Component processes of early reading, spelling, and narrative writing skills in Turkish: a longitudinal study

Abstract

The study examined: (a) the role of phonological, grammatical, and rapid automatized naming (RAN) skills in reading and spelling development; and (b) the component processes of early narrative writing skills. Fifty-seven Turkish-speaking children were followed from Grade 1 to Grade 2. RAN was the most powerful longitudinal predictor of reading speed and its effect was evident even when previous reading skills were taken into account. Broadly, the phonological and grammatical skills made reliable contributions to spelling performance but their effects were completely mediated by previous spelling skills. Different aspects of the narrative writing skills were related to different processing skills. While handwriting speed predicted writing fluency, spelling accuracy predicted spelling error rate. Vocabulary and working memory were the only reliable longitudinal predictors of the quality of composition content. The overall model, however, failed to explain any reliable variance in the structural quality of the compositions. Likewise, our current understanding of the component processes of early narrative writing skills in consistent orthographies is very limited. Three central processing skills have been identified to underlie the early composition writing skills of children. These are the transcription (e.g., handwriting and spelling), verbal memory (e.g., short term memory and working memory), and text generation (e.g., oral language skills such as grammar and vocabulary) (Berninger, 1999;McCutchen, 2000). However, as the research evidence almost 4 exclusively comes from studies conducted in English, we do not know the relative importance of these processing skills in consistent writing systems.The present study seeks to address these issues and has two primary aims. First, to investigate the relative role of grammatical awareness, phonological awareness, and RAN in reading and spelling; second, to investigate the role of the three central component processes

The precursors of double dissociation between reading and spelling in a transparent orthography

“…These findings are in line with those of previous studies (e.g., Furnes & Samuelsson, 2011;Moll et al, 2014;Wimmer & Mayringer, 2002). Despite the shortlived importance of phonological awareness as a predictor of reading in Finnish (e.g., Silvén, Poskiparta, Niemi, & Voeten, 2007;Torppa et al, 2015) and in other transparent orthographies (e.g., Georgiou, Parrila, & Papadopoulos, 2008;Mann & Wimmer, 2002), it has been shown to be an important predictor of spelling (e.g., Babayiğit & Stainthorp, 2010;Caravolas et al, 2012;Furnes & Samuelsson, 2011). The importance of phonological awareness in general and phoneme identification in particular is easy to understand in the case on Finnish.…”

“…doi:10.1007/s11881-016-0131-5 2017 Final Draft in a Highly Consistent Orthography Good readers tend to be good spellers, and poor readers tend to be poor spellers. Several studies have documented that reading and spelling are strongly associated with each other in different languages and age groups (e.g., Babayiğit & Stainthorp, 2010;Cardoso-Martins & Pennington, 2004;Desimoni, Scalisi, & Orsolini, 2012;Furnes & Samuelsson, 2011;Georgiou, Torppa, Manolitsis, Parrila, & Lyytinen, 2012;Landerl & Wimmer, 2008;Leppänen, Niemi, Aunola, & Nurmi, 2006;Vaessen & Blomert, 2013;Yeung et al, 2011). However, the imperfect correlation between the two (rs range from .60 to .80; see meta-analysis by Swanson, Trainin, Necoechea, & Hammill, 2003) leaves open the window for a dissociation in which good readers can also be poor spellers (known as unexpected poor spellers) and poor readers can also be good spellers (known as unexpected poor readers).…”

The Cognitive Profiles of Poor Readers/Good Spellers and Good Readers/Poor Spellers in a Consistent Orthography: A Retrospective Analysis

“…The close connection between reading and spelling has been documented by many studies in different writing systems (e.g., Babayiğit & Stainthorp, 2010;CardosoMartins & Pennington, 2004;Conrad, 2008;Ehri, 1997;Georgiou et al, 2011;Leppänen, Niemi, Aunola, & Nurmi, 2006;Vaessen & Blomert, 2013). In a meta-analysis, Swanson, Trainin, Necoechea, and Hammill (2003) reported that the average observed correlation between word reading and spelling was 0.70.…”

Cognitive predictors of shallow-orthography spelling speed and accuracy in 6th grade children

“…If spelling is attention demanding, and therefore draws processing resources away from higher-level processes, the writer may, in a literal sense, forget what they were going to say. This trade-off between transcription (spelling and handwriting) and higher-level conceptual or rhetorical processing has frequently been argued (e.g., Berninger, 1999;McCutchen, 1996;Torrance & Galbraith, 2006;von Koss Torkildsen, Morken, Helland, & Helland, 2016), although evidence of a causal relationship between spelling competence and text quality (spelling accuracy aside) is not yet established (see, for example, Babayiǧit & Stainthorp, 2010;Graham & Santangelo, 2014).…”