Writers typically produce their writing in bursts. In this article, the authors examine written language bursts in a sample of 33 children aged 11 years with specific language impairment. Comparisons of the children with specific language impairment with an age-matched group of typically developing children (n = 33) and a group of younger, language skill-matched children (n = 33) revealed the role of writing bursts as a key factor in differentiating writing competence. All the children produced the same number of writing bursts in a timed writing task. Children with specific language impairment produced Connelly et al. 279 a shorter number of words in each burst than did the age-matched group but the same as the language skill-matched group. For all groups, spelling accuracy and handwriting speed were significant predictors of burst length and text quality. The frequency of pauses at misspellings was related to shorter bursts. These results offer support to Hayes's model of text generation; namely, burst length is constrained by language and transcription skills.

Two experiments explored children's spelling development in the context of the Representational-Redescription Model (Karmiloff-Smith, 1992). Fifty-one 5-7 year old children (experiment one) and 44 5-6 year olds (experiment two) were assessed, via spelling production and recognition tasks, for phonological to morphological spelling development and representational levels derived from the RR model respectively.Children were allocated to one of the Nunes, Bindman and Bryant's (1997) stages for spelling production and to one of the representational levels derived from the RR model for spelling recognition and accompanying verbal justifications indicating their knowledge and understanding of spelling. These results are discussed in terms of how the R-R model accounts for the, hitherto unexplained cognitive mechanisms that underlie spelling development and the notion of multi-representation in spelling.Key phrases: Spelling development, RR model Spelling development in young children: A case of Representational-Redescription?This study focuses on spelling development in young children and whether this can be understood in the context of Karmiloff-Smith's (1992) RepresentationalRedescription (RR) model (see Steffler, 2001). The RR model describes how knowledge is represented in the cognitive system and how this knowledge changes with development. This is the first study to investigate the validity of the model for understanding spelling development. We will briefly discuss current views from the spelling literature about how spelling develops in young children. Early stage models (e.g. Frith, 1985) proposed that children gradually become more sophisticated in their spelling passing from an early "alphabetic stage" based on phonology and letter-sound correspondences to a later more sophisticated "orthographic stage" where higher order knowledge about spelling is acquired.Drawing upon this evidence and other more recent studies, Steffler (2001) concluded that a consensus has been reached within the literature, that spelling progresses from a visually based, phonological level, to a higher-order morphological level and then to a level where both of these aspects are taken into account, resulting in the correct production of spelling.Nunes, Bindman and Bryant (1997) provided support for this progression with a longitudinal study over three years using groups of children, aged 6, 7 and 8. At each of three sessions, participants did a spelling test of 30 words consisting of 10 regular past tense verbs, e.g. called; 10 irregular past tense verbs, e.g. slept; and 10 nonverbs, e.g., bird. Their results suggested that children progress through five developmental stages when learning the spelling of word endings. At stage one the spelling of word endings Spelling development: Representational-Redescription? 4 was found to be unsystematic and with little resemblance to either the end sound or to the conventional -ed. In some cases the last sound was not spelt at all. At stage two endings were frequently phonetic (i.e. sp...

A growing literature has demonstrated that prosodic sensitivity is related to early literacy development; however, the precise nature of this relationship remains unclear. It has been speculated in recent theoretical models that the observed relationship between prosodic sensitivity and early literacy might be partially mediated by children ' s vocabulary knowledge, phonological awareness, and morphological awareness, although such models have yet to be confirmed using advanced statistical techniques. The study reported here uses covariance structure modeling to provide the first direct test of the model proposed by Wood, Wade-Woolley, and Holliman. We also test a modified version of this model that was designed to overcome some of the limitations in the original. Seventy-five 5-7-year-old English-speaking children completed a new measure of prosodic sensitivity and were also assessed for their vocabulary knowledge, phonological awareness, morphological awareness, word reading, and spelling. The results showed that Wood et al. ' s model did not provide an adequate fit to our sample data; however, the new model, which permitted causal connections between the so-called mediator variables, provided an excellent fit. We argue that prosodic sensitivity should be afforded greater importance in models of literacy development, and offer a new theoretical model of the prosody-literacy relationship for future attempts at replication.

Children with Specific Language Impairment (SLI) are known to have difficulties with spelling but the factors that underpin these difficulties, are a matter of debate. The present study investigated the impact of oral language and literacy on the bound morpheme spelling abilities of children with SLI. Thirty-three children with SLI (9–10 years) and two control groups, one matched for chronological age (CA) and one for language and spelling age (LA) (aged 6–8 years) were given dictated spelling tasks of 24 words containing inflectional morphemes and 18 words containing derivational morphemes. There were no significant differences between the SLI group and their LA matches in accuracy or error patterns for inflectional morphemes. By contrast when spelling derivational morphemes the SLI group was less accurate and made proportionately more omissions and phonologically implausible errors than both control groups. Spelling accuracy was associated with phonological awareness and reading; reading performance significantly predicted the ability to spell both inflectional and derivational morphemes. The particular difficulties experienced by the children with SLI for derivational morphemes are considered in relation to reading and oral language.

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Prosodic sensitivitythe rhythmic patterning of speechis theorized to influence reading and spelling via vocabulary knowledge, phonological, and morphological awareness. Previously this conceptual model has been evidenced with children who can already read, however as orthographic knowledge can be used to complete phonological awareness tasks it cannot be said definitively that it is prosodic sensitivity influencing reading and spelling and not the reverse. Therefore, the present study sought to test the model in a longitudinal study conducted at the outset of reading development. A sample of 4-to 5-year-old English-speaking children (N = 101) were assessed for their prosodic sensitivity, vocabulary knowledge, phonological and morphological awareness, and one year later (N = 93) for their word reading and spelling. A path analysis revealed that the conceptual model provides an adequate fit to our sample data: prosodic sensitivity in pre-reading children predicts reading and spelling indirectly through other emergent literacy skills. The implications of these findings are discussed in relation to models of literacy development and literacy instruction.

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