research and writing are both lifelong skills

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11.1 The Purpose of Research Writing

Learning objectives.

Identify reasons to research writing projects.
Outline the steps of the research writing process.

Why was the Great Wall of China built? What have scientists learned about the possibility of life on Mars? What roles did women play in the American Revolution? How does the human brain create, store, and retrieve memories? Who invented the game of football, and how has it changed over the years?

You may know the answers to these questions off the top of your head. If you are like most people, however, you find answers to tough questions like these by searching the Internet, visiting the library, or asking others for information. To put it simply, you perform research.

Whether you are a scientist, an artist, a paralegal, or a parent, you probably perform research in your everyday life. When your boss, your instructor, or a family member asks you a question that you do not know the answer to, you locate relevant information, analyze your findings, and share your results. Locating, analyzing, and sharing information are key steps in the research process, and in this chapter, you will learn more about each step. By developing your research writing skills, you will prepare yourself to answer any question no matter how challenging.

Reasons for Research

When you perform research, you are essentially trying to solve a mystery—you want to know how something works or why something happened. In other words, you want to answer a question that you (and other people) have about the world. This is one of the most basic reasons for performing research.

But the research process does not end when you have solved your mystery. Imagine what would happen if a detective collected enough evidence to solve a criminal case, but she never shared her solution with the authorities. Presenting what you have learned from research can be just as important as performing the research. Research results can be presented in a variety of ways, but one of the most popular—and effective—presentation forms is the research paper . A research paper presents an original thesis, or purpose statement, about a topic and develops that thesis with information gathered from a variety of sources.

If you are curious about the possibility of life on Mars, for example, you might choose to research the topic. What will you do, though, when your research is complete? You will need a way to put your thoughts together in a logical, coherent manner. You may want to use the facts you have learned to create a narrative or to support an argument. And you may want to show the results of your research to your friends, your teachers, or even the editors of magazines and journals. Writing a research paper is an ideal way to organize thoughts, craft narratives or make arguments based on research, and share your newfound knowledge with the world.

Write a paragraph about a time when you used research in your everyday life. Did you look for the cheapest way to travel from Houston to Denver? Did you search for a way to remove gum from the bottom of your shoe? In your paragraph, explain what you wanted to research, how you performed the research, and what you learned as a result.

Research Writing and the Academic Paper

No matter what field of study you are interested in, you will most likely be asked to write a research paper during your academic career. For example, a student in an art history course might write a research paper about an artist’s work. Similarly, a student in a psychology course might write a research paper about current findings in childhood development.

Having to write a research paper may feel intimidating at first. After all, researching and writing a long paper requires a lot of time, effort, and organization. However, writing a research paper can also be a great opportunity to explore a topic that is particularly interesting to you. The research process allows you to gain expertise on a topic of your choice, and the writing process helps you remember what you have learned and understand it on a deeper level.

Research Writing at Work

Knowing how to write a good research paper is a valuable skill that will serve you well throughout your career. Whether you are developing a new product, studying the best way to perform a procedure, or learning about challenges and opportunities in your field of employment, you will use research techniques to guide your exploration. You may even need to create a written report of your findings. And because effective communication is essential to any company, employers seek to hire people who can write clearly and professionally.

Writing at Work

Take a few minutes to think about each of the following careers. How might each of these professionals use researching and research writing skills on the job?

Medical laboratory technician
Small business owner
Information technology professional
Freelance magazine writer

A medical laboratory technician or information technology professional might do research to learn about the latest technological developments in either of these fields. A small business owner might conduct research to learn about the latest trends in his or her industry. A freelance magazine writer may need to research a given topic to write an informed, up-to-date article.

Think about the job of your dreams. How might you use research writing skills to perform that job? Create a list of ways in which strong researching, organizing, writing, and critical thinking skills could help you succeed at your dream job. How might these skills help you obtain that job?

Steps of the Research Writing Process

How does a research paper grow from a folder of brainstormed notes to a polished final draft? No two projects are identical, but most projects follow a series of six basic steps.

These are the steps in the research writing process:

Choose a topic.
Plan and schedule time to research and write.
Conduct research.
Organize research and ideas.
Draft your paper.
Revise and edit your paper.

Each of these steps will be discussed in more detail later in this chapter. For now, though, we will take a brief look at what each step involves.

Step 1: Choosing a Topic

As you may recall from Chapter 8 “The Writing Process: How Do I Begin?” , to narrow the focus of your topic, you may try freewriting exercises, such as brainstorming. You may also need to ask a specific research question —a broad, open-ended question that will guide your research—as well as propose a possible answer, or a working thesis . You may use your research question and your working thesis to create a research proposal . In a research proposal, you present your main research question, any related subquestions you plan to explore, and your working thesis.

Step 2: Planning and Scheduling

Before you start researching your topic, take time to plan your researching and writing schedule. Research projects can take days, weeks, or even months to complete. Creating a schedule is a good way to ensure that you do not end up being overwhelmed by all the work you have to do as the deadline approaches.

During this step of the process, it is also a good idea to plan the resources and organizational tools you will use to keep yourself on track throughout the project. Flowcharts, calendars, and checklists can all help you stick to your schedule. See Chapter 11 “Writing from Research: What Will I Learn?” , Section 11.2 “Steps in Developing a Research Proposal” for an example of a research schedule.

Step 3: Conducting Research

When going about your research, you will likely use a variety of sources—anything from books and periodicals to video presentations and in-person interviews.

Your sources will include both primary sources and secondary sources . Primary sources provide firsthand information or raw data. For example, surveys, in-person interviews, and historical documents are primary sources. Secondary sources, such as biographies, literary reviews, or magazine articles, include some analysis or interpretation of the information presented. As you conduct research, you will take detailed, careful notes about your discoveries. You will also evaluate the reliability of each source you find.

Step 4: Organizing Research and the Writer’s Ideas

When your research is complete, you will organize your findings and decide which sources to cite in your paper. You will also have an opportunity to evaluate the evidence you have collected and determine whether it supports your thesis, or the focus of your paper. You may decide to adjust your thesis or conduct additional research to ensure that your thesis is well supported.

Remember, your working thesis is not set in stone. You can and should change your working thesis throughout the research writing process if the evidence you find does not support your original thesis. Never try to force evidence to fit your argument. For example, your working thesis is “Mars cannot support life-forms.” Yet, a week into researching your topic, you find an article in the New York Times detailing new findings of bacteria under the Martian surface. Instead of trying to argue that bacteria are not life forms, you might instead alter your thesis to “Mars cannot support complex life-forms.”

Step 5: Drafting Your Paper

Now you are ready to combine your research findings with your critical analysis of the results in a rough draft. You will incorporate source materials into your paper and discuss each source thoughtfully in relation to your thesis or purpose statement.

When you cite your reference sources, it is important to pay close attention to standard conventions for citing sources in order to avoid plagiarism , or the practice of using someone else’s words without acknowledging the source. Later in this chapter, you will learn how to incorporate sources in your paper and avoid some of the most common pitfalls of attributing information.

Step 6: Revising and Editing Your Paper

In the final step of the research writing process, you will revise and polish your paper. You might reorganize your paper’s structure or revise for unity and cohesion, ensuring that each element in your paper flows into the next logically and naturally. You will also make sure that your paper uses an appropriate and consistent tone.

Once you feel confident in the strength of your writing, you will edit your paper for proper spelling, grammar, punctuation, mechanics, and formatting. When you complete this final step, you will have transformed a simple idea or question into a thoroughly researched and well-written paper you can be proud of!

Review the steps of the research writing process. Then answer the questions on your own sheet of paper.

In which steps of the research writing process are you allowed to change your thesis?
In step 2, which types of information should you include in your project schedule?
What might happen if you eliminated step 4 from the research writing process?

Key Takeaways

People undertake research projects throughout their academic and professional careers in order to answer specific questions, share their findings with others, increase their understanding of challenging topics, and strengthen their researching, writing, and analytical skills.
The research writing process generally comprises six steps: choosing a topic, scheduling and planning time for research and writing, conducting research, organizing research and ideas, drafting a paper, and revising and editing the paper.

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Chapter 1: What is Research and Research Writing?

Six people of various sizes spread out evenly across the illustration, each next to a plant. Some people are watering the plants, some are gently touching the plant.

Write here, write now.

Developing your skills as a writer will make you more successful in ALL of your classes. Knowing how to think critically, organize your ideas, be concise, ask questions, perform research and back up your claims with evidence is key to almost everything you will do at university.

Writing is life

Solid writing skills will help you wow your family and friends with your well-articulated ideas, ace job interviews, build confidence in yourself, and feel part of a community of writers.

Beyond University

Whether you go on to graduate school, teach, work for the government or a non-profit, start your own business or your own heavy metal band, becoming a stronger writer will give you a solid foundation you can keep building on.

This chapter:

Defines research and gives examples
Describes the writing process
Introduces writing using research
Introduces simple research writing
Prompts you to think about research and writing meaningful to you

Kimmerer, Robin Wall. Braiding Sweetgrass : Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants . Milkweed Editions, 2013.

From “ Why Writing Matters “ . Writing Place: A Scholarly Writing Textbook by Lindsay Cuff. CC BY-NC-SA 4.0. 2023.

Reading and Writing Research for Undergraduates Copyright © 2023 by Stephanie Ojeda Ponce is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

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The Purpose of Research Writing

Learning Objectives
Identify reasons to research writing projects.
Outline the steps of the research writing process.

Reasons for Research

But the research process does not end when you have solved your mystery. Imagine what would happen if a detective collected enough evidence to solve a criminal case, but she never shared her solution with the authorities. Presenting what you have learned from research can be just as important as performing the research. Research results can be presented in a variety of ways, but one of the most popular—and effective—presentation forms is the research paper. A research paper presents an original thesis, or purpose statement, about a topic and develops that thesis with information gathered from a variety of sources.

Exercise 1
Write a paragraph about a time when you used research in your everyday life. Did you look for the cheapest way to travel from Houston to Denver? Did you search for a way to remove gum from the bottom of your shoe? In your paragraph, explain what you wanted to research, how you performed the research, and what you learned as a result.

Research Writing and the Academic Paper

Research Writing at Work

Writing at Work

Take a few minutes to think about each of the following careers. How might each of these professionals use researching and research writing skills on the job?

Medical laboratory technician
Small business owner
Information technology professional
Freelance magazine writer

Steps of the Research Writing Process

How does a research paper grow from a folder of brainstormed notes to a polished final draft? No two projects are identical, but most projects follow a series of six basic steps.

These are the steps in the research writing process:

Choose a topic.
Plan and schedule time to research and write.
Conduct research.
Organize research and ideas.
Draft your paper.
Revise and edit your paper.

Each of these steps will be discussed in more detail later in this chapter. For now, though, we will take a brief look at what each step involves.

Step 1: Choosing a Topic

To narrow the focus of your topic, you may try freewriting exercises, such as brainstorming. You may also need to ask a specific research question —a broad, open-ended question that will guide your research—as well as propose a possible answer, or a working thesis. You may use your research question and your working thesis to create a research proposal . In a research proposal, you present your main research question, any related subquestions you plan to explore, and your working thesis.

Step 2: Planning and Scheduling

Step 3: Conducting Research

When going about your research, you will likely use a variety of sources—anything from books and periodicals to video presentations and in-person interviews.

Step 4: Organizing Research and the Writer’s Ideas

Tip Remember, your working thesis is not set in stone. You can and should change your working thesis throughout the research writing process if the evidence you find does not support your original thesis. Never try to force evidence to fit your argument. For example, your working thesis is “Mars cannot support life-forms.” Yet, a week into researching your topic, you find an article in the New York Times detailing new findings of bacteria under the Martian surface. Instead of trying to argue that bacteria are not life forms, you might instead alter your thesis to “Mars cannot support complex life-forms.”

Step 5: Drafting Your Paper

Step 6: Revising and Editing Your Paper

Review the steps of the research writing process. Then answer the questions on your own sheet of paper.

In which steps of the research writing process are you allowed to change your thesis?
In step 2, which types of information should you include in your project schedule?
What might happen if you eliminated step 4 from the research writing process?

Key Takeaways

People undertake research projects throughout their academic and professional careers in order to answer specific questions, share their findings with others, increase their understanding of challenging topics, and strengthen their researching, writing, and analytical skills.

The research writing process generally comprises six steps: choosing a topic, scheduling and planning time for research and writing, conducting research, organizing research and ideas, drafting a paper, and revising and editing the paper.

This material comes from Writing for Success, by University of Minnesota, which is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted. You are free to use, adapt, and/or share this material as long as you properly attribute. Please keep this information on materials you use, adapt, and/or share for attribution purposes.

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research and writing are both lifelong skills

Eva O. L. Lantsoght 2 , 3

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This chapter on academic writing serves as a reference for a number of topics discussed throughout the textbook. Instructors can decide to teach this topic before talking about the literature review. This chapter is subdivided into the following topics: structuring writing, finding your voice, tips for non-native English speakers, and tips for productive academic writing. The first topic, on structuring writing, deals with the main questions you need to ask yourself before starting. The next topic, on finding your voice in writing, deals with writing styles, scholarly identity, and how different writing styles relate to different types of articles. Since the majority of scientific publications nowadays are in English, and many PhD candidates are non-native English speakers, we focus on the typical pitfalls for non-native speakers. We also discuss how, as a non-native speaker, you can work on improving your English, and how you can find your writing voice and scholarly identity in a language that is not your own. Finally, this chapter contains a series of tips for productive academic writing. Best practices are shared, and anecdotes from researchers worldwide illustrate how they manage to fit academic writing into their busy schedules.

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I invite you to try this method out, but it may not work for you, just like writing in MS Word does not work for everybody and many academics sing the praises of Scrivener.

I don’t think we should be publishing for the sole reason of getting citations and improving our metrics.

Even with a baby in the mix.

Which of course won’t happen, because you’ve learned in this book to plan so that you can always finish your drafts on time.

This section is a toolbox – use these tools on an as-needed basis.

One of my workplaces does not have a second screen. There, I often print out the article I am developing into a literature review section or of which I am analyzing the data.

And don’t we all love stats in the shape of pretty visuals?

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Lantsoght, E.O.L. (2018). Honing Your Academic Writing Skills. In: The A-Z of the PhD Trajectory. Springer Texts in Education. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-77425-1_7

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Terence Capellini standing next to a human skeleton

Terence D. Capellini, Richard B Wolf Associate Professor of Human Evolutionary Biology, empowers students to grow as researchers in his Building the Human Body course through a comprehensive, course-long collaborative project that works to understand the changes in the genome that make the human skeleton unique. For instance, of the many types of projects, some focus on the genetic basis of why human beings walk on two legs. This integrative “Evo-Devo” project demands high levels of understanding of biology and genetics that students gain in the first half of class, which is then applied hands-on in the second half of class. Students work in teams of 2-3 to collect their own morphology data by measuring skeletons at the Harvard Museum of Natural History and leverage statistics to understand patterns in their data. They then collect and analyze DNA sequences from humans and other animals to identify the DNA changes that may encode morphology. Throughout this course, students go from sometimes having “limited experience in genetics and/or morphology” to conducting their own independent research. This project culminates in a team presentation and a final research paper.

The benefits: Students develop the methodological skills required to collect and analyze morphological data. Using the UCSC Genome browser and other tools, students sharpen their analytical skills to visualize genomics data and pinpoint meaningful genetic changes. Conducting this work in teams means students develop collaborative skills that model academic biology labs outside class, and some student projects have contributed to published papers in the field. “Every year, I have one student, if not two, join my lab to work on projects developed from class to try to get them published.”

“The beauty of this class is that the students are asking a question that’s never been asked before and they’re actually collecting data to get at an answer.”

The challenges: Capellini observes that the most common challenge faced by students in the course is when “they have a really terrific question they want to explore, but the necessary background information is simply lacking. It is simply amazing how little we do know about human development, despite its hundreds of years of study.” Sometimes, for instance, students want to learn about the evolution, development, and genetics of a certain body part, but it is still somewhat a mystery to the field. In these cases, the teaching team (including co-instructor Dr. Neil Roach) tries to find datasets that are maximally relevant to the questions the students want to explore. Capellini also notes that the work in his class is demanding and hard, just by the nature of the work, but students “always step up and perform” and the teaching team does their best to “make it fun” and ensure they nurture students’ curiosities and questions.

Takeaways and best practices

Incorporate previous students’ work into the course. Capellini intentionally discusses findings from previous student groups in lectures. “They’re developing real findings and we share that when we explain the project for the next groups.” Capellini also invites students to share their own progress and findings as part of class discussion, which helps them participate as independent researchers and receive feedback from their peers.
Assign groups intentionally. Maintaining flexibility allows the teaching team to be more responsive to students’ various needs and interests. Capellini will often place graduate students by themselves to enhance their workload and give them training directly relevant to their future thesis work. Undergraduates are able to self-select into groups or can be assigned based on shared interests. “If two people are enthusiastic about examining the knee, for instance, we’ll match them together.”
Consider using multiple types of assessments. Capellini notes that exams and quizzes are administered in the first half of the course and scaffolded so that students can practice the skills they need to successfully apply course material in the final project. “Lots of the initial examples are hypothetical,” he explains, even grounded in fiction and pop culture references, “but [students] have to eventually apply the skills they learned in addressing the hypothetical example to their own real example and the data they generate” for the Evo-Devo project. This is coupled with a paper and a presentation treated like a conference talk.

Bottom line: Capellini’s top advice for professors looking to help their own students grow as researchers is to ensure research projects are designed with intentionality and fully integrated into the syllabus. “You can’t simply tack it on at the end,” he underscores. “If you want this research project to be a substantive learning opportunity, it has to happen from Day 1.” That includes carving out time in class for students to work on it and make the connections they need to conduct research. “Listen to your students and learn about them personally” so you can tap into what they’re excited about. Have some fun in the course, and they’ll be motivated to do the work.

The New York Times

The Opinion Pages

Learning to do research is a lifelong skill.

Courtney L. Young is the head librarian and an associate professor of women's studies at Penn State Greater Allegheny.

Updated August 29, 2011, 5:05 PM

While the Internet has increased accessibility to information and scholarly resources, this access does not make the research project useless.

Learning to inquire and think critically are important for research papers, essays, presentations and blog entries.

Components of the research process are important for all students. The end product doesn’t need to be a research paper, but the concepts of inquiry and critical thinking are still needed as the foundation of an essay or group presentation.

College and university librarians develop collections to support the institution’s curricula. We provide course-related instruction, teaching students how to develop a search strategy and use materials online and in print collections. This process empowers students to develop a strong foundation for any research project as well as lifelong skills to locate, evaluate and use information effectively. These skills translate to a variety of disciplines and industries. While there may be a shift in what type of assignments or final products (research paper, essay, group presentation, blog entry) a professor desires from her students, the core skills to conceive, investigate and execute the work are the same.

The research process, even if it evolves into writing projects of a different type, is still important.

Join Opinion on Facebook and follow updates on twitter.com/roomfordebate .

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2: Critical Thinking, Research, Reading, and Writing

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You have likely heard the term “critical thinking” and have probably been instructed to become a “good critical thinker.” Unfortunately, you are probably also unclear what exactly this means because the term is poorly defined and infrequently taught. “But I know how to think,” you might say, and that is certainly true. Critical thinking, however, is a specific skill. This chapter is an informal and practical guide to critical thinking and will also guide you in how to conduct research, reading, and writing for philosophy classes.

Critical thinking is set of skills, habits, and attitudes that promote reflective, clear reasoning. Studying philosophy can be particularly helpful for developing good critical thinking skills, but often the connection between the two is not made clear. This chapter will approach critical thinking from a practical standpoint, with the goal of helping you become more aware of some of the pitfalls of everyday thinking and making you a better philosophy student.

While you may have learned research, reading, and writing skills in other classes—for instance, in a typical English composition course—the intellectual demands in a philosophy class are different. Here you will find useful advice about how to approach research, reading, and writing in philosophy.

2.1: The Brain Is an Inference Machine
2.2: Overcoming Cognitive Biases and Engaging in Critical Reflection
2.3: Developing Good Habits of Mind
2.4: Gathering Information, Evaluating Sources, and Understanding Evidence
2.5: Reading Philosophy
2.6: Writing Philosophy Papers
2.7: Summary
2.8: Key Terms
2.9: Review Questions

Thumbnail: Critical thinking as chess (Unsplash License; Lou Levit via Unsplash )

Research Skills

Why it matters: research skills.

