An investigation of the interaction between writing modality and literacy skills in children learning written composition
Keywords:
handwriting, digital tablet, literacy effects, modality effects, written compositionAbstract
Start-of-school writing instruction traditionally entails students writing by hand, but alternatively can involve keyboarding, with handwriting instruction delayed. We tested the hypothesis that which approach most benefits a specific child is dependent, in part, on their literacy skills at school entry. In an educational context in which minimal literacy instruction occurs prior to first grade, we compared five first-grade classes in which students (N = 88) learned by hand with five classes in which students (N = 89) learned to write by typing on digital tablets. Students completed tasks measuring phoneme isolation, phoneme blending, grapheme-to-phoneme mapping, word reading, spelling and vocabulary at school entry, and composed narrative texts at five timepoints spread across the school year. The present study reports an additional analysis of data first reported in Spilling et al. (2023). Bayesian statistical modelling established effects of start-of-school literacy on overall composition performance, but not on students’ rate of learning. We found moderate to strong evidence against the hypothesis that start-of-school literacy affected rate of learning differently depending on the modality in which children were taught: Neither writing by pencil and paper nor writing by keyboard provides specific benefits for first-grade students with lower – or higher – literacy skills learning to compose text.
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