In our article Visualising The Science Of Writing: The Writing Map Explained [LINK] we define writing fluency as the ability to smoothly, happily, and quickly translate thoughts into written words. It encompasses the seamless integration of various skills, including:
- Transcription skills: Proficiency in handwriting and spelling, enabling effortless transcription of ideas.
- Composition skills: The capacity to generate and organise ideas effectively, constructing a coherent and meaningful text.
- Cognitive skills: Functions such as working memory and attention that support the writing process.
Developing children’s writing fluency is a crucial part of writing development, as it allows children to focus more on the content and quality of their writing rather than the mechanics of transcription, leading to more expressive and effective communication. Writing fluency is also a key skill for success in both academic and professional contexts. In today’s fast-paced world, being able to write quickly, clearly, and coherently is essential.
There are different ways to measure writing fluency. One way is to look at the final product. This could be how many words someone writes in a certain time. Another way is to look at their process. How often do they pause while writing?
When researchers study writing fluency, they find that skilled writers tend to write longer chunks of text without needing to pause, compared to less skilled writers.¹ This ‘smoothness’ in writing is linked to how well they can translate the thoughts in their heads into words and how quickly they can then get these words transcribed onto paper (or screen).²
Of course, it’s important to say that some of the best writers we’ve ever known don’t always write with what might be termed ‘compositional fluency’. For example, Oscar Wilde famously announced that: ‘I spent all morning taking out a comma and all afternoon putting it back’.
Writing fluency depends on things like encoding/spelling and handwriting speed. If a student struggles with encoding/spelling or hand writes slowly, it can slow down their writing process and make it harder for them to express their ideas compared to their peers. This, naturally, affects the overall quality of their writing. With this in mind, we want to focus on developing children’s writing fluency as quickly as possible. You can find out more about developing children’s writing fluency here.
Additionally, skills like working memory, attention and motivation are important for writing too. They help writers keep track of what they’re writing and stay focused on their composition. So, improving these skills, and keeping children motivated, can also help improve writing fluency.³
Overall, writing fluency is about how smoothly, happily and quickly a pupil can translate their thoughts into written words, and is influenced by a mix of skills like encoding/spelling, handwriting, working memory, attention, and motivation.
References
- Research with children shows that longer bursts (more words before pausing) and fewer/shorter pauses are associated with higher writing quality and stronger transcription skills (e.g. Beers et al., 2017; Kim 2024). ‘Writing bursts’ is defined as words transcribed between pauses. Children with lower writing efficiency have shorter bursts and their burst length can significantly explain variance in text quality (Dockrell et al., 2019). Students with stronger transcription (handwriting + spelling) skills usually write longer bursts and have fewer/shorter pauses; ‘bursts’ mediate the link between transcription and writing quality (Limpo et al., 2017). Over several grades, burst length increases and pause length decreases; children with more efficient transcription typically produce longer ‘bursts’ (Alves & Limpo, 2015).
- See ‘What are children doing as they produce writing?’ for more [LINK]
- See ‘The science of teaching primary writing’ [LINK] and ‘motivating writing teaching’ [LINK]