heir difficulties with receptive
oral language and other aspects of literacy.
We examined written texts in terms of text length, writing time,
and spelling errors. Participants produced short texts; the mean length
of texts produced was 86 words (range 12-182). Of the 15 min allocated
for the task, participants wrote for an average of 10 min (range 2-15).
There were high and statistically significant relationships between text
length and writing time (r = .55, p < .0005) and between text length
and the WOLD (Wechsler, 1996) z score (r = .66, p < .0005). On
average, participants produced 9 words per minute (SD = 4.5). Spelling
errors in the text were frequent (M = 5.5, 3D) = 4.2; range 0-17) but
there were no significant correlations between the numbers of spelling
errors and the numbers of words written (r = -.10, ns) or WOLD total
score (r = .04, ns).
Participants produced a mean rate of 53.75 (SD = 27.61) letters per
minute for the handwriting fluency measure. The mean number of letters
per minute produced was equivalent to that of children between 8 and 9
years old (Grade 3 M = 47.3; Grade 4 M = 63.26; Graham, Berninger,
Weintraub, & Schafer, 1998). Handwriting fluency at 16 years was
significantly and positively correlated (r = .54, p = .002) concurrently
with the WOLD reading and spelling z scores, and at 14 with the reading,
spelling, and nonverbal ability z scores. Writing fluency was
significantly correlated with both the numbers of words written (r =
.54, p < .0005) and WOLD z score (r = .42, p < .0005), but there
was no relationship with the numbers of spelling errors produced (r = .
Analytic Scores. To identify specific patterns of difficulties, we
examined the analytic scores of WOLD (Wechsler, 1996) subtests. The best
performances were on measures of grammar (M = 1.71, SD = .88) and
capitalization (M = 1.67, SD = .85), "although both means were
still at the lower end of the scale. The poorest performance was on the
measure of sentence structure (m = 1.45, SD = .73), a score indicative
of poor sentence structure containing many errors that inhibit clarity
or fluency (Rust, 1996). Measures of ideas and development (M = 1.5, SD
= .73), vocabulary (M = 1.47, SD = .73), and organization and coherence
(M = 1.57, SD = .79) were also in the low range. A Freidman's
Analysis indicated that the scores differed statistically significantly
across the subtests ([chi square] = 25.86, df = 5, p < .0005).
Measures of grammar and capitalization did not differ from each other (z
= .564, ns). There were significant differences between grammar compared
with organization and coherence (z = -2.138, p = .03), ideas and
development (z = -2.558, p = .01), vocabulary (z = -3.500, p <
.0005), and sentence structure (z = -3.638, p < .0005). Scores for
capitalization were significantly better than vocabulary (z = -2.683, p
= .007) and sentence structure (z = -3.153, p = .002), but did not
differ statistically from the measures of ideas and development (z =
-1.908, ns) or organization and coherence (z = -1.414, ns). The measure
of organization and coherence was significantly better than vocabulary
(z = -2.121, p = .03) but did not differ from ideas and development (z =
-1.00, ns) or sentence structure (z = -1.748, ns). Ideas and
development, vocabulary, and sentence structure did not differ
significantly from each other (z = -.577, ns; z = -.832, ns; z = -.302
We computed a factor analysis to investigate further the pattern of
subtest relationships. The factor analysis met all the necessary
statistical assumptions; we considered only those factors with
eigenvalues greater than 1.0. The analysis generated a single factor
solution accounting for 83% of the variance. There were large and
significant loadings (.87) for all of the WOLD (Wechsler, 1996)
Writing Trajectories Over Time. Data for the total analytic score
of the WOLD (Wechsler, 1996) were available for 51 participants at four
time points (ages 11, 12, 14, and 16). Four participants had refused to
write at 11, and data were missing for 1 student at age 12 and 2
participants at age 1