Not all sources or pieces of evidence are created equal, even when we are discussing academic sources; that is why in this book we review basic research skills that will help you ensure that your research rests on valid sources of information. Remember that even when a source is peer-reviewed, it is important to be able to evaluate it in context to determine its appropriateness and usefulness for your project.

When you are searching for sources, you should search in the right place using the right terms. Being a skilled researcher means being resourceful and thorough. You must make sure you have looked everywhere it is possible to find sources. Many databases overlap in terms of some of their contents, but you should search as widely as possible, through multiple databases, to ensure that you haven’t missed any important articles related to your topic.

Why It Matters: Research Skills. Provided by : University of Mississippi. Project : WRIT 250 OER Project. License : CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike

4 Ways Reading and Writing Interlock: What the Research Says

In putting together this special report on how writing instruction can and should build on the science of reading, Education Week reporters read through dozens of studies and spoke to leading researchers in the field.

From this reporting, we landed on four main research takeaways, each of which are worth reiterating here and consulting as school districts assess the strength of their own writing programs.

1. Reading and writing are intimately connected.

Research on the connections between the two disciplines began in the early 1980s and has grown more robust with time. Although there are elements specific to each, like handwriting, that need to be practiced on their own, reading and writing instruction appear to be effective when combined.

Among the newest and most important additions are three research syntheses conducted by Steve Graham, a professor at the University of Arizona, and his research partners. One of them examined whether writing instruction also led to improvements in students’ reading ability; a second examined the inverse question. Both found significant positive effects for reading and writing.

A third meta-analysis gets one step closer to classroom instruction. Graham and partners examined 47 studies of instructional programs that balanced both reading and writing —no program could feature more than 60 percent of one or the other. The results showed generally positive effects on both reading and writing measures.

2. Writing matters even at the earliest grades, when students are learning to read.

Studies show that the prewriting students do in early education carries meaningful signals about their decoding, spelling, and reading comprehension later on.

Reading experts say that students should be supported in writing almost as soon as they begin reading, and evidence suggests that both spelling and handwriting are linked to the ability to connect speech to print—a process known as encoding —and to oral language development.

3. Like reading, writing must be taught explicitly.

Writing is a complex task that demands much of students’ cognitive resources. Researchers generally agree that writing must be explicitly taught—rather than left up to students to “figure out” the rules on their own. That way, they can spend more time focusing on what they want to say, rather than trying to determine how to say it effectively.

There isn’t as much research about how precisely to do this. One 2019 review, in fact, found significant overlap among the dozen writing programs studied , and concluded that all showed signs of boosting learning. Debates abound about the amount of structure students need and in what sequence, such as whether they need to master sentence construction before moving onto paragraphs and lengthier texts.

But in general, students should be guided on how to construct sentences and paragraphs, and they should have access to models and exemplars, the research suggests. They also need to understand the iterative nature of writing, including how to draft and revise.

A number of different writing frameworks incorporating various degrees of structure and modeling are available, though most of them have not been studied empirically.

4. Writing can help students learn content—and make sense of it.

Much of reading comprehension depends on helping students absorb “world knowledge”—think arts, ancient cultures, literature, and science—so that they can make sense of increasingly sophisticated texts and ideas as their reading improves. Writing can enhance students’ absorption of this background knowledge, and should be emphasized rather than taking a back seat to the more commonly taught exercises, such as stories and personal reflections.

Graham and colleagues conducted another meta-analysis of nearly 60 studies looking at this idea of “writing to learn” in mathematics, science, and social studies. The studies included a mix of higher-order assignments, like analyses and argumentative writing, and lower-level ones, like summarizing and explaining.

This bibliography is by no means comprehensive, but it includes some of the studies and commentaries that we found most helpful in putting together this special report.

Berninger V. W., Abbott, R. D., Abbott, S. P., Graham S., & Richards T. (2002). Writing and reading: Connections between language by hand and language by eye. Journal of Learning Disabilities. Special Issue: The Language of Written Language, 35(1), 39–56 Berninger, Virginia, Robert D. Abbott, Janine Jones, Beverly J. Wolf, Laura Gould, Marci Anderson-Younstrom, Shirley Shimada, Kenn Apel. (2006) “Early development of language by hand: composing, reading, listening, and speaking connections; three letter-writing modes; and fast mapping in spelling.” Developmental Neuropsychology, 29(1), pp. 61-92 Cabell, Sonia Q, Laura S. Tortorelli, and Hope K. Gerde (2013). “How Do I Write…? Scaffolding Preschoolers’ Early Writing Skills.” The Reading Teacher, 66(8), pp. 650-659. Gerde, H.K., Bingham, G.E. & Wasik, B.A. (2012). “Writing in Early Childhood Classrooms: Guidance for Best Practices.” Early Childhood Education Journal 40, 351–359 (2012) Gilbert, Jennifer, and Steve Graham. (2010). “Teaching Writing to Elementary Students in Grades 4–6: A National Survey.” The Elementary School Journal 110(44) Graham, Steve, et al. (2017). “Effectiveness of Literacy Programs Balancing Reading and Writing Instruction: A Meta-Analysis.” Reading Research Quarterly, 53(3) pp. 279–304 Graham, Steve, and Michael Hebert. (2011). “Writing to Read: A Meta-Analysis of the Impact of Writing and Writing Instruction on Reading.” Harvard Educational Review (2011) 81(4): 710–744. Graham, Steve. (2020). “The Sciences of Reading and Writing Must Become More Fully Integrated.” Reading Research Quarterly, 55(S1) pp. S35–S44 Graham, Steve, Sharlene A. Kiuhara, and Meade MacKay. (2020).”The Effects of Writing on Learning in Science, Social Studies, and Mathematics: A Meta-Analysis.” Review of Educational Research April 2020, Vol 90, No. 2, pp. 179–226 Shanahan, Timothy. “History of Writing and Reading Connections.” in Shanahan, Timothy. (2016). “Relationships between reading and writing development.” In C. MacArthur, S. Graham, & J. Fitzgerald (Eds.), Handbook of writing research (2nd ed., pp. 194–207). New York, NY: Guilford. Slavin, Robert, Lake, C., Inns, A., Baye, A., Dachet, D., & Haslam, J. (2019). “A quantitative synthesis of research on writing approaches in grades 2 to 12.” London: Education Endowment Foundation. Troia, Gary. (2014). Evidence-based practices for writing instruction (Document No. IC-5). Retrieved from University of Florida, Collaboration for Effective Educator, Development, Accountability, and Reform Center website: http://ceedar.education.ufl.edu/tools/innovation-configuration/ Troia, Gary, and Steve Graham. (2016).“Common Core Writing and Language Standards and Aligned State Assessments: A National Survey of Teacher Beliefs and Attitudes.” Reading and Writing 29(9).

A version of this article appeared in the January 25, 2023 edition of Education Week as 4 Key Things to Know About How Reading and Writing Interlock

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Learning in Research: Importance of Building Research Skills for Students

Learning in research is a fundamental aspect of academic progress, and it plays a vital role in the success of researchers. Science and technology are developing at an unprecedented rate, with new discoveries and advancements being made every day. This makes it crucial for researchers to continuously enhance their research skills and stay ahead of the curve. Lifelong learning , which refers to the ongoing pursuit of knowledge throughout one’s career, is indispensable to thrive in your field. This article explores the importance of learning in research and outlines the benefits of building research skills for students with tailormade courses for researchers .

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Learning in research and academic progress

Research is not for the faint of heart. More so when you’re starting out. PhD students need to take care of multiple things in limited time – conducting research, completing their course work, attending classes, and building your network. You also need to keep up with the new research methodologies, technologies, and paradigms as they develop. In this scenario, it’s easy to doubt yourself and wonder if you even belong on academia. Focusing on continued learning in research is one way to deal with these imposter feelings and continue on your path to success. There are many advantages in adding to and polishing research skills for students . We’ve listed the benefits of lifelong learning in research that not only help you build a solid foundation of knowledge but also enables you to explore new avenues and contribute to your specific fields of study.

Benefits of lifelong learning in research

Continuously honing research skills offers numerous benefits to researchers, particularly students who are embarking on their academic journeys. Here are some key advantages to restoring your focus on learning in research :

Professional growth: Researchers who fail to keep up with the latest trends risk being left behind. Learning in research fosters personal and professional growth, empowering researchers to expand their knowledge base and develop their expertise. By acquiring new research skills for students and researchers, you can undertake more complex projects, produce high-quality work, and gain recognition in your field. Lifelong learning ensures you stay ahead of the race in a highly competitive environment, which allows you to secure better professional opportunities to advance your career.
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Adaptability: In a continually evolving research landscape, being adaptable is crucial for success. Continual learning in research equips you to navigate challenges, embrace change, and quickly adapt to new methodologies, technologies, and trends to ensure your research remains relevant and impactful. Moreover, being open to exploring a broader range of resources and tools allows you to widen your options, adopt the best suited options for your research, and keep you moving ahead in your career.
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Confidence in knowledge : Lifelong learning keeps you aware of the latest developments, allowing you to apply new online tools, innovative technologies, and varied approaches to your own work. Those who keep learning in research are typically more confident about their work and are able to pursue topics even outside their area of expertise. Not only does this give you a sense of personal fulfilment, it increases your chances of faster career growth and advancement.

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Improving Adult Literacy Instruction: Options for Practice and Research (2012)

Chapter: 2 foundations of reading and writing.

Foundations of Reading and Writing

This chapter provides an overview of the components and processes of reading and writing and the practices that develop these skills. This knowledge is derived mainly from research with K-12 students because this population is the main focus of most rigorous research on reading components, difficulties in learning to read, and effective instructional practices. The findings are particularly robust for elementary school students and less developed for middle and high school students due to lack of attention in research to reading and writing development during these years. We also review a small body of research on cognitive aging that compares the reading and writing skills of younger and older adults. From all the collected findings, we distill principles to guide literacy instruction for adolescents and adults who are outside the K-12 education system but need to further develop their literacy.

Caution must be used in generalizing research conducted in K-12 settings to other populations, such as adult literacy students. Precisely what needs to be taught and how will vary depending on an individual’s existing literacy skills; learning goals that require proficiency with particular types of reading and writing; and characteristics of learners that include differences in motivation, neurobiological processes, and cultural, linguistic, and educational backgrounds. Translational research will be needed to apply and adapt the findings to diverse populations of adolescents and adults, as discussed in later chapters.

This chapter is organized into five major parts. Part 1 provides an orienting discussion of the social, cultural, and neurocognitive mechanisms involved in literacy development. Part 2 describes the components and

processes of reading and writing, and research on reading and writing instruction for all students (both typical and atypical learners). We summarize principles for instruction that have sufficient empirical support to warrant inclusion in a comprehensive approach to literacy instruction. Part 3 discusses the neurobiology of reading and writing development and difficulties. Part 4 conveys additional principles for intervening specifically with learners who have difficulties with learning to read and write. In Part 5, we describe what is known about reading and writing processes in older adults and highlight the lack of research on reading and writing across the life span.

Throughout the chapter, we point to promising areas for research and to questions that require further study. We conclude with a summary of the findings, directions for research, and implications for the learners who are the focus of our report: adolescents and adults who need to develop their literacy skills outside K-12 educational settings. 1

SOCIAL, CULTURAL, AND NEUROCOGNITIVE MECHANISMS OF LITERACY DEVELOPMENT

Literacy, or cognition of any kind, cannot be understood fully apart from the contexts in which it develops (e.g., Cobb and Bowers, 1999; Greeno, Smith, and Moore, 1993; Heath, 1983; Lave and Wenger, 1991; Markus and Kitiyama, 2010; Nisbett, 2003; Rogoff and Lave, 1984; Scribner and Cole, 1981; Street, 1984). The development of skilled reading and writing (indeed, learning in general) depends heavily on the contexts and activities in which learning occurs, including the purposes for reading and writing and the activities, texts, and tools that are routinely encountered (Beach, 1995; Heath, 1983; Luria, 1987; Scribner and Cole, 1981; Street, 1984; Vygotsky, 1978, 1986). In this way, reading and writing are similar to other complex cognitive skills and brain functions that are shaped by cultural patterns and stimuli (Markus and Kitayama, 2010; Nisbett, 2003; Nisbett et al., 2001; Park and Huang, 2010; Ross and Wang, 2010). The particular knowledge and skill that develop depend on the literacy practices engaged in, the supports provided for learning, and the demand and value attached to particular forms of literacy in communities and the broader society (Heath, 1983; Scribner and Cole,

__________________

1 Other documents have summarized research on the components of reading and writing and instructional practices to develop literacy skills. We refer readers to additional resources for more extensive coverage of this literature (Ehri et al., 2001; Graham, 2006a; Graham and Hebert, 2010; Graham and Perin 2007a, 2007b; Kamil et al., 2008; McCardle, Chhabra, and Kapinus, 2008; National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, 2000a).

1983; Vygotsky, 1986). Thus, how people use reading and writing differs considerably by context.

As an example, forms and uses of spoken and written language in academic settings differ from those in nonacademic settings, and they also differ among academic disciplines or subjects (Blommaert, Street, and Turner, 2007; Lemke, 1998; Moje, 2007, 2008b; Street, 2003, 2009). Recent work on school subject learning also makes it clear that content and uses of language differ significantly from one subject matter to another (Coffin and Hewings, 2004; Lee and Spratley, 2006; McConachie and Petrosky, 2010). People may develop and use forms of literacy that differ from those needed for new purposes (Alvermann and Xu, 2003; Cowan, 2004; Hicks, 2004; Hull and Schultz, 2001; Leander and Lovvorn, 2006; Mahiri and Sablo, 1996; Moje, 2000a, 2008b; Moll, 1994; Noll, 1998; Reder, 2008). Thus, as depicted in Figure 1-2 , a complete understanding of reading and writing development includes in-depth knowledge of the learner (the learners’ knowledge, skills, literacy practices, motivations, and neurocognitive processes) and features of the instructional context that scaffold or impede learning. The context of instruction includes texts, tools, activities, interactions with teachers and peers, and instructor knowledge, beliefs, and skills.

Types of Text

Types of text vary from books to medication instructions to Twitter tweets. Texts have numerous features that in the context of instruction can either facilitate or constrain the learning of literacy skills (Goldman, 1997; Graesser, McNamara, and Louwerse, 2004). Texts that effectively support progress with reading are appropriately challenging and well written. They focus attention on new knowledge and skills related to the particular components of reading that the learner needs to develop. They also support the learner in gaining automaticity and confidence and in applying and generalizing their new skills. To the greatest degree possible, the materials for reading should help to build useful vocabulary and content (e.g., topic, world) knowledge. Effective texts also motivate engagement with instruction and practice partly by developing valued knowledge or relating to the interests of the learner.

Adult learners will have encountered many texts during the course of formal schooling that are poorly written or highly complex (Beck, McKeown, and Gromoll, 1989; Chambliss and Calfee, 1998; Chambliss and Murphy, 2002; Lee and Spratley, 2010). Similarly, the texts of everyday life are not written to scaffold reading or writing skill (Solomon, Van der Kerkhof, and Moje, 2010). Developing readers need to confront challenging texts that engage them with meaningful content, but they also need texts that afford the practicing of the skills they need to develop and systematic

support to stretch beyond existing skills. This support needs to come from a mix of instructional interactions and texts that scaffold the learner in developing and practicing new skills and becoming an independent reader (Lee and Spratley, 2010; Moje, 2009; Solomon, Van der Kerkhof, 2010).

Literacy Tools

Being literate also requires proficiency with the tools and practices used in society to accomplish valued tasks that require reading and writing (see Box 2-1 ). For example, digital and online media are used to communicate with diverse others and to produce, find, evaluate, and synthesize knowledge in innovative and creative ways to meet the varied demands of education and work. It is important, therefore, to offer reading and writing

BOX 2-1 Literacy in a Digital Age

Strong reading and writing skills underpin valued aspects of digital literacy in several areas:

• Presentations of ideas

• Using online resources to search for information and evaluating quality of that information

• Using basic office software to generate texts and multimedia documents

SOURCES: Adapted from National Center on Education and the Economy (1997); Appendix B : Literacy in a Digital Age.

instruction that incorporates the use of print and digital tools as needed for transforming information and knowledge across the varied forms of representation used to communicate in today’s world. These forms include symbols, numeric symbols, icons, static images, moving images, oral representations (available digitally and in other venues), graphs, charts, and tables (Goldman et al., 2003; Kress, 2003). Extensive research has been conducted on youths’ multimodal and digital literacy learning, demonstrating that young people are experimenting with a range of tools and practices that extend beyond those taught in school (see Coiro et al., 2009a, 2009b). Continued research is needed to identify effective instructional methods that incorporate digital technologies (e.g., Coiro, 2003; see Appendix B for detailed discussion of the state of research on digital literacy).

Literacy Activities

The development of skilled literacy involves extensive participation and practice using component skills of reading and writing for particular purposes (Ford and Forman, 2006; Lave and Wenger, 1991; McConachie et al., 2006; Rogoff, 1990; Scribner and Cole, 1981; Street, 1984; Vygotsky, 1986). Because literacy demands shift over time and across contexts, some individuals may need specific interventions developed to meet these shifting literacy demands. For example, a typical late adolescent or adult must traverse, on a regular basis, workplaces; vocational and postsecondary education; societal, civic, or political contexts; home and family; and new media. Literacy demands also change over time due to global, economic, social, and cultural forces. These realities make it especially important to understand the social and cultural contexts of literacy and to offer instruction that develops literacy skills for meeting social, educational, and workplace demands as well as the learner’s personal needs. The likelihood of transferring a newly learned skill to a new task depends on the similarity between the new task and tasks used for learning (National Research Council, 2005), making it important to design literacy instruction using the literacy activities, tools, and tasks that are valued by society and learners outside the context of instruction. Such instruction also would be expected to enhance learners’ motivation to engage with a literacy task or persist with literacy instruction.

Instruction that connects to knowledge that students already possess and value appears to be motivating (e.g., Au and Mason, 1983; Guthrie et al., 1996; Gutiérrez et al., 1999; Lee, 1993; Moje and Speyer, 2008; Moll and Gonzalez, 1994; Wigfield, Eccles, and Rodriguez, 1998) and thus may be important for supporting the persistence of those who have successfully navigated other life arenas despite not having developed a broader range of literacy skills and practices. Successful literacy instruction for adults and

adolescents should recognize the knowledge and experience brought by mature learners, even when their literacy skills are weak.

Because the motivation to engage in extensive reading and writing practice is so important for the development and integration of component skills, we discuss the topic of motivation more extensively in Chapter 5 .

Teacher Knowledge, Skills, and Beliefs

Literacy development, like the learning of any complex task, requires a range of explicit teaching and implicit learning guided by an expert (Ford and Forman, 2006; Forman, Minick, and Stone, 1993; Lave and Wenger, 1991, 1998; Rogoff, 1990, 1993, 1995; Scribner and Cole, 1981; Street, 1984; Vygotsky, 1986; Wertsch, 1991). To be effective, teachers of struggling readers and writers must have significant expertise in both the components of reading and writing, which include spoken language, and how to teach them. The social and emotional tone of the instructional environment also is very important for successful reading and writing development (Hamre and Pianta, 2003). Teachers are more effective when they nurture relationships and develop a positive, dynamic, and emotionally supportive environment for learning that is sensitive to differences in values and experiences that students bring to instruction.

Effective instructors tend to have an informed mental map of where they want their students to end up that they use to guide instructional practices every day. That is, they plan activities using clear objectives with deep understanding of reading and writing processes. Descriptions of effective teachers in the K-12 system stress that they are highly reflective in their teaching, mindful of their instructional choices and how they fit into the larger picture for their students, and able to fluently use and orchestrate a repertoire of effective and adaptive instructional strategies (Block and Pressley, 2002; Butler et al., 2004; Duffy, 2005; Lovett et al., 2008b). Effective teachers use feedback from their own performance to adjust and change instruction, and they are able to transfer and apply knowledge from one domain to another (Duffy, 2005; Israel et al., 2005; Zimmerman, 2000a, 2000b). Effective teachers of reading and writing also have deep knowledge of the English language system and its oral and written structures, as well as the processes involved in acquiring various language abilities (Duke and Carlisle, 2011; Moats, 2004, 2005). Beyond the requisite knowledge and expertise, literacy teachers often need coaching, mentoring, and encouragement to question and evaluate the efficacy of their instruction.

