This study explores 1) how reading and spelling relate to writing fluency, and 2) howreading, spelling and writing fluency relate to text quality. Fluency in writing has beendescribed as a measure that comprises all processes and subprocesses involved in writing. Inthis study we include two different definitions of fluency; product and process fluency.Factors such as language (L1/FL), text genre, and spelling have been shown to relate tofluency in writing, but less is known about the potential impact of, for example, reading.Text quality, on the other hand, has been connected with both product fluency such as textlength (Zhang et al., 2016), and process fluency such as time on task (Bennett et al., 2020)and number of keystrokes or words written per minute (Leijten & Van Waes, 2015; Sinharayet al, 2019). Reading has been found to relate to text quality in primary school (Ahmed et al.,2014; Kim et al., 2015), but less is known about this relationship in older students. This studycontributes with more knowledge on how reading may relate to writing fluency and textquality in later school years.

A group of 130 Swedish upper secondary school students’ final texts, writing processes andreading measures have been used in the analysis. In order to receive a broad picture ofstudents’ reading and writing, students performed a number of reading tasks and wrote textsin both L1 Swedish and FL English and in two genres (argumentative/narrative) usingkeystroke logging (Frid, Johansson, Johansson, & Wengelin, 2014). The data-collection wasconducted during 6 sessions in the students’ classrooms. Reading measures were collected inL1 and included word recognition (pseudoword reading and sight-word reading), readingcomprehension, and a dictation task was used to capture spelling. From the keystroke logs,we retrieved data about product fluency (number of characters in final texts, total number oftyped characters) and process fluency (number of characters per minute, length of burstsbetween pauses and revisions). Text quality was assessed qualitatively using an adaptedversion of Jacobs’ (1981) analytic scoring scheme which includes seven dimensions: content,organisation, cohesion, vocabulary, language use, spelling, and punctuation (see Sehlström etal., 2022 for information about the adapted version). The data was analysed statistically usingANOVA and regression models.

Results showed that students’ fluency in writing depended both on language (L1/FL) and ongenre (narrative/argumentative); fluency was higher when using their first language and whenwriting in the narrative genre. Further, spelling was related to product and process fluency inboth L1 and FL, though there were differences between genres. Reading comprehension wasalso related to product and process fluency but only in FL. Text quality was connected withword reading, spelling and reading comprehension as well as with the writing fluencymeasures; characters in final text, characters per minute and length of bursts between pauses.However, there were differences between language and genre. For example, readingcomprehension (in L1) was only related to text quality in FL and not in L1. In all the models,the writing fluency measures were more strongly connected with text quality than spelling,word reading and reading comprehension.

The results raise questions about the relationship between reading and writing and howreading seems to be applied differently during writing depending on what genre and languageis used. For example, reading comprehension in L1 seems to be more important for writing inFL than in L1, suggesting that reading comprehension may be a part of an underlyingcommon linguistic proficiency that writers use as a resource during writing in FL.

References

Ahmed, Y., Wagner, R. K., & Lopez, D. (2014). Developmental relations between readingand writing at the word, sentence, and text levels: a latent change score analysis.Journal of Educational Psychology, 106(2), 419–434.https://doi.org/10.1037/a0035692

Bennett, R., Zhang, M., Deane, P., & van Rijn, P. W. (2020). How Do Proficient and LessProficient Students Differ in Their Composition Processes? Educational Assessment,25(3), 198–217. https://doi.org/10.1080/10627197.2020.1804351

Frid, J., Johansson, V., Johansson, R., & Wengelin, Å. (2014). Developing a keystrokelogging program into a writing experiment environment. Writing Across Borders, 19–22 February 2014. Paris.

Jacobs, H., Zinkgraf, S., Wormuth, D., Hartfiel, V., & Hughey, J. (1981) Testing ESLcomposition: A practical approach. Newbury House.

Kim, Y.-S., Al Otaiba, S., & Wanzek, J. (2015). Kindergarten predictors of third gradewriting. Learning and Individual Differences, 37, 27–37.https://doi.org/10.1016/j.lindif.2014.11.00

Sehlström, P., Waldmann, C., Steinvall, A., & Levlin, M. (2022). Swedish (L1) and English(L2) Argumentative Writing of Upper Secondary Students with ReadingDifficulties. L1-Educational Studies in Language and Literature, 22, 1–22.https://doi.org/10.21248/l1esll.2022.22.1.405

Sinharay, S., Zhang, M., & Deane, P. (2019). Prediction of Essay Scores From WritingProcess and Product Features Using Data Mining Methods. Applied Measurement inEducation, 32(2), 116–137. https://doi.org/10.1080/08957347.2019.1577245

Van Waes, L. & Leijten, M. (2015). Fluency in Writing: A Multidimensional Perspective onWriting Fluency Applied to L1 and L2. Computers and Composition, 38, 79–95.https://doi.org/10.1016/j.compcom.2015.09.012

Zhang, Hao, J., Li, C., & Deane, P. (2016). Classification of writing patterns using keystrokelogs. QUANTITATIVE PSYCHOLOGY RESEARCH, 167, 299–314.https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-38759-8_23