice or remember much about the other
letters.
When he writes a word, he
represents a few sounds correctly but overlooks other sounds, and he sometimes adds extra letters unrelated to any sounds
in the word. If he repeats and remembers his misspellings, it may be harder to learn the correct spellings.
These problems often characterize the spelling struggles of a student with LD. If the student persists
in using these ineffective stratergies as he moves through the grades, it will severly limit his development as a reader and
a speller. Even if the student is receiving remedial reading instruction, unless spelling instruction is emphasized as well,
he may improve in reading but his spelling difficulties may still linger.
Memorizing the Spellings of Irregular and Long Words
In languages with a higher degree of spelling regularity, such as
Spanish, it is much easier for a student to figure out the correct spelling of an unfamiliar word. But in English, a speller
must encounter, notice, and pronounce specific words to remember to spell them. As noted earlier in this article, the
same phoneme may be spelled one way in some words and another way in other words, for example, the long /a/ sound in "mail"versus
"male", or the /s/ sound in "sit" versus "city".
It is especially hard for a student to guess the spellings of longer words correctly. One reason is
that a long word may contain letters that are not heard in its pronunciation. A
common example is the "schwa" vowel in unstressed syllables, which is pronounced like the sound "uh,"for example the last
two syllables in med-i-cine. It is hard to remember these letters when they do not represent their proper, distinctive sounds.
Other cases of letters that are not heard in pronunciations are doubled consonants,for example, those in "difficult" or "dessert",
and vowels that precede "r" within a syllable, for example är"in collar, and "or" in color.
There are stratergies a teacher or parent can use to help students
remember the spellings of some longer words.
- Creating special
ways of saying the words by pronouncing each syllable as it is spelled. This
allows a student to hear more of the letters and gives him a better match between letter and sound for connecting the spelling
to a pronunciation in memory. For example, the normal pronunciation of chocolate is "choc-lut," but a spelling pronounciation
might be "choc-o-late."
- Helping a student
to "flag"unexpected letters in memory, that is, to add a footnote in memory
signaling that a particular letter is silent, for example, the "t"in listen, the "w"in "sword", the "l"in talk. One way
to do such flagging is to single out and discuss the strange letter.
- Pointing out to the student other words that have the same silent letters or letter patterns
in words that the student already knows, for example "talk", "walk", and "chalk"; or "should," "would,"and "could". Finding groups of words
with the same pattern and even the same silent letter across patterns helps the student identify a source of spelling regularity,
which aids memorization.
Finally, spelling should always be included as part of vocabulary
learning because research has shown that spellings help a student secure the pronunciation and meaning of a new vocabulary
word in memory. To take advantage of this, a parent or teacher should not only provide a definuition but also should show
and analyze the spellings of a new vocabulary word when a student asks about its meaning.
How Parents Can Help
To summarize, in the primary grades, spelling instruction should provide
a foundation for remembering spellings that includes:
- knowing how to divide a word into its phonemes
- knowing the basics about how a letter or pair of letters corresponds to a phoneme-the "letter-sound
system"
- learning about regularities in spelling
Young students with LD need these foundational skills to remember spellings of simpler words that
predominate in their reading and writing lessons. As a student advances through the grades, the words he needs to spell become
more complex. Without a solid foundation and without continued instruction in word spellings and regularities, a student will
have difficulty sustaining strong spelling skills as he progresses through school.
Parents can help their children become better spellers. Of course, how much help you can provide depends
on your own spelling skills. It is not unusual for the parent of a child with spelling problems to have those problems as
well. If this is your situation, you may want to encourage the school to increase efforts to help your child build spelling
skills or you may request that the teacher provide spelling exercises for your child to practice at home. Or you might seek
help for your child from a private tutor with expertise in spelling instruction.
If your child's school does not teach spelling as part of comprehensive literacy instruction, you
might join with other interested parents to persuade the school or school district to include explicit, systematic instruction
in spelling in its literacy curriculum throughout the elementary grades.