Teacher beliefs can have a profound impact on the opportunities provided during instruction to develop literacy skills. For example, both Green (1983) and Golden (1988) demonstrated how teachers’ instruction changed depending on what the teachers assumed about the literacy abilities of the

students in each group. Students who were identified as reading at lower levels were not asked to think about the texts and interpret them in the same way as those at higher reading levels (see also Cazden, 1985). Being thought of as “successful” or “achieving” or, at the other extreme, “unsuccessful” and “failing” can produce low-literacy learning and even, in some cases, what is identified as disability (McDermott and Varenne, 1995).

As discussed further in Chapter 3 , it is well known that the knowledge and expertise of adult literacy instructors are highly variable (Smith and Gillespie, 2007; Tamassia et al., 2007). A large body of research on the efficacy of teacher education and professional development practices for literacy instruction does not exist that could be used as a resource for instructors of adults (McCardle, Chhabra, and Kapinus, 2008; National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, 2000a; Snow, Griffin, and Burns, 2005). Neither preparation nor selection of instructors in adult literacy education or developmental college courses has been studied much at all and certainly not in terms of ability to apply the practices presented in this chapter. Thus, the issue of instructor preparation for the delivery of effective instructional practices is vital to address in future research.

Neurocognitive Mechanisms

The field of cognitive neuroscience is opening windows on the brain mechanisms that underlie skilled reading and writing and related difficulties. Much of the research has focused on identifying the neurocircuits (brain pathways) associated with component processes in reading and writing at different stages of typical reading development, and differences in the progression of brain organization for these processes in atypically developing readers. It also has focused mainly on word- and sentence-level reading. More needs to be understood from neurocognitive research about the development of complex comprehension processes. In addition, because different disciplines study different aspects of literacy, much remains to be discovered about how various social, cultural, and instructional factors interact with neurocognitive processes to facilitate or constrain the development of literacy skills.

Brain imaging studies (both structural and functional imaging) have revealed, however, robust differences in brain organization between typically and atypically developing readers (see Chapter 7 ). It is yet to be determined whether these observed brain differences are the cause or consequence of reading-related problems. It is possible, however, to confirm certain levels of literacy development by observing the brain activity associated with literacy function. More needs to be understood about (1) the genetic, neuroanatomical, neurochemical, and epigenetic factors that control the development of these neurocircuits and (2) the ways in which experiential factors, such as

enriched learning environments, might modulate brain pathways in struggling readers at different ages and in different environments. Research on gene-brain-environment relations has the potential to inform instruction in at least three ways: (1) the development and testing of theories and models of typical and atypical development of reading and writing needed to guide effective teaching and remedial interventions; (2) development of measures that provide more sensitive assessments in specific areas of difficulty to use for instruction and research; and, though less germane to this report, (3) knowledge of neurobiological processes needed for early identification of risk with an eye toward prevention of reading and writing difficulties. The same possibilities apply for writing instruction, although neurobiological research on writing is in the early stages. In subsequent sections, we further describe what is known about the neurobiological mechanisms specific to reading and writing. A key point to keep in mind, however, is that neither the available behavioral data nor neurocognitive data suggest that learners who struggle with reading and writing require a categorically different type of instruction from more typically developing learners. Rather, the instruction may need to be adapted in particular ways to help learners overcome specific reading, writing, and learning difficulties, as discussed later in the chapter.

Reading is the comprehension of language from a written code that represents concepts and communicates information and ideas. It is a complex skill that involves many human capacities that evolved for other purposes and it depends on their development and coordinated use: spoken language, perception (vision, hearing), motor systems, memory, learning, reasoning, problem solving, motivation, interest, and others (Rayner et al., 2001). Reading is closely related to spoken language (National Research Council, 1998) and requires applying what is known about spoken language to deciphering an unfamiliar written code. In fact, the correlation between comprehension of spoken and written language in adults is high, approximately .90 (Braze et al., 2007; Gernsbacher, Varner, and Faust, 1990). Conversely, being less skilled in a spoken language—having limited vocabulary, less familiarity with standard grammar, speaking a different dialect—makes it more difficult to become skilled at reading that language (Craig et al., 2009; Scarborough, 2002). Reading also depends on knowledge of the context and purpose for which the act of reading occurs (Scribner and Cole, 1981; Street, 1984; Vygotsky, 1978).

Although reading and speech are similar, they differ in important ways that have implications for instruction (Biber, 1988; Clark, 1996; Kucer, 2001). Speech fades from memory whereas most types of text are more

permanent, allowing for reanalysis and use of strategies to comprehend complex written structures (Biber and Conrad, 2006). Skilled readers are attuned to the differences between texts and spoken language (e.g., differences in types and frequencies of words, expressions, and grammatical structures) (Biber, 1988; Chafe and Tannen, 1987), and they know the strategies that help them comprehend various kinds of text. Perhaps the most important difference is that people learn to speak (or sign) even when direct instruction is limited or perhaps absent, whereas learning to read almost always requires explicit instruction as well as immersion in written language.

The major components of reading are well documented and include decoding, fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension. Box 2-2 summarizes

BOX 2-2 Principles of Reading Instruction

Becoming an able reader takes a substantial amount of time. Reading is a complex skill, and, like other complex skills, it takes well over 1,000 hours, perhaps several times that, to acquire fully. Instruction consistent with the principles that follow must therefore be implemented and learner engagement supported at the scale required for meaningful gains.

• Use explicit and systematic reading instruction to develop the major components of reading (decoding, fluency vocabulary, comprehension) according to the assessed needs of individual learners. Although each dimension is necessary to proficient reading, adolescents and adults vary in the specific reading instruction they need. For example, some will require comprehensive decoding instruction; others may need less or no decoding instruction. Further research is needed to clarify the forms of explicit instruction that effectively develop component skills for adolescents and adults.

• Combine explicit and systematic instruction with extended reading practice to promote acquisition and transfer of component reading skills. Learning to read involves both explicit teaching and implicit learning. Explicit teaching does not negate the vital importance of incidental and informal learning opportunities or the need for extensive practice using new skills.

• Motivate engagement with the literacy tasks used for instruction and extensive reading practice. Learners, especially adolescents, are more engaged when literacy instruction and practice opportunities are embedded in meaningful learning activities. Opportunities to collaborate during reading also can increase motivation to read, although more needs to be known about how to structure collaborations effectively.

• Develop reading fluency as needed to facilitate efficiency in the reading of words and longer text. Some methods of fluency improvement have been vali-

principles of instruction related to developing each of these components. Although the components are presented separately here for exposition, reading involves an interrelated and interdependent system with reciprocity among the various components, both within reading and between reading and writing.

A substantial body of evidence on children shows that effective reading instruction explicitly and systematically targets each component of reading skill that remains to be developed (National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, 2000a; Rayner et al., 2001). More extensive evidence for this statement is available for younger than older learners and for word identification and decoding processes than for reading comprehension and

dated in children (e.g., guided repeated reading); these require further research with adolescents and adults.

• Explicitly teach the structure of written language to facilitate decoding and comprehension. Develop awareness of the features of written language at multiple levels (word, sentence, passage). Teach regularity and irregularity of spelling-to-sound mappings, the patterns of English morphology, rules of grammar and syntax, and the structures of various text genres. Again, the specifics of how best to provide this instruction to adolescents and adults requires further research, but the dependence of literacy on knowledge of the structure of written language is clear.

• To develop vocabulary, use a mixture of instructional approaches combined with extensive reading of texts to create “an enriched verbal environment.” High-quality mental representations of words develop through varied and multiple exposures to words in discourse and reading of varied text. Instruction that integrates the teaching of vocabulary with reading comprehension instruction, development of topic and background knowledge, and learning of disciplinary or other valued content are promising approaches to study with adolescents and adults.

• To develop comprehension, teach varied goals and purposes for reading; encourage learners to state their own reading goals, predictions, questions, and reactions to material; encourage extensive reading practice with varied forms of text; teach and model the use of multiple comprehension strategies; teach self-regulation in the monitoring of strategy use. Reading comprehension involves a high level of metacognitive engagement with text. Developing readers often need help to develop the metacognitive components of reading comprehension, such as learning how to identify reading goals, select, implement, and coordinate multiple strategies; monitor and evaluate success of the strategies; and adjust strategies to achieve reading goals. Extensive practice also is needed to develop knowledge of words, text structures, and written syntax that are not identical to spoken language and that are gleaned from extensive experience with various texts.

reading fluency, given that research has focused mainly in these areas. Despite this caveat, this principle of reading instruction is considered to have strong research support (National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, 2000a). The emphasis of instruction within and across reading components will vary depending on each person’s need for skill development, but skill needs to be attained in all the components. It is possible to design many ways to provide explicit and systematic reading instruction focused on the learner’s needs using methods and formats that will appeal to learners (McCardle, Chhabra, and Kapinus, 2008).

Learning to read involves both explicit teaching and implicit learning. Explicit teaching does not negate the importance of incidental and informal learning opportunities, or the need for extensive practice using new skills. Explicit and systematic reading instruction must be combined with extended experience with reading for varied purposes in order to promote learning and the transfer of reading skills. Thus, it is important to provide forms of reading practice that develop the particular skills that need to be acquired. Learners, especially adolescents, are more engaged when literacy instruction and practice are embedded in meaningful learning activities (e.g., Guthrie and Wigfield, 2000; Guthrie et al., 1999; Schiefele, 1996a, 1996b; Schraw and Lehman, 2001).

Decoding involves the ability to apply knowledge of letter-sound relationships to correctly pronounce printed words. It requires developing phonological awareness, which consists of phonemic awareness (an oral language skill that involves awareness of and ability to manipulate the units of sound, phonemes, in a spoken word) and alphabetic knowledge (knowing that the letters in written words represent the phonemes in spoken words) (National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, 2000b; Rayner et al., 2001).

Even highly skilled adult readers must rely on alphabetic knowledge and decoding skills to read unfamiliar words (e.g., “otolaryngology”) (Frost, 1998; Rayner et al., 2001). Word reading also requires being able to recognize sight words that do not follow regular patterns of letter-sound correspondence (e.g., “yacht”). Explicit and systematic phonics instruction to teach correspondences between letters and phonemes has been found to facilitate reading development for children of different ages, abilities, and socioeconomic circumstances (Foorman et al., 1998; McCardle, Chhabra, and Kapinus, 2008; Morris et al., 2010; National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, 2000a; Torgesen et al., 1999). The evidence is clear that explicit instruction is necessary for most individuals to develop

understanding of written code and its relation to speech (National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, 2000a; Snow, 2002).

The National Reading Panel, convened at the request of Congress, identified several types of effective systematic phonics programs, among them synthetic phonics (teaching children to convert letters into sounds or phonemes and then blend the sounds to form recognizable words) (National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, 2000a). The research shows that, although phonological awareness is the oral language building block of reading, teaching phonological awareness for those who need such instruction is most effective when coupled with the use of letters and the learning of letter-sound correspondences as part of phonics instruction.

Many adults with low literacy may experience difficulty with decoding (Baer, Kutner, and Sabatini, 2009; Greenberg, Ehri, and Perin, 1997, 2002; Mellard, Fall, and Woods, 2010; Nanda, Greenberg, and Morris, 2010; Read and Ruyter, 1985; Sabatini et al., 2010). Research on younger populations suggests that instructors may need to be prepared to explicitly and systematically teach all aspects of the word-reading system: letter-sound patterns, high-frequency spelling patterns (oat, at, end, ar), consonant blends (st-, bl-, cr-), vowel combinations (ai, oa, ea), affixes (pre-, sub-, -ing, -ly), and irregular high-frequency word instruction (sight words that do not follow regular spelling patterns). For those adults who need to develop their word-reading skills, it may be important to teach “word attack” strategies with particular attention to challenges posed by multisyllabic words and variable vowel pronunciations. Effective word attack strategies for all readers include phonological decoding and blending, word identification by analogy, peeling off prefixes and suffixes, and facility with variable vowel pronunciations (for information about these word-reading strategies and how to use them, see Lovett et al., 1994, 2000; Lovett, Lacerenza, and Borden, 2000). Even after adult learners have mastered decoding, they may need substantial practice to become able to decode words easily, freeing up limited attentional capacity for other reading processes, like comprehension (see discussion of fluency below).

Vocabulary knowledge is a primary predictor of reading success (Baumann, Kame’enui, and Ash, 2003). It is associated with word identification skills at the end of first grade (Sénéchal and Cornell, 1993) and reading comprehension in eleventh grade (Cunningham and Stanovich, 1998; Nagy, 2007). In fact, for those who have acquired basic decoding skills, the aspect of lexical (word) processing that has the greatest impact on reading is vocabulary knowledge and, more specifically, the depth, breadth, and

flexibility of knowledge about words (Beck and McKeown, 1986; Perfetti, 2007). Vocabulary also tends to grow with reading experience. As readers progress, lexical analysis (i.e., morphological awareness allowing the recognition of derived words, e.g., decide→decision, decisive, deciding ) becomes increasingly important for comprehending complex and unfamiliar words and concepts (Adams, 1990; Nagy and Anderson, 1984; Nagy and Scott, 2000). Specialized vocabulary is important to develop for comprehending texts in different subject-matter areas (Koedinger and Nathan, 2004).

The National Reading Panel (National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, 2000a) concluded that explicit vocabulary instruction is associated with gains in reading comprehension. Other research reviews have been less definitive, and thus some researchers consider the evidence to be mixed (Kamil et al., 2008; Pressley, Disney, and Anderson, 2007). Differences in findings across studies may be due partly to variations in the approaches and how they were implemented, the lack of direct measures of vocabulary growth in some studies, and the use of measures that fail to assess all dimensions of word knowledge or reading comprehension. These issues should be addressed in future research with adult and adolescent populations.

Research on literacy instruction for children suggests that selecting words from the curriculum and teaching their meanings prior to reading a text help to ensure that vocabulary items are in the spoken language of the reader prior to encountering the words in print (Beck, McKeown, and Kucan, 2002; McKeown and Beck, 1988; National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, 2000a). For less skilled readers, explicit instruction, combined with discussion and elaboration activities that encourage using the words to be learned, can improve vocabulary and facilitate better reading comprehension (Curtis and Longo, 2001; Foorman et al., 2003; Klinger and Vaughn, 1999; Stahl and Fairbanks, 1986). Beck and colleagues (Beck and McKeown 2007; McKeown and Beck, 1988) articulated principles for developing a teacher’s ability to deliver effective vocabulary instruction: (a) introduce vocabulary through connected language (discussion, elaboration activities) instead of only dictionary definitions, (b) provide multiple opportunities to interact with new words and word meanings in a variety of engaging contexts, and (c) use activities that engage learners in deep and reflective processing of word meanings. In addition, repeated exposure to words in multiple contexts and domains enhances vocabulary learning (Kamil et al., 2008; Nagy and Scott, 2000) and provides “an enriched verbal environment” (Beck, McKeown, and Kucan, 2002) for vocabulary growth. Findings that show no effect for vocabulary instruction have tended to look at more impoverished forms of instruction.

Having rich knowledge of words (i.e., high-quality lexical representa-

tions) allows for rapid and reliable retrieval of word meanings with profound consequences for both word- and text-reading proficiency (Perfetti, 1992, 2007). Reading is supported by knowing not only the definition of the words being read but also how the words are used, their different forms (e.g., anxious → anxiety ), and what they connote in different situations. Findings from research on children indicate that effective approaches to vocabulary instruction will consist of strategies that build high-quality lexical representations and develop metalinguistic awareness (Nagy, 2007). These strategies include teaching not only word meanings but also multiple meanings of words and varied word forms and origins, as well as providing ample opportunities to encounter and use the words in varied contexts. As more text becomes available in electronic form, it also may be possible to develop more tools that provide text-embedded “just-in-time” vocabulary support that developing readers can call on when their reading is impeded by lack of word or lexical knowledge.

Embedding vocabulary instruction in reading comprehension activities is another method of developing high-quality lexical representations (Perfetti, 1992, 2007). This approach involves reading new texts that develop vocabulary, topic, and domain knowledge. Readers acquire new words, phrases, and concepts that appear more often in text than in speech and that would therefore lie outside most learners’ experience with spoken language (Kamil et al., 2008). For example, because academic texts (e.g., those in science or history) include specialized vocabulary that is not part of everyday spoken language (Beck, McKeown, and Kucan, 2002; Kamil et al., 2008), the teaching of content needs to be integrated with explicit teaching of words and phrases used in a discipline (Moje and Speyer, 2008). Such approaches warrant study with those outside K-12 because adolescents and adults may need to develop academic or other specialized vocabulary and content knowledge for education, work, or other purposes.

Overall, findings suggest a range of vocabulary activities that may be useful in adult literacy instruction, but, at present, research on adults is extremely limited.

Reading fluency is the ability to read with speed and accuracy (Klauda and Guthrie, 2008; Kuhn and Stahl, 2003; Miller and Schwanenflugel, 2006). Developing fluency is important because the human mind is limited in its capacity to carry out many cognitive processes at once (Logan, 2004). When word and sentence reading becomes automatic, readers can concentrate more fully on creating meaning from the text (Graesser, 2007; Perfetti, 2007; Rapp et al., 2007; van den Broek et al., 2009). Experiments

with young children show that fluency instruction can lead to significant gains in both fluency and comprehension (Chard, Vaughn, and Tyler, 2002; Klauda and Guthrie, 2008; Kuhn and Stahl, 2003; Therrien, 2004; Therrien and Hughes, 2008).

The relation between fluency and comprehension is not fully understood, however, and it is more complex and bidirectional than previously thought (Meyer and Felton, 1999; Wolf and Katzir-Cohen, 2001). Comprehension appears to affect fluency as well as the reverse (Collins and Levy, 2008; Johnston, Barnes, and Desrochers, 2008; Klauda and Guthrie, 2008). Moreover, although some studies show that fluency instruction improves comprehension, other studies do not (Fleisher, Jenkins, and Pany, 1979; Grant and Standing, 1989; Oakhill, Cain, and Bryant, 2003). There are at least two possible reasons for the mixed findings to address in future research. Studies have demonstrated that there are different dimensions of reading fluency (at the level of words, phrases, sentences, and passages), and all should be considered in measuring or facilitating reading fluency. In addition, the best ways to conceptualize and measure text comprehension have yet to be identified and used consistently across research studies.

Guided repeated reading has generally led to moderate increases in fluency, accuracy, and sometimes comprehension for both good and poor readers (Kuhn and Stahl, 2003; Kuhn et al., 2006; Vadasy and Sanders, 2008). In guided repeated reading, the learner receives feedback and is supported in identifying and correcting mistakes. A critical unanswered question is whether certain types of text are more effective than others for guided repeated reading interventions (Kuhn and Stahl, 2003; Vadasy and Sanders, 2008).

Repeated reading of a text without guidance, though a popular instructional method believed to improve fluency, has not been reliably demonstrated to be effective, even with young children in K-3 classrooms (Carlisle and Rice, 2002; National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, 2000a; Stahl, 2004). At least one recent review suggests that there is not enough rigorous evidence to warrant unguided repeated reading for students with or at risk for learning disabilities (Chard et al., 2009). A well-designed controlled evaluation with high school students with reading disabilities also failed to find support for repeated reading effects on reading comprehension (Wexler et al., 2010).

Fluency has been difficult to change for adolescent and adult readers (Fletcher et al., 2007; Wexler et al., 2010). One possible reason is that older struggling readers lack sufficient reading practice and experience. Another possible reason is that instruction must focus on developing not only the reader’s ability to decode or recognize individual words but to quickly process larger units of texts (e.g., sentences and paragraphs). In the future, fluent reading needs to be studied at the word level, syntactic level, and

passage level. Fluency at each of these levels has been found to contribute to growth in reading comprehension for fifth graders (Klauda and Guthrie, 2008; see also Kuhn and Stahl, 2003; Young and Bowers, 1995). To encourage the practice needed for fluency, it is important to develop procedures and text types that will engage older developing readers.

Reading Comprehension

Components and Processes

Although they differ in detail, theories of reading comprehension share many assumptions about the cognitive processes involved (Cromley and Azevedo, 2007; Gernsbacher, Varner, and Faust, 1990; Graesser, Singer, and Trabasso, 1994; Kintsch, 1998; Trabasso, Secco, and van den Broek, 1984; van den Broek, Rapp, and Kendeou, 2005; Zwaan and Singer, 2003). First, comprehension requires adequate and sustained attention. In complex cognitive acts, such as reading comprehension, attention cannot simultaneously be focused in an unlimited number of ways. As mentioned earlier, facile readers develop fluent and relatively automatic decoding that allows allocating more attention to the information gleaned from words and phrases and creating coherent meaning from text (Ericsson and Kintsch, 1994; Kintsch and van Dijk, 1978; O’Brien et al., 1998). Concentration also must be sustained so that memories of previous sentences and pages do not fade before the next text is read, and this is less possible when a decoding problem diverts attention from prior content.

