Twenty-fifth International Conference on Learning

Abstract

It is unclear whether the cognitive factors that children draw on during the writing process differ from the factors which have been found to be important to product measures (Torkildsen, et al., 2016). This study aimed to investigate the effect of spelling, as an intrinsic part of transcription ability, on the overall quality of the written compositions produced and how composing higher-level processes relate to product characteristics. InputLog enabled us investigate the writing profiles of dyslexic and non-dyslexic children. Composing skills in both Greek and English as a foreign language were assessed through two different approaches to writing assessment, dictation passages and picture elicited narratives in both languages since narrative abilities have also been strongly related to children’s academic performance (Torkildsen, et al., 2016). Children with dyslexia scored significantly below their peers regarding overall text quality, they produced shorter texts and less cohesive / coherent. Dyslexic writers’ spelling profile, as well as their revising and pausing behaviour, seem to be lagging rather than deviant, while both revising and pausing behaviours indicate that spelling has been the main concern for both groups of writers and confirm the dyslexics’ deficient error detection mechanism (Horrowitz-Kraus & Breznitz, 2011).