The purpose of this study was to investigate the effect of two methods of reading instruction on children's ability to write original compositions. Six hundred eighty-four first and second graders (i. t. a. and T. O. pupils) wrote two compositions which were evaluated on length, vocabulary level, content, and originality. At both the grade one and the grade two level, the essays of the i. t. a. sample were longer and at a somewhat higher vocabulary level. Further, in terms of both the Content and Communication scales, there were at both grade levels statistically significant differences in favor of the. i. t. a. group.The major emphasis of the research devoted over the past several years to the study of the initial teaching alphabet (i. t. a.) has been, quite naturally, on i. t. a.'s value as a medium for instruction in beginning reading. Reading, however, is only one aspect of the language arts curriculum, and a further value often claimed for i. t. a. is that it facilitates children's writing. The most common explanations given for this phenomenon are (1) that the typically higher reading level achieved by the i. t. a. first grader gives him more complex models to draw upon in his written work, and (2) that the consistency of the i. t. a. sound-symbol relationship enables the child to write without concern for the intricacies of spelling in the traditional orthography (T. 0.). Thus, at least in these two respects, the child's creative energies may be concentrated on the substance rather than the mechanics of the writing task, and his written work may be brought more closely into line with his spoken expression. Some research (e.g., Mazurkiewicz, 1966;Downing, 1967) has been done on the comparison of i. t. a. and T. O. in terms of their effect on written work, and the results have almost uniformly tended to favor the work of the i. t. a. samples. The dimensions studied,however, seeih to have been restricted to such continua as the number of running words, capitalization, spelling, vocabulary level, etc. In order to investigate not only these but also such other continua as originality and ability to communicate ideas on paper, the present authors undertook a limited study of written work in the first and second grade classes of a metropolitan school district.