Second, comprehension requires the reader to interpret and integrate information from various sources (the sentence being read, the prior sentence, prior text, background knowledge, and extraneous information) (Goldman, Graesser, and van den Broek, 1999; Graesser, Gernsbacher, and Goldman, 2003; Graesser, Singer, and Trabasso, 1994; Kintsch, 1998; Kintsch and van Dijk, 1978; McCardle, Chhabra, and Kapinus, 2008; Rapp et al., 2007; Rumelhart, 1994; Snow, 2002; Trabasso and van den Broek, 1985; van den Broek, Rapp, and Kendeou, 2005). Comprehension depends heavily on background knowledge for understanding how elements in a text relate to one another to create a broader meaning (McNamara et al., 1996; O’Reilly and McNamara, 2007). Nontextual information that accompanies the text (figures or multimedia) must also be integrated to support deeper comprehension (Hegarty and Just, 1993; Lowe and Schnotz, 2007; Mayer, 2009; Rouet, 2006). Such information distracts the unskilled reader. With practice, however, strategic processes for remembering, interpreting, and integrating information become less effortful.

Third, each reader has at least an implicit standard of coherence used while reading to determine whether the type and level of comprehension

aimed for is being achieved (Kintsch and Vipond, 1979; van den Broek, Risden, and Husebye-Hartman, 1995). That is, readers must decide how hard to try and how long to persist in reading a text. Effective readers keep working to better understand text until certain requirements are met. The standard varies depending on such factors as the person’s reading goal, interest, and fatigue. A facile reader strives for an overall understanding of text that is rich with meaning and complete and is highly effective in adjusting the allocation of effort for particular purposes (Duggan and Payne, 2009; Kaakinen and Hyönä, 2007, 2008, 2010; Kaakinen, Hyönä, and Keenan, 2003; Kintsch, 1994; Linderholm and van den Broek, 2002; Reader and Payne, 2007; Stine-Morrow et al., 2004, 2006; Stine-Morrow, Miller, and Hertzog, 2006; Therriault, Rinck, and Zwaan, 2006; Zwaan, Magliano, and Graesser, 1995). A rich and complete understanding involves making inferences, retrieving prior knowledge, and connecting components of text that may not be contiguous on the page. It also requires attending to semantic connections given in the text. Two types of coherence relations—referential and causal—are central to many types of texts (Britton and Gulgoz, 1991; McNamara et al., 1996; van den Broek et al., 2001), but readers also use other relations in text (spatial, temporal, logical, intentional) to create meaning (Graesser and Forsyth, in press; van den Broek et al., 2001; Zwaan and Radvansky, 1998).

Although theories of reading comprehension overlap in many respects, they vary in the number and types of components emphasized and how these components interact (Graesser and McNamara, 2010). The Direct and Inferential Mediation Model (DIME; Cromley and Azevedo, 2007), for example, focuses on five general factors that affect comprehension and that every comprehension theory includes in some form: (1) background knowledge, (2) word-reading, (3) vocabulary, (4) strategies, and (5) inference procedures. These factors accounted for a substantial 66 percent of the variation in reading comprehension in a study of 175 ninth graders.

Different types of text place different demands on the reader, and skilled readers adjust their reading according to what is being read and why (McCrudden and Schraw, 2007; Pressley, 2000; Rouet, 2006). Thus, other approaches to comprehension research focus on how variations in text (genre, style, structure, purpose, content, complexity) influence how people read text and develop knowledge of text structures. Box 2-3 presents an example of one text-based model of reading comprehension.

Reading Comprehension Instruction

Although current theories and models of comprehension are useful for guiding instruction, they require further development. A more systematic and integrated approach to reading comprehension research is needed to

BOX 2-3 A Text-Based Model of Reading Comprehension

Proposed by Graesser and McNamara (2010), the multilevel text model, which extends earlier research by Garrod and Pickering (2004), Kintsch (1998), and Zwaan and Radvansky (1998), identifies seven main components of text processing that affect comprehension: lexical decoding, word knowledge, syntax, genre and rhetorical structure, textbase, situation model, and pragmatic communication (see also Graesser and McNamara, 2011; Kintsch, 1998; Perfetti, 1999).

• Lexical decoding, word knowledge, and syntax components refer to word-and sentence-reading skills.

• Knowledge of genres (narration, exposition, persuasion, description) and global text structures also aids comprehension. A proficient reader processes the rhetorical composition used in various genre and discourse functions of text segments (sections, paragraphs, sentences) and their relation to the overall organization of the text (citation). (Examples of rhetorical structures used to compose expository texts are cause + effect, claim + evidence, problem + solution, and compare + contrast.)

• Full processing of the textbase (propositions explicitly stated in the text) is needed for accurate comprehension. For example, a ubiquitous problem among unskilled readers is the tendency to minimally process propositions, rely too much on what they “know” about the topic from their own experience, and miss parts of the text that do not match their experience.

• Situation model refers to creating larger representations of meaning, derived both from propositions stated explicitly (the textbase) and a large number of inferences that must be filled in using world knowledge.

• Pragmatics refers to the communication goals of spoken and written language. Proficient, goal-directed readers search, select, and extract relevant information from text, further evaluate what they read for relevance to their goals, and use relevance to monitor their attention while reading. People best comprehend and learn from text when the pragmatic function of the text matches the readers’ goals.

develop instruction that can be evaluated using rigorous experimental research designs.

The report of the National Reading Panel (National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, 2000a) is a main source of experimental evidence on instruction that contributes to developing comprehension. More recent research also has sought a better understanding of the components of instruction that improve comprehension among students at different ages and with different levels of reading skills (e.g., Berkeley, Mastropieri, and Scruggs, 2011; Edmonds et al., 2009). We draw on all of these sources of information in discussing what is known about effective comprehension instruction.

The National Reading Panel analyzed the results of 203 different studies of reading comprehension instruction with students in grades 4 and above and identified eight instructional procedures that had a positive effect on reading comprehension. In this analysis and in more recent research, comprehension strategy instruction emerges as one of the most effective interventions (Forness et al., 1997; Gersten et al., 2001; Kamil, 2004; Kamil et al., 2008; National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, 2000a). Similarly, an influential meta-analysis of comprehension interventions, including for students with learning disabilities (Swanson, 1999), supports the efficacy of strategy instruction models.

Several core findings have emerged from the research on comprehension strategy instruction. First, different texts and challenges to comprehension require the use of different strategies. Effective comprehension requires understanding all of the strategies, when and why to select particular strategies, how to monitor their success, and how to adjust strategies as needed to achieve the reading goal (Mason, 2004; Sinatra, Brown, and Reynolds, 2002; Vaughn, Klinger, and Hughes, 2000). The greatest benefits occur when students learn to flexibly use and coordinate multiple comprehension strategies (Kamil et al., 2008; Lave, 1988; Vaughn, Klinger, and Hughes, 2000).

Comprehensive strategy instruction is more effective if students are taught all of the preskills and knowledge they will need to use the strategies effectively. The 2008 practice guide on adolescent literacy published by the U.S. Department of Education’s Institute of Education Sciences cautions that, to be effective, explicit strategy instruction must provide sufficient supports (Kamil et al., 2008). Among those supports are explicit instruction on different aspects of text structure (Williams et al., 2005, 2007), familiarity with different text genres, and recognition of the different conventions authors use to convey meaning. For example, less skilled readers often have limited knowledge of narrative or expository text structures and do not rely on structural differences in text to assist their reading (Meyer, Brandt, and Bluth, 1980; Rapp et al., 2007; Williams, 2006). As more text is available in electronic forms and as display devices become more ubiquitous, it will be possible to embed prompts and other “pop-up” preskill supports in texts to help scaffold the comprehension process.

Strategy instruction depends heavily on opportunities to draw from existing knowledge and build new knowledge (Alexander and Judy, 1989; McKeown, Beck, and Blake, 2009; Moje and Speyer, 2008; Moje et al., 2010). World, topic, and domain knowledge are important to the effective use of strategies (Alexander and Judy, 1989; Moje and Speyer, 2008). Learners with limited or fragmented knowledge of a subject typically apply general and relatively inefficient strategies in an inflexible manner (Alexander, 1997; Alexander, Graham, and Harris, 1998). As their knowl-

edge expands and becomes better integrated, learners begin to use strategies more efficiently and flexibly. The value of some strategies declines with more knowledge about the content (rereading specific sections of text), whereas the value of others increases (e.g., mentally summarizing or elaborating main ideas that involve deeper processing of text).

Strategy instruction seems most effective when it incorporates ample opportunities for practice (Kamil et al., 2008; Pressley and Wharton-McDonald, 1997; Pressley et al., 1989a, 1989b). Incorporation of attributional retraining (Berkeley et al., 2011; Borkowski, Weyhing, and Carr, 1988; Schunk and Rice, 1992) and training to improve metacognitive processes (Malone and Mastropieri, 1992) also appear to enhance the effectiveness of strategy instruction. Understanding of text improves if readers are asked to state reading goals, predictions, questions, and reactions to the material that is read (Kamil et al., 2008; National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, 2000a; Palincsar and Brown, 1984). These practices may be effective because they engage readers in more active processing of the content or develop the metacognitive and self-regulatory skills needed for reading comprehension, which requires substantial metacognitive capability.

Knowledge of the various ways to support comprehension remains to be developed in several ways. It is known that the development of comprehension requires having extensive opportunities to practice skills with materials and engagement with varied forms of text (Rayner et al., 2001; Snow, 2002). A question for research is the degree to which explicit instruction to develop knowledge of text components facilitates comprehension. Often the components of text described in text-based models of reading (e.g., see Box 2-3 ) are learned mainly from practice with reading varied texts instead of from explicit teaching (Hacker, Dunlosky, and Graesser, 2009). Adults who lack reading comprehension skills developed through years of accumulated experience with reading especially might benefit from explicit instruction to develop awareness of text components that often happens implicitly.

Research on the development of literacy and language in the context of learning domain content for broader learning goals (e.g., Lee, 1993; McKeown and Beck, 1994; Moje, 1995, 1996, 1997) is promising to pursue with adolescents and adults needing both to improve their literacy skills and to develop background and specialized knowledge. One of these approaches, disciplinary literacy, seeks to make explicit the different reading and writing demands and conventions of the disciplinary domains, given that the disciplines use particular ways of reading and writing to solve real-world problems (Bain, 2000; Coffin, 2000; Hynd-Shanahan, Holschuh, and Hubbard, 2004; McConachie and Petrosky, 2010; Moje, 2007, 2008a;

Shanahan and Shanahan, 2008; Wineburg, 1991, 1998). This emerging body of research points to several important findings.

First, rich discussion about text may increase both literacy outcomes and understanding of content (Applebee et al., 2003). Similarly, instruction specific to the writing valued in the disciplines can increase both the quality of written text and the disciplinary content learned (e.g., Akkus et al., 2007; Coffin, 2006; Hohenshell and Hand, 2006; Moje et al., 2004b). Second, readers of a range of ages taught to read using texts and language practices valued in the disciplines show enhanced understanding of the content and ability to engage critically with the content (Bain, 2005, 2006; Palincsar and Magnusson, 2001). Third, close study of the linguistic structures of textbooks and related texts appears to enhance students’ understanding of the content (e.g., Schleppegrell and Achugar, 2003; Schleppegrell, Achugar, and Oteíza, 2004). Research is needed to evaluate the approaches more fully with samples that include diverse populations of adolescents and adults who need to develop their reading skills.

Although experimental research has focused mainly on the use of effective reading strategies, research is needed to determine how best to combine strategy instruction with other practices that may further facilitate the development of comprehension. McKeown, Beck, and Blake (2009) demonstrated, for example, that focusing students’ attention on the content of the text through the use of open-ended questions was more effective in developing comprehension than the same amount of time invested in strategy instruction. An important direction for research with adolescents and adults is to identify the best methods of integrating strategy instruction with the development of content knowledge, vocabulary, and other aspects of language competence for reading comprehension to meet the assessed needs of the learner.

Findings also suggest that the critical analysis of text, such as asking readers to consider the author’s purposes in writing the text; the historical, social, or other context in which the text was produced; and multiple ways of reading or making sense of the text may encourage deeper understanding of text (Bain, 2005; Greenleaf et al., 2001; Guthrie et al., 1999; Hand, Wallace, and Yang, 2004; McKeown and Beck, 1994; Palinscar and Magnusson, 2001; Paxton, 1997, Romance and Vitale, 1992). Introducing and explicitly comparing features of texts and literacy practices across languages and cultures also may be helpful to some readers (Au and Mason, 1983; Heath, 1983; Lee, 1993). A recent meta-analysis (Murphy et al., 2009) indicates that critical thinking, reasoning, and argumentation about text all warrant more systematic attention to determine the instructional practices that are effective for developing comprehension skills.

In general, more needs to be known about individual differences in comprehension, which is a major objective of the Reading for Understand-

ing initiative of the Institute of Education Sciences launched in 2010. Individuals may possess certain combinations of proficiencies and weaknesses in comprehension that are important to understand and to measure to guide instructional practice.

The range of skill components to be practiced and the amount of practice required are substantial for the developing reader. At the same time, available evidence suggests that adult learners do not persist in formal programs for anywhere near the amount of time needed to accomplish all of the needed preskill training and reading practice (Miller, Esposito, and McCardle, 2011; Tamassia et al., 2007). Consequently, it is important to better understand how to motivate longer and deeper engagement with reading practice by adult learners.

It is likely that selecting texts that are compatible with learning goals will result in more persistence at deep understanding. Self-reported motivation to perform certain reading tasks in the classroom predicts moderately well students’ performance on the reading tasks and reading achievement scores (Guthrie and Wigfield, 2005; Guthrie, Taboada, and Coddington, 2007; Schiefele, Krapp, and Winteler, 1992). In general, it is well established that academic performance improves when motivation and engagement are nurtured and constructive attributions and beliefs about effort and achievement are reinforced. Opportunities to collaborate during reading also can increase motivation to read (Guthrie, 2004; Guthrie and Wigfield, 2000; Slavin, 1995, 1999; Wigfield et al., 2008) although more needs to be known about how to structure collaborations effectively. We highlight key findings of that research in Chapter 5 .

Writing is the creation of texts for others (and sometimes for the writer) to read. People use many types of writing for a variety of purposes that include recording and tabulating, persuading, learning, communicating, entertaining, self-expression, and reflection. Proficiency in writing for one purpose does not necessarily generalize to writing for other purposes (Osborn Popp et al., 2003; Purves, 1992; Schultz and Fecho, 2000). In today’s world, proficiency requires developing skills in both traditional forms of writing and newer electronic and digital modes (see Appendix B ). In the last three decades, much more has become known about the components and processes of writing and effective writing instruction. As with reading, most of this research comes from K-12 settings.

FIGURE 2-1 Model of the components and processes of writing.

Components and Processes of Writing

Figure 2-1 shows the component skills and processes of writing. As the figure shows, the writer manages and orchestrates the application of a variety of basic writing skills, specialized writing knowledge, writing strategies, and motivational processes when writing. The application of these skills and processes is interrelated and varies depending on the task and purpose of the writer.

Basic Writing Skills

Basic writing skills include planning, evaluating, and revising of discourses; sentence construction (including selecting the right words and syntactic structure to convey the intended meaning); and text transcription skills (spelling, handwriting, keyboarding, capitalization, and punctuation; Graham, 2006b).

Sentence construction involves selecting the right words and syntactic structures for transforming ideas into text that conveys the intended meaning. Skilled writers can deftly produce a variety of different types of sentences for effective communication. Facility with writing does not always mean constructing more complex sentences (Houck and Billingsley, 1989). Sentence complexity varies as a function of several factors, such as genre (Hunt, 1965; Scott, 1999; Scott and Windsor, 2000). Yet better writ-

ers produce more complex sentences than less skilled writers (Hunt, 1965; Raiser, 1981), and teaching developing and struggling writers how to craft more complex sentences improves not only their sentence writing skills, but also the quality of their texts (Graham and Perin, 2007b; Hillocks, 1986).

For those developing or struggling writers who need to develop spelling, handwriting, or keyboarding skills, instruction in these areas improves these skills and enhances other aspects of writing performance (Berninger et al., 1998; Christensen, 2005; Graham, Harris, and Fink, 2000; Graham, Harris, and Fink-Chorzempa, 2002).

Specialized Writing Knowledge

Writing also depends on specialized knowledge beyond the level of specific sentences: knowledge of the audience (Wong, Wong, and Blenkinsop, 1989), attributes of good writing, characteristics of specific genres and how to use these elements to construct text (Englert and Thomas, 1987; Graham and Harris, 2003), linguistic knowledge (e.g., of words and of text structures that differ from those of speech) (Donovan and Smolkin, 2006; Groff, 1978), topic knowledge (Mosenthal, 1996; Mosenthal et al., 1985; Voss, Vesonder, and Spilich, 1980), and the purposes of writing (Saddler and Graham, 2007). In general, skilled writers possess a more sophisticated conceptualization of writing than less skilled writers (Graham, Schwartz, and MacArthur, 1993). The developing writer’s knowledge about writing also predicts individual differences in writing performance (Bonk et al., 1990; Olinghouse and Graham, 2009). A small body of evidence shows that efforts to increase developing and struggling writers’ knowledge about writing, especially knowledge of text structure, improve the writing performance of school-age students (Fitzgerald and Markham, 1987; Fitzgerald and Teasley, 1986; Holliway and McCutchen, 2004) and college students (Traxler and Gernsbacher, 1993; Wallace et al., 1996).

Writing Strategies and Self-Regulation

Writing depends on the use of strategies and knowledge that must be coordinated and regulated to accomplish the writer’s goal (Graham, 2006a; Hayes and Flower, 1980; Kellogg, 1993b; Zimmerman and Reisemberg, 1997). These include goal setting and planning (e.g., establishing rhetorical goals and tactics to achieve them), seeking information (e.g., gathering information pertinent to the writing topic), record-keeping (e.g., making notes), organizing (e.g., ordering notes or text), transforming (e.g., visualizing a character to facilitate written description), self-monitoring (e.g., checking to see if writing goals are met), reviewing records (e.g., reviewing notes or the text produced so far), self-evaluating (e.g., assessing the

quality of text or proposed plans), revising (e.g., modifying text or plans for writing), self-verbalizing (e.g., saying dialogue aloud while writing or personal articulations about what needs to be done), rehearsing (e.g., trying out a scene before writing it), environmental structuring (e.g., finding a quiet place to write), time planning (e.g., estimating and budgeting time for writing), self-rewarding (e.g., going to a movie as a reward for completing a writing task), seeking social assistance (e.g., asking another person to edit the paper), and emulating the writing style of a more gifted author (Scardamalia and Bereiter, 1985; Zimmerman and Riesemberg, 1997).

As in reading, the strategies must be applied intelligently with an understanding of when and why to use a particular approach (Breetvelt, Van den Bergh, and Rijlaarsdam, 1994, 1996; Van den Bergh and Rijlaarsdam, 1996). For example, in a study of high school students’ use of 11 writing strategies, use of strategy at the most opportune time was a strong predictor of the quality of writing. Skilled writing especially requires planning and revising (Graham and Harris, 2000a; Hayes and Flower, 1980; Zimmerman and Reisemberg, 1997). For example, children and adolescents spend very little time planning and revising, whereas more accomplished writers, such as college students, spend about 50 percent of writing time planning and revising text (Graham, 2006b; Kellogg, 1987, 1993a). Explicit teaching of strategies for planning and revising has a strong and positive effect on the writing of both developing and struggling writers (Graham and Perin, 2007b; Rogers and Graham, 2008). Similar results have been found for adults needing to develop their writing skills (MacArthur and Lembo, 2009).

Writing Motivation

Despite its importance, motivation is one of the least frequently studied aspects of writing. In this small literature, the most commonly studied topics are attitudes about writing, including self-efficacy, interest, and writing apprehension, and goals for writing (Brunning and Horn, 2000; Graham, Berninger, and Fan, 2007; Hidi and Boscolo, 2006; Madigan, Linton, and Johnston, 1996; Pajares, 2003).

