by Cristina Rodríguez, Juan E. Jiménez & Jennifer Balade
Original article: LINK
This study looked at how well young Spanish-speaking children in kindergarten can write. They wanted to see how two important skills—being able to write down words (transcription skills) and being able to compose their writing orally (oral language abilities)—affected how well children wrote and how much they wrote.
They found that having good transcription skills really helps children write well and write more. Being able to compose their writing orally was important for writing well too. They noticed that being good at transcription and composing their writing orally were related to each other, showing that they both play a part in helping children learn to write.
The study’s findings challenge the idea that only transcription skills matter in early writing. Instead, they suggest that both transcription skills and compositional skills (like oral language) are important and intertwined in early writing development. This challenges the traditional belief that transcription skills act as a bottleneck, hindering children’s access to higher-order writing tasks.