Tutorial interventions for writing disabilities: Comparison of transcription and text generation processes

Seventeen fourth and fifth graders with severe writing disabilities partici pated in a weekly, one-hour individual tutorial for over eight months on th e average. The tutorial was equally directed to transcription (handwriting and spelling) and composition skills. Students showed reliable improvement in composition and handwriting automaticity but not in spelling. Although w riting-related fine-motor, orthographic, orthographic-motor integration, an d phonological segmentation skills were not directly trained, they Improved . However, phonological memory skills did not improve and may be a major co nstraint in the development of spelling skills in students with severe lear ning disabilities involving written language. Remediation may need to focus on development of phonological memory and not just on teaching rules and s trategies. Word recognition skills also seemed to limit response to spellin g instruction, and remedial spelling instruction may need to focus on words students can already read. In addition, students with spelling disabilitie s may benefit from a connectionist approach that models sound-spelling conn ections without teaching rules and may need more repeated practice with spe cific words than was provided. This exploratory study generated hypotheses that require further instructional research to test.