Attitudes toward writing predict writing achievement (Knudson, 1995; see also Graham, Berninger, and Fan, 2007), and poor writers have less positive attitudes about writing than good writers (Graham, Schwartz, and MacArthur, 1993). Thus, it is important to establish positive attitudes about writing. Attitudes may be influenced by self-efficacy or belief in one’s ability to write well. Self-efficacy predicts writing performance (Albin, Benton, and Khramtsova, 1996; Knudson, 1995; Madigan, Linton, and Johnston, 1996; Pajares, 2003), and, with only some exceptions (Graham, Schwartz, and MacArthur, 1993), weaker writers have a lower sense of

self-efficacy than stronger writers (Shell et al., 1995; Vrugt, Oort, and Zeeberg, 2002).

Self-efficacy is especially important to the social-cognitive model of writing proposed by Zimmerman and Reisemberg (1997; Zimmerman, 1989), which specifies that writing is a goal-driven, self-initiated, and self-sustained activity that involves both cognition and affect. The model, which is derived from empirical research and professional writers’ descriptions of how they compose, specifies the self-initiated thoughts, feelings, and actions that writers use to attain various writing goals. Related findings show that the perceived level of success (or failure) in the self-regulated use of writing strategies enhances (or diminishes) self-efficacy and affects intrinsic motivation for writing, further use of self-regulatory processes during writing, and attainment of writing skills and goals. Goals are important because they prompt marshaling the resources, effort, and persistence needed for proficient writing (Locke et al., 1981). Setting goals is especially important when engaging in a complex and demanding task such as writing, which requires a high level of cognitive effort (Kellogg, 1986, 1987, 1993a). As noted earlier in this chapter, arranging writing tasks so that they are consistent with learners’ goals is especially helpful.

Linguistic and Cognitive Foundations of Writing

Writing systems developed as a way to record speech in more permanent form for such purposes as extending memory or creating legal records (Nissen, Damerow, and Englund, 1993). Thus, it is not surprising that facility with reading and writing draws on many of the same skills and that these overlap with those of spoken language (Nelson and Calfee, 1998; Tierney and Shanahan, 1991). These include knowledge of alphabetics (phonemic and phonological awareness), English spelling patterns, vocabulary and etymology (word origins), morphological structures, syntax and sentence structures, and text and discourse structures.

Skilled writing also involves cognitive capacities that evolved earlier and separate from literacy (Graham and Weintraub, 1996; McCutchen, 2006; Shanahan, 2006). Key among these is working memory (Hayes, 1996; Swanson and Berninger, 1996), which is needed, for example, to create interconnections that increase the coherence of text. Writing also requires use of executive functions to coordinate and flexibly use a variety of writing strategies (Graham, 2006b) and more generally purposefully activate, orchestrate, monitor, evaluate, and adapt writing to achieve communication goals (Graham, Harris, and Olinghouse, 2007).

Writing Instruction

A number of principles for writing instruction are supported by research (see Box 2-4 ), although the body of research is smaller than for reading. This research includes a focus on both narrative and expository writing (Graham and Perin, 2007a).

A key principle from this research is that explicit and systematic instruction is effective in teaching the strategies, skills, and knowledge needed to be a proficient writer . Almost all the effective writing practices identified in three meta-analyses of experiments and quasi-experiments (grades 4-12, Graham and Perin, 2007a; grades 3 through college, Hillocks, 1986; and grades 1-12, Rogers and Graham, 2008) involved explicit instruction. These practices proved effective with a range of writers, from beginners to college students, as well as with those who experienced difficulty in learning to write. What should be taught, however, depends on the writer’s developmental level, the skills the writer needs to develop for particular purposes, and the writing task.

A comprehensive meta-analysis of experiments and quasi-experiments by Graham and Perin (2007a) conducted with students in grades 4-12 supports use of the practices in Box 2-5 . This meta-analysis also shows that learners can benefit from the process approach to writing instruction (Graves, 1983), although the approach produces smaller average effects than methods that involve systematic instruction of writing strategies (Graham and Perin, 2007a). In another recent meta-analysis, the process approach was not effective for students who were weaker writers (Sandmel and Graham, in press). The process approach is a “workshop” method of teaching that stresses extended writing opportunities, writing for authentic

BOX 2-4 Principles of Writing Instruction

• Explicitly and systematically teach the strategies, skills, and knowledge needed to be a proficient writer.

• Combine explicit and systematic instruction with extended experience with writing for a purpose, with consideration of message, audience, and genre.

• Explicitly teach foundational writing skills to the point of automaticity.

• Model writing strategies and teach how to regulate strategy use (e.g., how to select, implement, and coordinate writing strategies; how to monitor, evaluate, and adjust strategies to achieve writing goals).

• Develop an integrated system of skills by using instructional approaches that capitalize on and make explicit the relations between reading and writing.

• Structure instructional environments and interactions to motivate writing practice and persistence in learning new forms of writing.

BOX 2-5 Effective Practices in Writing Instruction

• Strategy instruction for planning, revising, and/or editing compositions.

• Summarizing reading passages in writing.

• Peer assistance in planning, drafting, and revising compositions.

• Setting clear, specific goals for purposes or characteristics of the writing.

• Using word processing regularly.

• Sentence-combining instruction (instruction in combining short sentences into more complex sentences, usually including exercises and application to real writing).

• Process approach to writing with professional development.

• Inquiry approach (including clear goals, analysis of data, using specified strategies, and applying the analysis to writing).

• Prewriting activities (teaching students activities to generate content prior to writing).

• Analyzing models of good writing (discussing the features of good essays and learning to imitate those features).

NOTE: The practices are listed in descending order by effect size.

SOURCE: Adapted from Graham and Perin (2007a).

audiences, personalized instruction, and cycles of writing. It relies mainly on incidental and informal methods of instruction. The approach is most effective when teachers are taught how to implement it (Graham and Perin, 2007a). It is possible that process approaches would be more effective if they incorporated explicit and systematic instruction to develop essential knowledge, strategies, and skills, especially for developing writers. This is a question for future research.

As with reading, it is important to combine explicit and systematic instruction with extended experience with writing for a purpose (Andrews et al., 2006; Graham, 2000; Graham and Perin, 2007a; Hillocks, 1986). It is important to note that most of the evidence-based writing practices suggest the importance of considerable time devoted to writing and the need to practice writing for different purposes. These findings are consistent with qualitative research showing that two practices common among exceptional literacy teachers are (1) dedicating time to writing and writing instruction across the curriculum and (2) involving students in varying forms of writing over time (Graham and Perin, 2007b).

Some foundational writing skills need to be explicitly taught to the point of automaticity. Spelling, handwriting, and keyboarding become mostly automatic for skilled writers (Graham, 2006b), and individual differences in handwriting and spelling predict writing achievement (Graham

et al., 1997), even for college students (Connelly, Dockrell, and Barnett, 2005). Thus, it is important that writers learn to execute these skills fluently and automatically with little or no thought (Alexander, Graham, and Harris, 1998). When these skills are not automatized, as is the case for many developing and struggling writers, cognitive resources are not available for other important aspects of writing, such as planning, evaluating, and revising (McCutchen, 2006). Use of dictation to eliminate handwriting and spelling also has a positive impact on writing performance for children and adults, especially on the amount of text produced (De La Paz and Graham, 1995), although functional writing capability in everyday life probably needs to include the ability to write via other means than dictation. Overall, it is clear that automating what can be automated helps improve writing competence. Some aspects of writing, such as planning or sentence construction, require decisions and cannot be fully automated (Graham and Harris, 2000a). Other, more strategic processes need to be taught and practiced to a point of fluent, flexible, and effective use (Berninger and Amtmann, 2003; Berninger et al., 2006; Graham and Harris, 2003; Graham and Perrin, 2007b).

Instructional environments must be structured to support motivation to write. Although some studies have focused specifically on enhancing motivation to write with positive results (Hidi, Berndorff, and Ainley, 2002; Miller and Meece, 1997; Schunk and Swartz, 1993a, 1993b), the evidence base related to motivation and instruction stems mainly from a few ethnographic, qualitative, and quasi-experimental studies. A small number of experiments show practices that improve the quality of writing and that reasonably could affect motivation to write or engage with writing instruction, although motivation itself was not measured. These practices include setting clear goals for writing; encouraging students to help each other plan, draft, or revise (Graham and Perin, 2007a); use of self-assessment (Collopy and Bowman, 2005; Guastello, 2001); and providing feedback on progress (Schunk and Swartz, 1993a, 1993b). Several single-subject design studies with adolescent learners have demonstrated that social praise, tangible rewards, or both can improve students’ writing behaviors (Graham and Perin, 2007b).

Experiments are needed to identify how to deliver motivating instruction that encourages engagement with and persistence in writing and to explain how the practices work (via improved self-efficacy, improved self-regulation, etc.) to improve writing. This research might also draw on observational studies that describe instructional routines used by teachers to support engagement with writing and that enable developing writers to become a source of writing improvement for their peers (Dyson, 1995; Lensmire, 1994; Prior, 2006; Russell, 1997; Schultz, 1997; Schultz and

Fecho, 2000). Other qualitative research with exceptional literacy teachers of elementary school students suggests additional instructional approaches for engaging learners that warrant further study with older populations (see Graham and Perin, 2007b).

When the connections between reading and writing are made explicit during instruction, a more integrated system of literacy skills develops and learning is facilitated. Historically, reading and writing have been taught as separate language skills (Nelson and Calfee, 1998). As Fitzgerald and Shanahan (2000) note, this may be due to a variety of factors, such as greater value placed on reading than writing, professional division between those who teach and study these two skills, and gaps in teachers’ skills and knowledge. Yet reading and writing depend on similar knowledge and cognitive processes, so insights in one area can lead to insights in the other. Making reciprocities explicit between reading and writing systems will facilitate skill development, contribute to metalinguistic awareness, and enhance retrieval of and access to text forms and meanings (see Graham, 2000; Graham and Hebert, 2010; Wolf, 2007).

Spelling instruction, for example, deepens awareness of correspondences between letters or letter patterns and speech sounds and thus enables forming a more specific mental representation of words for faster word reading (Ehri, 1987; McCardle, Chhabra, and Kapinus, 2008; Snow, Griffin, and Burns, 2005). A meta-analysis involving students in grades 1 to 7 shows that reading fluency is enhanced through teaching spelling or sentence construction skills (Graham and Hebert, 2010). Similarly, alphabetics instruction for reading improves spelling (Graham, 2000).

Reading comprehension improves with frequent writing, according to a recent meta-analysis of 60 experiments involving elementary school students (Graham and Hebert, 2010). Process approaches to writing, teaching sentence construction skills, and teaching text structure as part of a writing activity had a small-to-moderate impact on reading comprehension. Activities included writing questions and answers about the material read, taking notes about text, summarizing text, and analyzing and interpreting text through writing.

Teachers need to understand the components of skilled reading and writing and how they reinforce each other so that a coherent system of skills can be taught, but the differences between reading and writing should not be overlooked. Both reading and writing involve the mastery of specialized skills, knowledge, and processes and thus require dedicated instruction. Instructional programming can be designed and delivered so that all reading and writing components are developed as needed and support each other (Englert et al., 1995, 1998; Roberts and Meiring, 2006).

NEUROBIOLOGY OF READING AND WRITING DEVELOPMENT AND DIFFICULTIES

Neurobiology of Reading

Early findings on the brain pathways (neurocircuits) for reading and reading disorders came primarily from studies of acquired dyslexia associated with brain injury (Damasio and Damasio, 1983; Dejerine, 1891; Geschwind, 1965; Warrington and Shallice, 1980) or postmortem histological studies of individuals with a history of reading disability (Galaburda, 2005; Galaburda et al., 2006). Early studies implicated several posterior regions of the left hemisphere (LH) as critical to reading behavior, including the angular gyrus in the parietal lobe and the fusiform gyrus in the occipitotemporal region. In recent years, structural (MRI) and functional (EEG, MEG, PET, fMRI) neuroimaging technologies have provided a new window on neurocircuits involved in reading and its disorders (Pugh et al., 2010). The new technologies, some of which are relatively unobtrusive, allow observing levels of brain activity associated with reading and writing components. A more extensive reading circuitry has been documented with these new technologies, and the findings are broadly consistent with earlier neuropsychological research.

Specifically, across a large number of studies with skilled readers, it is seen that visual word reading (fluent decoding) involves a largely LH circuitry with temporoparietal (TP), occipitotemporal (OT), frontal, and subcortical components (for reviews, see Pugh et al., 2010; Schlaggar and McCandliss, 2007). In typically developing readers, all three of these components (with subcortical mediating influences from the basal ganglia and thalamus) come to function in a highly integrated manner (Bitan et al., 2005; Hampson et al., 2006; Seghier and Price, 2010). Indeed, at the level of neurocircuits, a foundation of skilled reading appears to be the establishment of adequate connections among distributed LH regions (operationally defined with measures of functional connectivity). This LH circuitry, when established through reading experience, supports efficient mapping of visual percepts of print onto knowledge of the phonological and semantic structures of language for fast and automatic word recognition during reading (Booth et al., 2001; Church et al., 2008; Cohen et al., 2000, 2002; Shaywitz et al., 2002).

By contrast, for both children and adults with reading disabilities (RD), there are marked functional differences, relative to typically developing readers, in language processing (see Pugh et al., 2010, for reviews) with reduced activation and connectivity at both TP and OT sites. Moreover, these differences in brain function appear to be associated with anomalies in brain structure. Structural MRI studies have identified differences, such

as reduced gray matter volumes in RD, at those regions showing functional anomalies (e.g., Brambati et al., 2004). Several studies using diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) also reveal reduced white matter connectivity for several pathways that support interregional communication among these LH foci (e.g., Niogi and McCandliss, 2006).

While establishment of this LH circuitry for fluent decoding is necessary, the goal of reading is comprehension. Research on neurocircuits that support reading beyond the word level is beginning to focus on how neurocircuits organize as readers cope with syntactic, pragmatic, and cognitive processing demands associated with sentence and text reading and comprehension (Caplan, 2004; Cooke et al., 2006; Cutting and Scarborough, 2006; Ferstl et al., 2008; Kuperberg et al., 2008; Shankweiler et al., 2008). In general, the same broad LH circuitry evident for word-level reading is observed, with additional increased activation in regions beyond those activated by simple word reading tasks (Cutting and Scarborough, 2006). A recent meta-analysis of neuroimaging studies (Ferstl et al., 2008) confirms that these higher order language processes involve an extended neural network that includes dorso-medial prefrontal cortex, posterior cingulate cortex, and heightened right hemisphere (RH) involvement. As with research on word reading, recent studies contrasting skilled and less skilled “comprehenders” reveal anomalies across these extended LH networks (Keller, Carpenter, and Just, 2001; Rimrodt et al., 2010).

Neurobiology of Writing

Reading and writing make common demands on orthographic, phonological, and semantic processing and so must involve at least partially overlapping neurocircuits (Berninger and Richards, 2002; Berninger and Winn, 2006). Available studies indicate substantial overlap (Philipose et al., 2007; Purcell et al., 2010). Research on the component systems associated with writing-related behaviors, such as handwriting (James and Gauthier, 2006; Katanoda, Yoshikawa, and Sugishita, 2001; Menon and Desmond, 2001) and spelling (Bitan et al., 2005; Booth et al., 2001; Richards, Berninger, and Fayol, 2009) is rapidly increasing. Together, these studies implicate a highly integrated perception-action neurocircuitry for writing that overlaps substantially, but not entirely, with the neurocircuitry involved in reading words and sentences. Connections between writing and reading also have been identified in the higher order aspects of writing, such as planning of written and spoken messages (see Indefrey and Levelt, 2004, for a meta-analysis), which in turn overlap with the broad circuitry for comprehension (Ferstl et al., 2008) and lexical finding (i.e., finding the right word to convey the writer’s intended meaning). It is known that reading and writing difficulties often co-occur in learners at different ages and that some of

these learners struggle more at the word level (Wagner et al., 2011) while others struggle at more abstract levels of processing (Berninger, Nagy, and Beers, 2011). More needs to be understood about shared and unshared neurocircuits at each level to better understand individual differences in the difficulties learners experience with writing.

Implications for Instruction

It is possible in future research to track populations with different literacy challenges that receive different instructional approaches to see which produce the most efficient change in neural circuitry. Although this information does not directly or completely test the effectiveness of instructional approaches, such knowledge of brain processes will be important for validating theories of reading and writing and skill acquisition. With a better understanding of how brain processing changes with age, one can also better determine whether and why certain instructional approaches are likely to generalize across populations of different ages. It will be important to extend the research to reading beyond the word level and to writing.

It will be especially valuable to understand how neurocircuits involved in reading and writing become organized, why they fail to organize properly in individuals with reading problems, how they are modified by experiential factors that include instruction and intervention, and why they do not develop as expeditiously with learning and practice in some subpopulations. More knowledge about how shared and unshared neurocircuits organize for reading and writing could help in the design of instruction that maximizes the carryover of skills from one domain to the other (e.g., identifying when and why focusing on spelling might impact silent reading or vice versa).

Ongoing developmental research is examining both structural (Giedd et al., 1997; Hua, Tembe, and Dougherty, 2009) and functional (Booth et al., 2001; Shaywitz et al., 2002) brain changes as individuals mature from early childhood into adulthood. Such research will be invaluable for understanding how learning to read and write differs at different ages. This information can be used to design optimal learning environments that take advantage of neurocognitive strengths and compensate for declines at different points in the life span. It is also important to learn how structural or functional factors constrain the basic computational skills on which learning to read depends (memory capacity, consolidation, speed of processing) (Just and Varma, 2007).

More knowledge about gene-brain-behavior relationships will be critical for understanding changes in plasticity that may affect learning to read and write in adulthood. In particular, more needs to be known about individual and developmental differences in the sensitivity of reading and writ-

ing neurocircuits. Ongoing treatment studies, which suggest that gains in reading skill after intense reading intervention produce more “normalized” brain organization for reading (Shaywitz et al., 2004; Simos et al., 2001; Temple et al., 2003), have focused mainly on younger learners. Generalization to adult learners may not be straightforward. One recent study does suggest a good deal of plasticity following reading remediation even for those disabled readers who had adequate opportunities to learn to read at a young age but did not develop adequate skills (Eden et al., 2004). Thus, it is reasonable to hypothesize that those learning to read later in life, whether because of inadequate access to instruction or learning disability, are able to achieve at least some degree of brain reorganization that is common among more typically developing readers as a result of effective instruction. An understanding of why reorganization does or does not occur and for whom it occurs requires further study.

INSTRUCTION FOR STRUGGLING READERS AND WRITERS

The principles of reading and writing instruction presented thus far are equally important for both typically developing and struggling learners. A separate, sizeable literature on interventions for struggling K-12 learners points to additional principles of instruction to help overcome specific areas of difficulty through targeted remediation. Both children and adults experience difficulties with cognitive and linguistic processes of reading and writing that require attention during instruction to develop literacy proficiency. In Chapter 7 , we describe in more detail the difficulties with component reading and writing processes that adults with learning difficulties may experience and review the literature on accommodations, used mainly in college settings, which enable students to benefit from academic instruction and demonstrate their knowledge and skills. Because research on interventions to develop the reading and writing skills of adults with learning disabilities is limited, we describe here what is known from research with children and to some degree adolescent students about how to intervene with struggling readers and writers.

Decontextualized Interventions

Before discussing additional principles of instruction for learners with disabilities, we first note that there has been a tradition in the field of learning disabilities to offer students with reading and writing difficulties training targeted to general cognitive or sensory processing deficits believed to cause the person’s problem with academic learning. This has led to interventions involving balance beams, colored lenses, and brain retraining exercises; such programs are often designed to remediate what some

researchers have identified as core deficits in specific lower level sensory or motor processes (visual, auditory, cerebellar) believed to underlie the academic learning problems (see, e.g., Lovegrove, Martin, and Slaghuis, 1986; Nicolson, Fawcett, and Dean, 2001; Stein, 2001; Tallal, 1980, 2004). Training in motor, visual, neural, or cognitive processes without academic content, however, does not lead to better academic outcomes for children with learning disabilities (Fletcher et al., 2007). There is no evidence that nonreading interventions of this sort will improve the reading outcomes of those with reading disabilities. This is not to say that interventions targeting cognitive processes used in reading would never be helpful, but that it is only useful to develop and practice these processes as they are needed in the context of literacy instruction and literacy practice.

