Reading and writing: an overview

Reading and writing are fundamentally oral language skills that rely on strong listening and speaking competence.  Together, they are referred to as “literacy skills.”

Unlike listening and talking, reading and writing are not innate to human beings. Nonetheless, they have become incredibly important skills to master for social, academic, and career success.

Reading and writing are unique skills, but they are highly interrelated and involve the 5 language domains: phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics and pragmatics of listening and talking.

WRITING

Written language is the most complex of all language abilities. It enables communication and assists in recall. Broadly, the task is to communicate our thinking through the point of a pencil or key stroke. This accomplishment results from a surprising number of linguistic and executive skills, combined with finger agility, that fundamentally rests on our oral language system.

See below to learn more about what it takes to be a strong writer, signs and symptoms of a weakness in written expression, and management of writing difficulties.

COMPONENTS OF WRITING COMPETENCY

HANDWRITING skill is critical.  The physical act of writing by hand cements the sound-letter links that promote speed and automaticity essential for efficient written language production. 

SPELLING is the ability to accurately and automatically encode words into their orthography, or print. Spelling’s linguistic underpinnings include: phonology, morphology, orthography, vocabulary, and phonics.

CONTENT is critical as one cannot write what one does not know. Writers must translate their ideas into specific vocabulary. Sentences must be formulated in a formal register and in a variety of complex sentence structures.

PLANNING AND REGULATING the writing process requires self-regulation and strategy. The purpose and audience must be considered, along with the organization, structure, and mechanics. A host of executive functions enable self-monitoring, planning, brainstorming, outlining, revising and publishing.

SIGNS AND SYMPTOMS

Difficulties may occur at any, or all, levels of the writing process from Kindergarten through college. 

There are the self-regulatory components of writing that are critical to success.  In fact, research shows that self-regulated strategy development trumps process instruction. These include planning, executing, and revision.

Spelling, alone, can be a significant roadblock for some writers.  Its linguistic underpinnings in phonology, morphology, and semantics can provide challenges and interfere with automatic written output. The output of poor spellers is drastically below that of able spellers. .

Also essential to writing are well-developed fine motor and handwriting skills.  These, when taught with reading and spelling skills, wire together and reinforce each other, as there is a bidirectional relationship between spelling and word reading. 

There are writers who struggle at the sentence-level with construction and text development. Others struggle with moving their ideas and analysis into text. These written language issues frequently travel with an oral language diagnosis, and ideally are treated along with written language issues.

PRESCHOOL

In preschool, children are exposed to letters and writing. Children who have unusual difficulty with letter recognition, letter formation, alphabet skills, and word recognition may be at risk for both reading and writing issues. Additionally, the ability to segment words into syllables and sounds is a critical phonemic awareness skill related to spelling. These skills are developed at the preschool level with rhyming and singing activities along with engaging read-alouds.

ELEMENTARY

In the elementary years, writing expectations ramp up. Sentences are expected to be more formal and organization of ideas is valued. Discourse forms are introduced, along with cohesive ties. Accurate spelling is expected as the writing process becomes more automatic. For school-age children, written language demands increase across the curriculum. Not only do students write book reports, but they also write explanations for math solutions. Difficulty with any of these writing expectations can be a sign of a written expression disorder that can depress grades.

MIDDLE and HIGH SCHOOL

In middle and high school, the disciplinary writing demands are significant.  Expectations increase in terms of formality of syntax, the level of thinking that goes into analytical writing, and discipline-specific discourse structures. Students write lab reports in science, historical identification, and literary analysis. Disciplinary writing expectations also increase as the volume of writing increases significantly. At this stage, and through graduate school, writing is used to enable learning (note-taking) as well as to demonstrate a student's learning in papers and tests.  

MANAGEMENT

Writing deficits are very responsive to intervention, particularly when their language base has been accurately diagnosed.

Thorough testing can differentially diagnose and determine the nature of a writing disorder and the appropriate scope and sequence of remediation for each individual.

Speech-language pathologists have unique knowledge of the subsystems of language (phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics, pragmatics) as they relate to written language.

Speech-language pathologists with written language expertise are equipped to treat the language underpinnings that are responsible for written language disorders. They are able to leverage the bidirectional relationship of reading and writing and the oral language foundation.