by Young-Suk Grace Kim and Christopher Schatschneider
Original article: LINK
This study looked at how different skills affect a child’s ability to write. The study focused on 6-7 year old children.
They found that working memory, which is like a mental notepad, is really important for language and thinking skills, as well as for writing down words correctly. These skills, in turn, help with writing.
They also found that basic language skills, like knowing lots of words and understanding grammar, and higher-level thinking skills, like making inferences and understanding other people’s perspectives, are important for putting together longer pieces of writing.
Their model showed that the ability to talk fluently about different topics, being good at spelling, and writing quickly and neatly all played big roles in how these other skills affected writing.
In summary, this study showed that a whole host of different skills, both basic and advanced, play a part in how well young children can write. And it’s not just about one skill directly leading to better writing; there are lots of different paths that these skills have to take to help children become better writers.
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The study reveals some important insights into the complex relationship between language, cognitive skills, and writing ability.
Firstly, the study confirms the importance of both text generation and transcription skills for early writing development. The researchers found that text-level oral language (the ability to produce coherent spoken language) and transcription skills (spelling and handwriting fluency) were directly related to writing quality. This highlights the crucial role generating ideas and translating those ideas into written form play in young children’s writing process.
Furthermore, they observed that higher-order cognitive skills, such as inference, play a significant role in writing quality. Inference, the ability to connect ideas and propositions to content knowledge, was independently related to writing, suggesting its importance in establishing coherence across a text. This finding underscores the notion that even the youngest of writers benefit from the ability to draw connections between ideas when crafting their own written compositions.
Interestingly, they found that the effects of higher-order cognitive skills, like inference, on writing were primarily mediated by text-level oral language skills. This suggests that spoken language production serves as a bridge between higher-order cognitive abilities and writing.
In summary, the findings support a model for early writing that acknowledges the complex interplay between compositional language skills and transcription.