Thus, the first principle below is supported by findings that argue against this type of decontextualized intervention for reading and writing difficulties. The principles that follow specify further that, rather than needing instruction that is qualitatively different from the instruction that is effective with typically developing learners, learners who struggle benefit from certain adaptations—even more explicit and systemic reading and writing instruction; enhanced supports for the transfer and generalization of skills and opportunities for practice; attention to maladaptive attributions, which can be particularly important to address for struggling learners; and scaffolded and differentiated instruction that targets specific difficulties while continuing to develop all the skills needed for reading and writing development.

Principles of Instruction for Struggling Learners

• Interventions that directly target specific literacy difficulties in the context of explicit reading and writing instruction result in better literacy outcomes for struggling readers and writers.

This principle is based on solid evidence (but often from studies of young students) that effective intervention for literacy learning problems directly targets specific difficulties in literacy skills (Fletcher et al., 2007; Foorman et al., 1998; Lovett, Barron, and Benson, 2003; Morris et al., 2010; Swanson, Harris, and Graham, 2003; Torgesen et al., 1999). As mentioned earlier in this chapter, good remedial interventions that address core areas of processing deficit in the context of literacy instruction appear to partially normalize patterns of brain activation for those with learning disabilities: their brain activation profiles after effective intervention come to resemble those of more able readers as they perform reading-related tasks—for example, judging whether two nonwords (e.g., lete and jeat) rhyme, a

task with both phonological and orthographic processing demands (Meyler et al., 2008; Shaywitz et al., 2004; Simos et al., 2002a; Temple et al., 2003).

Most who struggle with reading and writing, particularly those with severe literacy learning disorders, have specific difficulties in aspects of speech or language that impact their ability to learn to read and write, such as poor phonological awareness and phonological processing skills, lags in oral language development (e.g., vocabulary, syntax), and slow naming speed (that may or may not be independent of phonological deficits) (Catts and Hogan, 2003; Liberman, 1971; Liberman and Shankweiler, 1991; Pennington and Bishop, 2009; Schatschneider et al., 2004; Shankweiler and Crain, 1986; Share and Stanovich, 1995; Vellutino et al., 2004; Wagner et al., 1997; Wagner, Torgesen, and Rashotte, 1994; Wolf and Bowers, 1999). Based on studies mostly with younger participants, it is reasonable to assume (subject to needed empirical verification with adults) that these difficulties can be remediated by increasing the time and intensity of instruction that is focused on building the language skills on which fluent reading and writing skills depend.

Targeted interventions also improve the performance of struggling writers. Although some who experience difficulties with writing have other difficulties with learning (Graham and Harris, 2005) or language processing (Dockrell, Lindsay, and Connelly, 2009; Smith-Lock, Nickels, and Mortensen, 2008), not all aspects of writing are necessarily affected (see, e.g., Mortensen, Smith-Lock, and Nickels, 2008). In these cases, interventions that target a specific component skill on which writing depends have had some success. Teaching the language skill of phonological awareness, for example, results in better spelling performance for those who are weak spellers (Bradley and Bryant, 1985; O’Connor, Notari-Syverson, and Vadasky, 1996). A few studies have shown that teaching vocabulary to developing writers enhances their writing performance (Duin and Graves, 1987; Popadopoulou, 2007; Thibodeau, 1964). Sentence combining, an oral language practice that often relies heavily on combining smaller sentences into larger ones when speaking, has improved the quality of writing in adolescents (Graham and Perin, 2007b). In addition, some limited evidence with elementary school students experiencing difficulties with regulating attention shows that teaching ways to monitor attention while writing improves writing skills and increases the amount of text written (Harris et al., 1994; Rumsey and Ballard, 1985). Again, these findings must be verified with adult learners. Common to almost all effective interventions is that they targeted specific areas of processing as part of teaching and practicing the act of writing, instead of trying to remediate processing problems in isolation.

Notably, the process-writing approach, which does not systematically target specific difficulties (Graves, 1983), has not been effective with strug-

gling writers in a recent meta-analysis of five studies (Sandmel and Graham, in press). Varied forms of the approach are often used, however, and research is needed to determine whether some form is effective with some struggling learners.

• Struggling learners benefit from more intense instruction, more explicit instruction, and even more opportunities to practice.

The most significant gains obtained in reading interventions are associated with more intense, explicit, and systematic delivery of instruction (Fletcher et al., 2007; Torgesen et al., 2001). Reading interventions are especially effective if they teach to mastery, include academic content, monitor progress, and offer sufficient scaffolding of skills and emotional support (Fletcher et al., 2007). Greater time devoted to literacy activities allows for the additional explicit instruction required to remediate skills; opportunities to address gaps in vocabulary and language knowledge; and the additional exposures needed to consolidate, review, and explicitly teach for the generalization of newly acquired skills (Berninger et al., 2002; Blachman et al., 2004; Lovett et al., 2000; Torgesen et al., 2001; Wise, Ring, and Olson, 2000).

Similarly, almost all of the strategies that have proven to be effective in teaching struggling writers have involved intense and explicit instruction with ample opportunities to practice taught skills (see the meta-analysis by Graham and Perin, 2007a; Rogers and Graham, 2008). This research included teaching planning strategies together with genre knowledge (see the meta-analysis by Graham and Harris, 2003), revision (Graham, 2006a; Schumaker et al., 1982), handwriting and spelling (Berninger et al., 1997, 1998; Graham, 1999), as well as sentence construction (Saddler and Graham, 2005) and paragraph construction skills (Sonntag and McLaughlin, 1984; Wallace and Bott, 1989). In addition, the self-regulated strategy development model for teaching writing strategies has been more effective than other approaches for teaching writing strategies to struggling writers (Graham, 2006a). It involves explicitly teaching how to regulate the use of strategies and requires developing skills to a criterion, unlike other approaches that are time-limited.

• Struggling learners need enhanced support for the generalization and transfer of new literacy skills.

A majority of struggling learners do not apply and transfer newly learned literacy skills spontaneously. To be effective, instruction for all learners must attend to the generalization of new skills and knowledge and include opportunities to practice these in varied tasks outside the intervention context. This

observation is particularly true, however, for those with reading disabilities. For example, children with reading disabilities demonstrate problems with transfer that are specific to printed language; these difficulties are not evident on learning tasks with parallel cognitive demands but no phonological processing requirements (Benson, 2000; Benson, Lovett, and Kroeber, 1997; Lovett, Barron, and Benson, 2003). Children with severe reading disabilities also demonstrated marked transfer-of-learning failures even when instructed target words were well learned and remembered (Lovett et al., 1989, 1990). For example, in one study, those who learned to read the word bake and practiced on words with the same spelling pattern (e.g., rake, fake, lake ) could not later reliably identify make (Lovett et al., 1990).

A recent synthesis of intervention research with adolescent struggling readers (Edmonds et al., 2009) confirmed that older struggling readers do benefit from explicit reading comprehension strategy instruction, but these skills did not generalize well. It is possible that more explicit training and scaffolding would support generalization, as might more practice opportunities.

Struggling readers experience particular difficulties in acquiring self-regulatory strategies across a variety of literacy tasks (Levin, 1990; Pressley, 1991; Swanson, 1999; Swanson and Alexander, 1997; Swanson and Saez, 2003; Swanson and Siegel, 2001; Wong, 1991), and these difficulties are likely to affect the transfer and generalization failures observed among struggling learners (Harris, Graham, and Pressley, 1992; Meltzer, 1994). For example, when children with reading disabilities have received strategy instruction, some appear to remain novices relative to their more able peers because they fail to transform simple strategies into more efficient forms (Swanson, Hoskyn, and Lee, 1999; Zimmerman, 2000a, 2000b). Multidimensional interventions that combine explicit skills instruction with the teaching of specific strategies for reading can help those with reading disabilities to generalize strategies and skills (Lovett et al., 2003, 2005; Lovett, Lacerenza, and Borden, 2000; Morris et al., 2010; Swanson, 1999). Faster growth and better outcomes in word identification, for example, are attained when a multidimensional intervention is adopted, particularly one that combines direct and dialogue-based instruction, explicit teaching of different levels of syllabic segmentation, and teaching of multiple decoding strategies. Although most of this research has focused on word reading, the critical importance of explicit instruction for developing the flexible use of strategies to identify words and read extended text cannot be over-emphasized when it comes to achieving generalization and maintenance of remedial gains.

Although the evidence base for struggling writers is smaller than for reading, it suggests that struggling writers also have difficulty maintaining and generalizing gains from instruction (Wong, 1994). The findings need

to be interpreted cautiously, however, because maintenance decrements do not appear to be severe (Graham, 2006a; Graham and Harris, 2003), and in most research maintenance of gains was assessed for no more than a month from the end of the intervention. Generalizing specific writing skills to tasks and contexts beyond those in which they were taught is not an all-or-none phenomenon, and transfer often appears to generalize to some degree (Graham, 2006a; Graham and Harris, 2003).

A very small body of research with elementary and middle school students who are struggling writers shows that maintenance and generalization of taught writing skills and strategies can be facilitated by teaching target material to mastery, having students set goals for using the skills and strategies and monitoring their progress in doing so, analyzing when and how to use the skills and strategies, and enlisting peers as a resource for reminding and helping struggling writers to apply new skills (Harris, Graham, and Mason, 2006; Sawyer, Graham, and Harris, 1992; Stoddard and MacArthur, 1993).

• Maladaptive attributions, beliefs, and motivational profiles of struggling learners need to be understood and targeted during instruction.

The motivational profiles of struggling and typical readers and writers can be very different. Struggling learners are usually lower in intrinsic motivation and a sense of self-efficacy for reading and writing, more likely to be extrinsically motivated or unmotivated, and more likely to attribute failure to internal factors (e.g., ability) and success to external factors (e.g., luck)—all of which lead to disengagement from reading and writing activities, less reading and writing experience, and markedly lower literacy achievement (Deci and Ryan, 2002b; Graham, 1990a; Graham, Schwartz, and MacArthur, 1993; Guthrie and Davis, 2003; Harter, Whitesell, and Kowalski, 1992; Moje et al., 2000; Morgan et al., 2008; Ryan, Stiller, and Lynch, 1994; Sawyer, Graham, and Harris, 1992; Taboada et al., 2009; Wigfield et al., 2008). Specific difficulties in these domains include maladaptive attributions about effort and achievement, learned helplessness rather than mastery-oriented motivational profiles, immature and poorly developed epistemic beliefs, and disengagement from reading and writing activities.

There is a dearth of experimental evidence on how to build adaptive attributions and motivations for struggling adult readers and writers during the course of intervention, although research with children and adolescents with reading disabilities is emerging (Guthrie et al., 2009; Lovett, Lacerenza, and Borden, 2000; Morris et al., 2010; Wigfield et al., 2008; Wolf, Miller, and Donnelly, 2000). In other research, positive attri-

butional change has been observed for children in middle school with the effective remediation of reading disabilities. Emerging research with struggling adolescent readers suggests the importance of intervening directly to address the attributional and motivational correlates of literacy learning difficulties (see Guthrie, Wigfield, and You, in press). In this research, adding attributional retraining to comprehension strategy instruction was associated with better maintenance of gains (Berkeley, Mastropieri, and Scruggs, 2011).

Similarly, few writing studies have examined how to address the maladaptive attributions and beliefs that affect struggling writers (Wong et al., 2003). Adding attribution retraining to strategy instruction in writing is a promising approach that has enhanced the compositions of struggling writers (Garcia-Sánchez and Fidalgo-Redondo, 2006; Sexton, Harris, and Graham, 1998). For example, one writing program improved struggling writers’ motivation to write by including components for enhancing multiple affective factors, including self-efficacy, self-esteem, expectations, and beliefs about writing (García and de Caso, 2004).

• Intervention should be differentiated to scaffold learning and meet the individual needs of those who struggle with literacy.

Scaffolding is the term used to describe teaching approaches in which the instructor or presentation of tools supports execution of a skill until the student gradually develops full mastery. Differentiated instruction is the term used for teaching that meets individual and small group needs by providing learning activities and supports for the development of skills that have not yet been acquired but that are necessary to move through an instructional sequence. With this type of scaffolded and integrated instruction and intervention model, learning deficits are addressed and remediated while teaching all of the necessary skills for reading and writing development that enable struggling students to participate and move through the broader program of instruction (National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, 2000a). Differentiation avoids provision of extra or specialized instruction to those who do not need it, which is counterproductive and could lead learners to view literacy activity as uninteresting.

One of the premises of special education, the arm of educational practice that specializes in learning difficulties, is that instruction should be further tailored to meet the processing needs of individual students (Edmonds et al., 2009; Scammacca et al., 2007). As discussed earlier, to date, little evidence from controlled intervention studies supports the tailoring of literacy instruction to difficulties with more general processing; what seems most important is that the intervention offer explicit, systematic, and intense reading remediation targeted to develop component literacy skills in the

context of reading instruction and reading practice (Fletcher et al., 2007; Morris et al., 2010; Torgesen et al., 2001).

Differentiation of instruction also appears to be effective for writing. Most of this research has focused on teaching planning strategies to struggling writers who spend little time systematically planning their papers (e.g., Englert et al., 1991). The instruction has a positive impact on the quality and structure of text produced by struggling writers (see meta-analyses by Graham, 2006a; Graham and Harris, 2003; Graham and Perin, 2007a; Rogers and Graham, 2008). MacArthur and Lembo (2009) also found this to be a productive strategy with adult literacy learners. Similarly, a few studies show that instruction that targets the handwriting or spelling of elementary school students experiencing difficulties with these skills improves these skills as well as how much the students write and their facility with constructing sentences (Berninger et al., 1997, 1998; Graham, Harris, and Fink, 2000; Graham, Harris, and Fink-Chorzempa, 2002). In addition, the writing performance of middle and high school struggling writers was enhanced when they were taught sentence construction skills (e.g., Saddler and Graham, 2005; Schmidt et al., 1988).

READING AND WRITING ACROSS THE LIFE SPAN

Although much is known from research about the processes involved in the development of reading and writing and effective instruction for typically developing readers and writers and those who struggle, almost no research has focused on changes in reading and writing processes from early childhood through adulthood. This research will be needed to establish whether adults with low literacy have not yet achieved an asymptotic level of skill along a common learning trajectory or, perhaps less likely, whether they need truly alternative pathways to competence. A small body of research on cognitive aging has, however, examined differences in reading and writing processes between younger and older adults, although some studies examine change in cognitive functions from the late 30s or 40s. Most of those who receive adult literacy instruction are older adolescents and young adults (e.g., according to Tamassia et al., 2007); in the program year 2001-2002, 34 percent were 16- to 24-years old and 46 percent were 25- to 44-years old. Yet a significant portion of adult learners (18 percent) are older than 44. Thus, we review this research with older populations to identify whether adults may experience unique challenges in developing and using their literacy skills in midlife and beyond. There is a lack of research on changes in literacy (and learning processes) from young adulthood to middle adulthood because most research has focused on young populations or older adults.

An important caveat to the findings reported here is that the research

has focused not on older adults who need to develop their literacy but on relatively well-educated and literate populations. The research typically compares the performance of older adults to that of college students who serve as samples of convenience. Thus caution must be applied in generalizing the findings to populations of adults who need to develop literacy skills later in life.

In general, the processes involved in the component skills of reading and writing studied thus far appear mostly preserved into later adulthood, although older adults do experience declines in areas affected by perception and speed of processing (Durgunoğlu and Öney, 2002; Stine-Morrow, Loveless, and Soederberg, 1996). Word recognition reappears to be fundamentally preserved throughout the adult life span. With age, readers tend to rely more on recognizing a whole word as a unit instead of decoding it using phonics skills (Spieler and Balota, 2000), although phonics facility remains essential for reading new words. As in younger readers, eventual automatic recognition of newly learned words occurs through adulthood (Lien et al., 2006). In both spoken and written communication, aging may bring reliance on the broader discourse context to decode individual words (Madden, 1988; Stine and Wingfield, 1990; Stine-Morrow et al., 2008; Wingfield et al., 1985).

Vocabulary knowledge is maintained and has the potential to grow throughout adulthood (Birren and Morrison, 1961; Schaie, 2005). For example, the ability to recognize the meanings of words in a text appears to be intact (Burke and Peters, 1986; Burke, White, and Diaz, 1987; Light, Valencia-Laver, and Zavis, 1991). It is possible, however, for vocabulary growth to decelerate later in life, perhaps because declines in working memory hinder inferring the meanings of novel words in the course of ordinary reading (McGinnis and Zelinski, 2000, 2003).

Reading comprehension can become compromised in several respects with age. Sensory impairment, which becomes more prevalent in later adulthood, may require adult readers (and listeners) to allocate more attention to decoding the surface form, which reduces cognitive resources available for understanding the meaning of text (Dickinson and Rabbitt, 1991; Stine-Morrow and Miller, 2009; Wingfield, Tun, and McCoy, 2005). Phonological skills also may be affected by sensory acuity deficits (Hartley and Harris, 2001), presenting a barrier to comprehension.

Skills in basic parsing of syntax may remain intact throughout the life span (Caplan and Waters, 1999), although age-related declines in processing capacity may reduce comprehension of syntactically complex text (Kemper, 1987; Norman, Kemper, and Kynette, 1992). The production of utterances in both speech and writing shows reliable trends toward syntactic simplification and reduced informational density with age (Kemper, 1987; Kemper et al., 2001; Norman, Kemper, and Kynette, 1992), so one

would assume reasonably that the ability to read more complex and dense texts might be slowed or otherwise compromised. Comprehension of complex constructions may require more controlled/executive processing with age (Wingfield and Grossman, 2006). For example, older adults may find it more necessary to use such strategies as making notes and rereading text elements.

Decreased ability to rapidly construct meaning from language may result from age-related declines in mental processing capacity (Federmeier et al., 2003; Hartley, 1988; Hartley et al., 1994; Stine and Hindman, 1994). Aging readers also may allocate relatively less attention to the semantic analysis of sentences (Radvansky et al., 2001). With age, people usually experience decreases in memory for text (Johnson, 2003; Radvansky et al., 2001; Stine-Morrow and Shake, 2009; Zelinski and Gilewski, 1988), perhaps beginning as early as midlife (ages 40-45) (Ferstl, 2006; Van der Linden et al., 1999). These declines are mitigated by routinely engaging in activities that require text memory, by having high verbal ability, and by having knowledge related to the topic of the text (Hultsch and Dixon, 1983; Meyer and Rice, 1989; Stine-Morrow et al., 2008).

Older readers tend to remember information from elaborated texts that provide redundant support for key information better rather than isolated facts (Daneman and Merikle, 1996; Stine and Wingfield, 1990; Stine-Morrow et al., 2008). The ability to generate inferences about the larger situation described by a text is mostly intact (Radvansky and Dijkstra, 2007). Yet comprehension skills can be affected by decreased capacity for making inferences as a result of memory decline. For example, older adults can have difficulty with important inferences that require remembering text from one sentence to later ones. As a consequence, they may create a fuzzier or less complete representation of the text (Cohen, 1981; Hess, 1994; Light and Capps, 1986; Light et al., 1994; McGinnis, 2009; McGinnis et al., 2008; Noh et al., 2007).

An important strength of adulthood is accumulated knowledge that often occurs as a consequence of literacy. The dependence on knowledge in reading may increase throughout adulthood (Meyer, Talbot, and Ranalli, 2007; Miller, 2003, 2009; Miller and Stine-Morrow, 1998; Miller, Cohen, and Wingfield, 2006). Knowledge has a variety of forms, including the ability to articulate ideas (declarative knowledge), skilled performance (procedural knowledge), and implicit processes in work and social contexts (tacit knowledge), and encompasses the range of human experiences (e.g., cultural conventions, facts, conceptual systems, schemas that abstract essential elements of a system and their organization). Such knowledge can enhance text comprehension through a number of routes (Ackerman, 2008; Ackerman and Beier, 2006; Ackerman et al., 2001; Barnett and Ceci, 2002; Beier and Ackerman, 2001, 2005; Charness, 2006; Ericsson,

2006; Graesser, Haberlandt, and Koizumi, 1987; Griffin, Jee, and Wiley, 2009; Miller, 2009; Miller and Stine-Morrow, 1998; Miller, Cohen, and Wingfield, 2006; Miller et al., 2004; Noordman and Vonk, 1992). Knowledge enables, for example, understanding relations among concepts not obvious to the novice, understanding vocabulary and jargon, abstract reasoning (e.g., analogy), making inferences and connections in the text, and monitoring the success of efforts made to comprehend.

Less research has focused on changes in writing processes with age. Although vocabulary knowledge either stabilizes or grows through adulthood, especially if the adult continues to engage with text (Stanovich, West, and Harrison, 1995), adults may have difficulty with recalling a word, may substitute or transpose speech sounds in a word, and may make spelling errors more frequently beginning in midlife (Burke and Shafto, 2004; Burke et al., 1991; MacKay and Abrams, 1998).

As people age, the speech and writing they produce has simpler syntax and is less dense with information (Kemper, 1987; Kemper et al., 2001; Norman, Kemper, and Kynette, 1992). The tendency to produce less complex syntax is due partly to declines in working memory (Norman, Kemper, and Kynette, 1992), but also to some extent may reflect greater awareness that simpler syntax is easier for the listener or reader to understand. There is not a universal trend, however, toward simplified writing with age. For example, although syntax becomes simpler over time, narrative storytelling becomes more complex (Kemper et al., 1990).

In sum, not enough is known about the ways in which reading and writing processes change across the life span to determine whether or how instructional approaches would need to be modified to make them more effective for learners of different ages. Most research has concentrated on young children at the beginning of reading development and on older adults at the opposite end of the life span who are proficient readers benefiting from the fruition of knowledge growth but beginning to experience some declines in processing capacity. The findings available hint, however, at some of the underlying cognitive processes that are likely to remain intact in older adults. They also suggest some challenges in developing and using literacy skills later in life that may require enhanced supports.

SUMMARY AND DISCUSSION

A complete understanding of reading and writing development requires knowledge of the learner (the learners’ knowledge, skills, literacy practices, motivations, and neurocognitive processes) and features of the instructional context (types of text, literacy tools, literacy activities, instructor knowledge, beliefs, and skills) that scaffold or impede learning. Because different disciplines study different aspects of literacy, research has yet to systemati-

cally examine how various social, cultural, and contextual forces interact with neurocognitive processes to facilitate or constrain the development of literacy.

The major components of reading and writing are well documented. Depending on the assessed needs of the learner, instruction needs to target decoding and strategies for identifying unfamiliar words. Instruction should focus on depth, breadth, and flexibility of vocabulary knowledge and use. Learners also need strategies for comprehending and learning from text. Instruction should support the development of knowledge, including background, topic, and world knowledge. Learners also need metalinguistic knowledge (phonology, morphology) and discourse knowledge (genre and rhetorical structure). Metacognitive skills may need to be developed to facilitate comprehension and meet goals for reading.

Figure 2-1 shows the writing skills that may need to be targeted with instruction, among them sentence construction skills, planning and revising, spelling, and usage (capitalization and punctuation skills). As for reading, knowledge to develop for writing includes background, topic, and world knowledge as well as knowledge of the potential audiences for written products. Writing instruction, like reading instruction, needs to develop facility with writing for particular purposes, contexts, and content domains. Writing also requires mastery of tools required for writing (typing, word processing, and handwriting).

Literacy development, like the learning of any complex task, requires a range of explicit teaching and implicit learning guided by an expert. Explicit and systematic instruction is effective in developing the components of reading and writing and facilitating the integration and transfer of skills to new tasks and context. Full competence requires extensive practice with varied forms of text and tasks that demand different combinations of literate skill. It also requires learning how to use tools required in a society for producing and using text for communication, self-expression, and collaboration. Principles of effective reading and writing instruction are summarized in Boxes 2-2 and 2-4 . Box 2-5 lists practices shown to be effective in the development of writing. Reading and writing involve many shared components and processes. Instruction that includes activities that capitalize on and make explicit the relations between reading and writing facilitates development of a better integrated and mutually reinforcing literacy system.

A sizeable literature on efficacious interventions for struggling learners points to additional principles for teaching reading and writing to this population that include (1) direct targeting of specific areas of difficulty in the context of explicit reading and writing instruction; (2) more intense instruction, more explicit instruction, and even more opportunities to practice; (3) direct targeting of the generalization and transfer of learning; (4)

targeting of maladaptive attributions and beliefs; and (5) differentiation of instruction to meet the particular needs of those who struggle or have diagnosed disabilities in the course of broader instruction to develop reading and writing skills.

Several limitations in current knowledge of component processes indicate that research is needed to (1) develop more integrated and comprehensive models of reading comprehension processes, including metacognitive components, to develop more complete approaches to instruction and assessment; (2) understand the relation of fluency to comprehension and how best to develop fluency; (3) identify efficacious methods for developing vocabulary and other aspects of linguistic knowledge for reading and writing proficiency; (4) develop more integrated models of writing processes and writing instruction; (5) develop methods of teaching reading and writing in tandem with world and topic knowledge in academic, disciplinary, or content areas; (6) understand the neurobiology of reading and writing to test theories and models of typical and atypical developmental processes, develop more sensitive assessments, guide teaching and treatment of disability, and prevent reading and writing difficulties; and (7) understand the social and contextual forces on reading and writing and the implications both for the design of instruction to develop valued functional literacy skills and the assessment of these skills as part of evaluating the effectiveness of instructional outcomes.

Cognitive aging research suggests that adults may experience some age-related neurocognitive declines affecting reading and writing processes and speed of learning that might need consideration during instruction. Most research has concentrated on young children at the beginning of reading development and on older adults at the opposite end of the life span who are proficient readers beginning to experience some declines. As a result, more needs to be known about how reading and writing processes change across the life span to determine how to make instruction effective for learners of different ages.

As Chapter 3 makes clear, except for a few intervention studies, the study of component literacy skills and processes has not been a priority in research with adults, nor has the research fully incorporated knowledge of the practices that develop reading and writing skills in K-12 students. The population of adult learners is highly diverse. Adults bring varied life experiences, knowledge, education levels, skills, and motivations to learning that need attention in instructional design. Research with adolescents and adults will be required to validate, identify the boundaries of, and extend current knowledge of literacy to identify how best to meet the particular literacy development needs of well-defined subgroups of learners.

A high level of literacy in both print and digital media is required for negotiating most aspects of 21st-century life, including supporting a family, education, health, civic participation, and competitiveness in the global economy. Yet, more than 90 million U.S. adults lack adequate literacy. Furthermore, only 38 percent of U.S. 12th graders are at or above proficient in reading.

Improving Adult Literacy Instruction synthesizes the research on literacy and learning to improve literacy instruction in the United States and to recommend a more systemic approach to research, practice, and policy. The book focuses on individuals ages 16 and older who are not in K-12 education. It identifies factors that affect literacy development in adolescence and adulthood in general, and examines their implications for strengthening literacy instruction for this population. It also discusses technologies for learning that can assist with multiple aspects of teaching, assessment,and accommodations for learning.

There is inadequate knowledge about effective instructional practices and a need for better assessment and ongoing monitoring of adult students' proficiencies, weaknesses, instructional environments, and progress, which might guide instructional planning. Improving Adult Literacy Instruction recommends a program of research and innovation to validate, identify the boundaries of, and extend current knowledge to improve instruction for adults and adolescents outside school. The book is a valuable resource for curriculum developers, federal agencies such as the Department of Education, administrators, educators, and funding agencies.

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Positive Partnership: Librarians Support Student Athlete Academics

University of Arizona librarians partnered with an athletics support program to help students hone their research and writing skills.

By Ashley Mowreader

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The University of Arizona CATS Academic program partnered with library staff to provide personalized, embedded support to student athletes on campus.

University of Arizona

For many students, the biggest barrier to accessing support resources is not knowing that the services exist. A July 2023 study by Tyton Partners found 60 percent of students are not aware of the full scope of offerings at their institution, limiting their ability to receive help from campus partners.

At the University of Arizona, staff working alongside student athletes wanted to better their reading and writing skills, so they established a strategic partnership with campus librarians to increase awareness and usage of supports.

Since launching the initiative in 2021, staff have seen hundreds of student athletes engage with research and writing tutors, helping them achieve regular academic goals.

The background: Arizona’s 500 or so student athletes receive wraparound holistic support from a team called CATS, which stands for commitment to an athlete’s total success, and is a play on the team’s mascot, the Wildcat.

CATS Academics is the curricula-focused arm of the team, helping provide supports, alongside the Student Success and Retention Innovation teams.

In the past, CATS Academics had a writing program within their facility (which is also home to study spaces and spaces for advising) that focused on helping students put together essays for class, but more recently, staff realized students didn’t have as many challenges with writing as they did with research and understanding course materials, explains Marisol Quiroz, director of CATS academics and assistant athletic director.

To respond to this need, Mary Hartman, a senior learning specialist in CATS, led a team to reimagine the program as a literacy lab, focused more on reading and writing support in appointments.

There was still a need for research help though, so Hartman partnered with Paula Johnson, an associate librarian for student learning and engagement and Beth Reese, research and learning assistant, to make athletes familiar with library staff and services.

“We recognized that our students were not utilizing those services or didn’t know much about it, and so it was just, ‘Let’s give them an introduction to what the library provides and all of the resources they have,’” Hartman says.

How it works: Several years ago, Hartman took a group of athletes on a “field trip” to the library over the summer to tour the facility, which had recently undergone a transformation, and learn how to navigate the library website.

“Our trip to the library was critical,” Hartman says, both in making students more comfortable with using the library but also in finding which resources they need.

The field trip evolved into a more consistent partnership in which CATS hosted peer tutors, called PICS (peer information counselors), and graduate assistants to offer regular tutoring hours at CATS Academics’ facilities in order to support athletes with their writing.

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To do so, Hartman and Johnson coordinated schedules to understand what times would be most impactful for the athletes and then assigned PICs to work at the facility for the term or academic year.

“It can get a little tricky, kind of like a puzzle, piecing things together,” Hartman says. “But it’s gone really well, and we’ve been able to work through that.”

From there, the staff establishes regular service hours and posts them for student athletes to drop in as they need support.

Two students sit in a computer lab working on their laptops.

A peer tutor works with a student athlete, helping the student become familiar with the library website, proper citation and research writing.

Mary Hartman/University of Arizona

The PIC serves as a library ambassador, highlighting what structures and services are on campus, but also as a research tutor, to build up their classmates’ analytical and informational skills. The PICs vary sometimes based on availability, but in a typical year, CATS will have four or so dedicated tutors for the athletes.

The impact: During fall 2023, CATS had 13 weeks of tutoring support, with an average of eight hours per week served by PICs and graduate assistants, with a total of 756 student appointments scheduled in study hall or literacy lab. One graduate assistant also developed three, one-hour help sessions for a general education course undertaken by many athletes to provide additional research support.

In spring 2024, the center offered four hours a week and held 260 or so student appointments. An additional two help sessions were provided for the same general education course.

One of the program’s goals is to be proactive in connecting students with support, which staff say has been true of the program. Anecdotally, students share they’re more likely to use library facilities, more comfortable navigating the website and know where to turn when they do have big projects or essays on the horizon.

“I think the students recognize the importance of the support and that it’s here for them,” Hartman says. “And especially that it’s in the building, because then they don’t necessarily have to go to the library. We already have that embedded here.”

In the future, staff hope to conduct further analysis on the initiative to better track effectiveness and how it’s making gains on students’ academics.

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Relations between Reading and Writing: A Longitudinal Examination from Grades 3 to 6

Young-suk grace kim.

University of California Irvine

Yaacov Petscher

Florida Center for Reading Research

Jeanne Wanzek

Vanderbilt University

Stephanie Al Otaiba

Southern Methodist University

We investigated developmental trajectories of and the relation between reading and writing (word reading, reading comprehension, spelling, and written composition), using longitudinal data from students in Grades 3 to 6 in the US. Results revealed that word reading and spelling were best described as having linear growth trajectories whereas reading comprehension and written composition showed nonlinear growth trajectories with a quadratic function during the examined developmental period. Word reading and spelling were consistently strongly related (.73 ≤ r s ≤ .80) whereas reading comprehension and written composition were weakly related (.21 ≤ r s ≤ .37). Initial status and linear slope were negatively and moderately related for word reading (−.44) whereas they were strongly and positively related for spelling (.73). Initial status of word reading predicted initial status and growth rate of spelling; and growth rate of word reading predicted growth rate of spelling. In contrast, spelling did not predict word reading. When it comes to reading comprehension and writing, initial status of reading comprehension predicted initial status (.69), but not linear growth rate, of written comprehension. These results indicate that reading-writing relations are stronger at the lexical level than at the discourse level and may be a unidirectional one from reading to writing at least between Grades 3 and 6. Results are discussed in light of the interactive dynamic literacy model of reading-writing relations, and component skills of reading and writing development.

Reading and writing are the foundational skills for academic achievement and civic life. Many tasks, including those in school, require both reading and writing (e.g., taking notes or summarizing a chapter). Although reading and writing have been considered separately in much of the previous research in terms of theoretical models and curriculum ( Shanahan, 2006 ), their relations have been recognized (see Fitzgerald & Shanahan, 2000 ; Langer & Flihan, 2000 ; Shanahan, 2006 for review). In the present study, our goal was to expand our understanding of developmental trajectories of reading and writing (word reading, reading comprehension, spelling, and written composition), and to examine developmental relations between reading and writing at the lexical level (word reading and spelling) and discourse level (reading comprehension and written composition), using longitudinal data from upper-elementary grades (Grades 3 to 6).

Successful reading comprehension entails construction of an accurate situation model based on the given written text ( Kintsch, 1988 ). Therefore, decoding or reading words is a necessary skill (Hoover & Gough, 1990). The other necessary skill is comprehension, which involves parsing and analysis of linguistic information of the given text. This requires working memory and attention to hold and access linguistic information (Daneman & Merikle, 1996; Kim, 2017 ) as well as oral language skills such as vocabulary and grammatical knowledge ( Cromley & Azevedo, 2007 ; Elleman, Lindo, Morphy, & Compton, 2009 ; Kim, 2015 , 2017 ; National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, 2000 ; Vellutino, Tunmer, Jaccard, & Chen, 2007 ). In addition, construction of an accurate situation model requires making inferences and integrating propositions across the text and with one’s background knowledge to establish global coherence. These inference and integration processes draw on higher order cognitive skills such as inference, perspective taking, and comprehension monitoring ( Cain & Oakhill, 1999 ; Cain, Oakhill, & Bryant, 2004 ; Cromley & Azevedo, 2007 ; Kim, 2015 , 2017 ; Kim & Phillips, 2014 ; Oakhill & Cain, 2012 ; Pressley & Ghatala, 1990 ).

In writing (written composition), one has to generate content in print. As a production task, transcription skills (spelling, handwriting or keyboarding fluency) are necessary (e.g., Berninger & Amtmann, 2002; Graham, Berninger, Abbott, Abbott, & Whitaker, 1997 ; Juel, Griffith, & Gough, 1986 ). Generated ideas undergo translation into oral language in order to express ideas and propositions with accurate words and sentence structures; and thus, writing draws on oral language skills ( Berninger & Abbott, 2010 ; Kim et al., 2011 , 2013 , 2015a ; Olinghouse, 2008 ). Of course, quality writing is not a sum of words and sentences, but requires local and global coherence ( Kim & Schatschneider, 2017 ; Bamberg, 1983 ). Coherence is achieved when propositions are logically and tightly presented and organized, and meet the needs of the audience. This draws on higher order cognitive skills such as inference, perspective taking ( Kim & Schatschneider, 2017 ; Kim & Graham, 2018 ), and self-regulation and monitoring (Berninger & Amtmann, 2002; Kim & Graham, 2018 ; Limpo & Alves, 2013 ). Coordinating these multiple processes of generating, translating, and transcribing ideas relies on working memory to access short term and long term memory (Berninger & Amtmann, 2002; Hayes & Chenoweth, 2007 ; Kellogg, 1999 ; Kim & Schatschneider, 2017 ) as well as sustained attention ( Berninger & Winn, 2006 ).

What is apparent in this brief review is similarities of component skills of reading and writing skills (see Kim & Graham, 2018 ; Fitzgerald & Shanahan, 2000 ). Then, what is the nature of reading and writing relations 1 ? According to the interactive and dynamic literacy model ( Kim & Graham, 2018 ), reading and writing are hypothesized to co-develop and influence each other during development (interactive), but the relations change as a function of grain size and developmental phase (dynamic). The interactive nature of the relation is expected for two reasons. First, if reading and writing share language and cognitive resources to a large extent, then, development of those skills would influence both reading and writing. Second, the functional and experiential aspect of reading and writing facilitates co-development ( Fitzgerald & Shanahan, 2000 ). The majority of reading and writing tasks occur together (e.g., writing in response to written source materials; note taking after reading); and this functional aspect would facilitate and reinforce learning key knowledge and meta-awareness about print and text attributes (e.g., text structures) in the context of reading and writing.

Reading-writing relations are also expected to be dynamic or to change as a function of various factors such as grain size ( Kim & Graham, 2018 ). When the grain size is relatively small (i.e., word reading and spelling), reading-writing relations are expected to be stronger because these draw on a more or less confined set of skills such as orthography, phonology, and semantics ( Adams, 1990 ; Carlisle & Katz, 2006 ; Deacon & Bryant, 2005 ; Kim, Apel, & Al Otaiba, 2013 ; Nagy, Berninger, & Abbott, 2006 ; Ehri, 2000 ; Treiman, 1993 ). In contrast, when the grain size is larger (i.e., discourse-level skills such as reading comprehension and written composition), the relation is hypothesized to be weaker because discourse literacy skills draw on a more highly complex set of component skills, which entails more ways to be divergent (see Kim & Graham, 2018 ). Extant evidence provides support for different magnitudes of relations as a function of grain size (i.e., lexical versus discourse level literacy skills). Moderate to strong correlations have been reported for lexical-level literacy skills (i.e., word reading and spelling; .50 ≤ r s ≤ .84; Ahmed, Wagner, & Lopez, 2014 ; Berninger & Swanson, 1994 ; Ehri, 2000 ; Juel et al., 1986 ; Kim, 2011 ; Kim, Al Otaiba, Wanzek, & Gatlin, 2015a ) whereas a weaker relation has been reported for reading comprehension and written composition (.01 ≤ r s ≤ .59; Abbott & Berninger, 1993 ; Ahmed et al., 2014 ; Berninger & Abbott, 2010 ; Berninger et al., 1993; Juel et al., 1986 ; Kim et al., 2015a ).

Although previous work on reading-writing relations has been informative, empirical investigations of developmental relations between reading and writing using longitudinal data were limited. In fact, little is known about developmental patterns of writing skills (for reading development, see, for example, Kieffer, 2011 ; McCoach, O’Connell, Reis, & Levitt, 2006 ; Morgan, Farkas, & Wu, 2011 ), let alone developmental relations between reading and writing. In other words, our understanding is limited about a) the functional form or shape of development – whether writing skills, including both spelling and written composition, develop linearly or non-linearly; and b) the nature of growth in terms of the relation between initial status and the other growth parameters (linear slope and/or quadratic function) – a positive relation between initial status and linear growth would indicate that students with more advanced skills at initial status would growth faster, similar to the Matthew Effect ( Stanovich, 1986 ), whereas a negative relation would indicate a mastery relation where students with advanced initial status showing less growth.

Relatively few studies have investigated developmental trajectories for either spelling or writing. In spelling, a nonlinear developmental trajectory was reported for Norwegian-speaking children in the first three years of schooling ( Lervag & Hulme, 2010 ). Nonlinear developmental trajectories in spelling were also found for Korean-speaking children and developmental trajectories differed as a function of word characteristics ( Kim, Petscher, & Park, 2016 ). In written composition, only a couple of studies have investigated development trajectories. Kim, Puranik, and Al Otaiba (2015b) investigated growth trajectories of writing within Grade 1 (beginning to end) for three groups of English-speaking children: typically developing children, children with language impairment, and those with speech impairment. They found that although there were differences in initial status among the three groups, the linear developmental rate in writing did not differ among the three groups of children. This study was limited, however, because it examined development within a relatively short period (Grade 1), and the functional form of the growth trajectory was limited to a linear model because only three waves of data were available. Another longitudinal study, conducted by Ahmed and her colleagues ( 2014 ), followed English-speaking children from Grades 1 to 4, but growth trajectories over time were not examined because their focus was the relation between reading and writing, using changes in scores between grades.

The vast majority of previous studies on reading-writing relations have been cross-sectional investigations, and they have reported somewhat mixed findings. Some reported a unidirectional relation of reading to writing ( Kim, 2011 ; Kim et al., 2015a ); some reported a direction from writing to reading ( Berninger, Abbott, Abbott, Graham, & Richards, 2002 ; see also Graham & Hebert’s [2010] meta-analysis); and others reported bidirectional relations ( Berninger & Abbott, 2010 ; Kim & Graham, 2018 ; Shanahan & Lomax, 1986; Shanahan & Lomax, 1988). Results from limited extant longitudinal studies are also mixed. Lerkkanen, Rasku-Puttonen, Aunola, and Nurmi (2004) , using longitudinal data (4 time points across the year) from Finnish first grade children, reported a bidirectional relation between reading (composed of word reading and reading comprehension) and spelling during the initial phase of development, but not during the later phase. As for the relation between written composition and reading (composed of word reading and reading comprehension), the direction was from writing to reading, but not the other way around. Ahmed et al. (2014) examined reading-writing relations at the lexical, sentence, and discourse levels using longitudinal data from Grades 1 to 4, and found different patterns at different grain sizes. They reported a unidirectional relation from reading to writing at the lexical (word reading-spelling) and discourse levels (reading comprehension and written composition), but a bidirectional relation at the sentence level.

Findings from these studies suggest that reading and writing are related, but the developmental nature of relations still remains unclear. Building on these previous studies, the primary goal of the present study was to expand our understanding of the development of reading and writing, and their interrelations. To this end, we examined growth trajectories and developmental relations of reading and writing at the lexical and discourse-levels. Although previous studies did reveal relations between reading and writing, the number of studies which explicitly examined developmental relations at the same grain size of language (i.e., lexical level and discourse level) using longitudinal data is extremely limited, with the above noted Ahmed et al.’s (2014) study as an exception. We examined the reading-writing relations at the lexical-level and discourse-level, respectively. This is because theory and evidence clearly indicate that the component skills of reading and writing differ for lexical literacy skills (e.g., Adams, 1990 ; Treiman, 1993 ) versus discourse literacy skills (e.g., Berninger & Winn, 2006 ; Hoover & Gough, 1990; Perfetti & Stafura, 2014; Kim, 2017 ).

With the overarching goal of examining developmental relations between reading and writing at the lexical and discourse-levels, we had the following two research questions:

What are the patterns of development of reading (word reading and reading comprehension) and writing (spelling and written composition) from Grades 3 to 6?

How are growth trajectories in reading and writing interrelated over time from Grades 3 to 6?

With regard to the first research question, we expected nonlinear growth trajectories for word reading, spelling, and reading comprehension where linear development is followed by a slowing down (or plateau). Due to lack of prior evidence in the grades we examined (i.e., Grades 3 to 6), we did not have a specific hypothesis about the functional form of growth trajectories for written composition. In terms of reading-writing relations, we hypothesized a stronger relation between word reading and spelling than that for reading comprehension and written composition. We also hypothesized a bidirectional relation particularly between word reading and spelling based on fairly strong bivariate relations reviewed above. For reading comprehension and written composition, we expected a weaker relation, and did not have a specific hypothesis about bidirectionality, given lack of empirical data in upper elementary grades.

Participants

Data from the present study are from a longitudinal study of students’ reading and writing development in the South Eastern region of the US. Cross sectional results on predictors of writing in Grades 1 to 3 have been reported previously ( Kim et al., 2014 , 2015a ). However, longitudinal data from Grades 3 (mean age = 8.25, SD =.39) to 6, the focal grades in the present study, have not been reported. The longitudinal study was composed of two cohorts of children in the same district. In other words, the sample sizes in each grade (see Table 1 ) were the sum of two cohorts of children.

Descriptive statistics for outcome measures

Measure	Grade	N	Minimum	Maximum	Mean	Std. Deviation	Mean Standard Score
WJ-LWID	3	338	428	559	499.40	19.34	103
	4	279	442	555	507.68	18.13	102
	5	344	434	555	513.44	17.92	102
	6	269	449	581	519.48	17.98	100

WJ-Spell	3	359	453	547	498.85	17.08	100
	4	279	444	554	506.18	16.59	103
	5	344	451	550	511.78	16.14	103
	6	278	470	562	515.91	16.16	100

WJ-PC	3	338	443	518	491.34	11.26	94
	4	279	450	525	496.21	11.36	94
	5	344	454	533	498.80	11.27	94
	6	277	454	536	501.61	11.49	93

WIAT TDTO	3	359	0	15	6.67	2.88	106
	4	272	0	20	8.83	4.01	107
	5	341	0	20	9.55	4.12	111
	6	290	0	19	9.62	4.01	106

WIAT IDEAS	3	359	2	7	3.80	0.88	-
	4	277	0	7	4.02	0.99	-
	5	343	1	7	4.23	1.05	-
	6	292	0	7	4.33	1.15	-

One Day IDEAS	3	351	1	7	4.40	1.07	-
	4	276	1	7	4.04	1.02	-
	5	344	0	7	4.00	0.98	-
	6	290	0	7	4.25	0.99	-

Note. WJ = Woodcock Johnson; LWID = Letter Word Identification Task; PC = Passage Comprehension; WIAT = Wechsler Individual Achievement Test; One day = One day prompt; TDTO = Thematic Development and Text Organization

As shown in Table 1 , total sample size in each grade varied across years and each measure 2 . For instance, in spelling, data from a total of 359 children were available in Grade 3 whereas in Grade 6, data were available for 278 children. An empirical test of whether missingness is completely at random (MCAR; Little, 1988 ) or not revealed that all data in grades 3–6 were MCAR, χ 2 (492) = 530.13, p = .114, with the exception of the grade 6 writing data, χ 2 (4) = 21.46, p < .001. However, a review of the data suggested that the data were not non-ignorable missing and the patterns of missing were unrelated to the variables themselves. As such, full-information maximum likelihood was the appropriate method for estimating coefficients in the presence of missing data ( Enders, 2010 ).

The sample was composed of 53% male students who were predominantly African-Americans (59%), followed by White (29%), Multi-racial (9%), Other (2%), and Native American or Asian (1%). We noted a pattern of more attrition related to free and reduced lunch price status. In grade 3, 51% of students were eligible for free or reduced price lunch compared to 49% in grade 4, 39% in grade 5, and 29% in grade 6. Further, 10% of students in grade 3 were identified with a primary exceptionality, 7% in grade 4, 6% in grade 5, and 6% in grade 6. No students were identified as having limited English proficiency.

Word reading

Children’s word reading was assessed by the Letter Word Identification task of the Woodcock Johnson-III (WJ-III; Woodcock, McGrew, & Mather, 2001 ). In this task, the child is asked read aloud words of increasing difficulty. This task assesses children’s decoding skill and knowledge of word specific spellings in English. Cronbach’s alpha estimates across grades 3–6 ranged from .90 to .91 according the test manual. The Letter Word Identification task of WJ-III has been widely used in previous studies and has been shown to be strongly related to other word reading tasks (e.g., r = .92; Kim et al., 2015a ; Kim & Wagner, 2015 ).

Reading comprehension

The Passage Comprehension task of WJ-III was used. This is a cloze task where the child is asked to read sentences and short passages and to fill in the blanks. Cronbach’s alpha estimates across the grades ranged from .76 to .84. This has also been widely used as a measure of reading comprehension with strong correlations with other well-established measures of reading comprehension (e.g., .70 ≤ r s ≤ .82; Keenan et al., 2008 ; Kim & Wagner, 2015 ).

The Spelling task of WJ-III was used. This is a dictation task where the child hears the word in isolation, in a sentence, and in isolation again, and is asked to spell it. Cronbach’s alpha estimates across the grades ranged from .90 to .91. The WJ-III has been reported to be strongly related to word reading skills (.76 ≤ r s ≤ .83; Kim et al., 2015a ; McGrew, Schrank, & Woodcock, 2007 ).

Written composition

Written composition was measured by two tasks: The Essay Composition task of the Wechsler Individual Achievement Test-3 rd (WIAT-3; Wechsler, 2009 ) and an experimental task that were used in previous studies ( Kim et al., 2014 , 2015a ; McMaster, Du, & Pétursdôttir, 2009 ; also see Abbott & Berninger, 1993 for a similar prompt). In the WIAT task, the child was asked to write about her favorite game and provide three reasons. The WIAT task has been widely used in previous studies (e.g., Berninger & Abbott, 2010 ) and was related to other writing prompts (.38 ≤ r s ≤ .45; Kim et al., 2015a ). In the experimental task, the child was asked to write about something interesting that happened after they got home from school one day (One day prompt hereafter). The One day prompt has been shown to be related to the WIAT writing task ( r = .45; Kim et al., 2015a ) and was related to other indicators of writing proficiency such as writing productivity and fluency ( McMaster et al., 2009 ). Children were given 15 minutes to complete each of their writing tasks.

Students’ written compositions were evaluated on the quality of ideas on a scale of 0 (unscorable) to 7, which was modified from the widely used 6+1 Trait approach ( Northwest Regional Educational Laboratory, 2011 ). A similar approach has been widely used in previous studies ( Graham, Berninger, & Fan, 2007 ; Hooper, Swartz, Wakely, de Kruif, & Montgomery, 2002 ; Kim et al., 2014 ; , 2015a ; Olinghouse, 2008 ). Compositions that had rich and clear ideas with details received higher scores. In addition to the idea quality, the WIAT Essay Composition task was also evaluated on thematic development and text organization (TDTO hereafter) following the examiner’s manual. Coders were rigorously trained to achieve high reliability within each year as well as across the years. For the present study, we established inter-rater reliability using 40–50 written compositions per prompt per year; Cohen’s Kappa ranged from .78 to .97.

Children were assessed in the spring by carefully trained assessors in a quiet space in each school. Assessment consisted of two sessions of individual assessment and two sessions of small group sessions. Research assistants were trained for two hours prior to each assessment session were required to pass a fidelity check before administering assessments to the participants in order to ensure accuracy in administration and scoring. The reading tasks and the spelling task were individually administered whereas the written compositions were administered in a small group setting (3–4 children).

Data Analytic Approach

We employed a combination of latent individual growth curve modeling and structural equation modeling in this study. An important aspect of evaluating the structural cross-construct relations is first understanding the underlying functional form of growth for each of the four outcome types. To this end, four specific latent variable models were tested for each outcome: a linear growth model, a non-linear growth model with non-linearity defined through a quadratic term, a linear free-loading growth model, and a linear latent change score (or dual change score) model. Each of these models reflect an alternative consideration of how growth is shaped ( Petscher, Quinn, & Wagner, 2016 ). The linear latent growth model describes a strictly linear relation over time regardless of the number of time points in the model; thus, even though there are four observed waves of data, the linear model forces a linear growth curve. The non-linear growth model extends the linear model by allowing multiple non-linear terms to be added above the linear slope; and the different alternative nonlinear models were evaluated for precise estimation of non-linearity. In the present data, four available time points permitted specification of a quadratic parameter to be estimated to determine the rate of celeration that one grows (i.e., acceleration or deceleration). The freed loading growth curve model is eponymous such that the loadings on the slope factor in the growth model are freely estimated rather than fixed at particular time intervals. In this way, the shape of the curve is defined by the estimated loadings, not a priori determined values. For example, in a linear growth model the loadings may be coded as 0, 1, 2, 3 for four time points and the equal interval coding points to the assumption of equal interval change over time. A freed loading growth model may code the loading structure as 0, *, *, 1 where 0 and 1 denote the beginning and end of change and * denotes freely estimated proportional change that may occur between times 1 and 4. The dual change score model ( McArdle, 2009 ) may be viewed as a hybrid of direct and/or indirect models with individual growth curve analysis. Dual change models include two types of change parameters, an average slope factor, such as in the linear model, and a proportional change parameter that reflects the relation between a prior time point and the change between two time points.

For the word reading, spelling, and reading comprehension outcomes, the latent growth models were fit directly to the observed measures. However, for written composition, with multiple measures of writing data at each time point, multiple indicator growth models ( Meredith & Tisak, 1990 ) were specified for each of the four general model types described above. The inclusion of the multiple indicators necessitate additional model testing steps to evaluate levels of longitudinal invariance for the loadings, intercepts, and variances. The level(s) of measurement invariance serves to ensure that the latent variables are measured on the same metric over time so that differences in the latent means and variances are due to individual differences in the latent scores and not due to biases that are consequential to a lack of measurement invariance. Loading invariance was first tested, followed by various iterations of freeing model constraints on the basis of modification indices. Once a decision was made regarding measurement invariance, the multiple indicator growth models were specified.

Following the growth model evaluations, two structural equation models were specified for pairs of constructs. First, the latent intercept and slope factors from the word reading growth model were used as predictors of factors in the spelling growth model, as well as the latent intercept from the spelling growth model as a predictor of growth in word reading. Second, the latent intercept and slope factors from the reading comprehension growth model were used as predictors of factors in the writing growth model. Fit for all latent variables was evaluated using the comparative fit index (CFI; Bentler, 1990 ), Tucker-Lewis index (TLI; Bentler & Bonett, 1980 ), and the root mean square error of approximation (RMSEA; Browne & Cudeck, 1992 ). CFI and TLI values greater than .90 are considered to be minimally sufficient criteria for acceptable model fit ( Hooper, Coughlan, & Mullen, 2008 ) and RMSEA values <.10 are desirable. The Bayes Information Criteria (BIC) was used as another index for comparing model fit with model difference of at least 5 suggesting practically important differences (Raftery, 1995).

Descriptive Statistics

Table 1 provides the descriptive statistics (W scores for the WJ measures & standard scores when available) across all measures and time points. Mean standard scores in the standardized and normed tasks were in the average range across the years (93–111). Average W scores in WJ-III Letter-Word Identification scores increased from grade 3 ( M = 499.40, SD = 19.34) to grade 6 ( M = 519.48, SD = 17.98), as did the WJ-III Spelling scores (grade 3: M = 498.85, SD = 17.08; grade 6: M = 515.91, SD = 16.16), and the WJ-III Passage Comprehension scores (grade 3: M = 491.34, SD = 11.26; grade 6: M = 501.61, SD = 11.49).

For writing measures, raw scores showed increases from grades 3 to 6 on both the WIAT TDTO (grade 3: M = 6.67, SD = 2.88; grade 6: M = 9.62, SD = 4.01) and the WIAT idea quality (grade 3: M = 3.80, SD = 0.88; grade 6: M = 4.33, SD = 1.15). The mean WIAT TDTO standard scores were in the average range (106–111). In contrast, mean scores for the One Day idea quality measure did not show a similar pattern of growth, but decreased slightly (grade 3: M = 4.40, SD = 1.07; grade 6: M = 4.25, SD = 0.99). Although this may appear surprising, a slight dip or no growth in a particular year in writing quality has been previously reported ( Ahmed et al., 2014 ).

Correlations among the measures across grades are reported in Table 2 . The relations between reading and writing in each grade varied: Word reading and spelling were strongly related (.73 ≤ r s ≤ .80) whereas reading comprehension and writing were somewhat weakly related (.21 ≤ r s ≤ .37). Correlation matrices within tasks across grades show that word reading tasks (.75 ≤ r s ≤ .86) and spelling (.83 ≤ r s ≤ .89) were strongly correlated across grades. Reading comprehension was also fairly strongly related across the grades (.60 ≤ r s ≤ .69) In contrast, correlations in writing scores across grades were weakly to moderately related (.15 ≤ r s ≤ .50).

Correlations among variables

Variable	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10	11	12	13	14	15	16	17	18	19	20	21	22	23
1. G3 LWID	--
2. G3 Spell	0.75	--
3. G3 PC	0.69	0.55	--
4. G3 WT TDTO	0.36	0.38	0.37	--
5. G3 WT idea	0.31	0.33	0.29	0.50	--
6. G3 One day	0.35	0.38	0.36	0.43	0.49	--
7. G4 LWID	0.86	0.76	0.73	0.39	0.37	0.37	--
8. G4 Spell	0.78	0.86	0.59	0.34	0.31	0.36	0.80	--
9. G4 PC	0.63	0.49	0.68	0.38	0.37	0.40	0.68	0.53	--
10. G4 WT TDTO	0.36	0.31	0.38	0.35	0.21	0.25	0.34	0.34	0.32	--
11. G4 WT idea	0.28	0.27	0.37	0.32	0.30	0.24	0.24	0.29	0.21	0.61	--
12. G4 One day	0.24	0.18	0.33	0.29	0.30	0.33	0.33	0.27	0.32	0.36	0.42	--
13. G5 LWID	0.79	0.68	0.69	0.41	0.33	0.29	0.81	0.74	0.66	0.39	0.38	0.36	--
14. G5 Spell	0.76	0.86	0.59	0.37	0.39	0.38	0.78	0.87	0.52	0.32	0.30	0.33	0.73	--
15. G5 PC	0.60	0.51	0.69	0.31	0.23	0.35	0.65	0.54	0.64	0.43	0.34	0.31	0.67	0.55	--
16. G5 WT TDTO	0.29	0.28	0.33	0.25	0.12	0.19	0.28	0.29	0.23	0.50	0.47	0.38	0.29	0.30	0.34	--
17. G5 WT idea	0.16	0.16	0.07	0.20	0.15	0.19	0.18	0.26	0.12	0.39	0.42	0.40	0.23	0.25	0.22	0.63	--
18. G5 One day	0.26	0.28	0.21	0.19	0.16	0.30	0.26	0.32	0.19	0.33	0.41	0.37	0.29	0.34	0.26	0.43	0.53	--
19. G6 LWID	0.79	0.67	0.67	0.44	0.33	0.38	0.83	0.73	0.65	0.42	0.40	0.36	0.81	0.74	0.64	0.34	0.22	0.38	--
20. G6 Spell	0.82	0.83	0.62	0.41	0.37	0.44	0.76	0.89	0.48	0.43	0.39	0.33	0.70	0.87	0.52	0.30	0.30	0.41	0.78	--
21. G6 PC	0.59	0.43	0.61	0.36	0.24	0.36	0.55	0.44	0.69	0.34	0.30	0.30	0.59	0.46	0.60	0.27	0.09	0.26	0.67	0.54	--
22. G6 WT TDTO	0.26	0.30	0.31	0.23	0.24	0.30	0.33	0.36	0.32	0.46	0.41	0.38	0.35	0.39	0.34	0.44	0.35	0.36	0.34	0.33	0.36	--
23. G6 WT idea	0.18	0.23	0.23	0.25	0.31	0.28	0.33	0.36	0.27	0.38	0.43	0.40	0.35	0.34	0.35	0.43	0.48	0.46	0.37	0.34	0.32	0.59	--
24. G6 One day	0.25	0.29	0.25	0.32	0.25	0.30	0.28	0.34	0.23	0.45	0.44	0.39	0.32	0.35	0.40	0.43	0.49	0.50	0.35	0.36	0.27	0.42	0.52

G = Grade; LWID = Letter Word Identification Task; PC = Passage Comprehension; WT = WIAT Essay task; One day = One day prompt; TDTO = Thematic Development and Text Organization

Research Question 1

What are the patterns of development in reading (word reading and reading comprehension) and writing (spelling and written composition) from Grades 3 to 6?

Prior to the specification of the growth models for all outcomes, the longitudinal invariance of the writing measures was evaluated with Mplus v7.0 ( Muthén & Muthén, 1998–2013 ). The first phase of the model building was to identify the extent to which a single factor best represented the measurement-level covariances among the three measured writing variables at each of the grade levels. However, because the model was just-identified (i.e., 0 degrees of freedom), fit indices were not available for the grade-based models. The baseline model for longitudinal invariance specified longitudinal constraints on the loadings, intercepts, and residual variances and the model fit was poor: χ 2 (75) = 480.97, RMSEA = .107, (90% RMSEA CI = .098, .116), CFI = .68, TLI = .72. Through a series of model revisions a final model was specified that included invariant loadings and intercepts, partially invariant residual variances (i.e., grade 3 WIAT TDTO was freely estimated), and the addition of three residual covariances among writing measures, χ 2 (62) = 115.40, RMSEA = .043 (90% RMSEA CI = .030, .055), CFI = .96, TLI = .96, and the fit of this final model was significantly better than the fully invariant model (Δχ 2 = 365.57, Δdf = 13, p < .001).

As noted above, four alternative growth models were examined and compared for each of the outcomes, word reading, spelling, reading comprehension, and writing. Model fit results are reported in Table 3 . Generally, each model configuration fit well to the outcomes. For example, the word reading models all maintained acceptable CFI and TLI (>.95) as well as RMSEA (<.10). When using the BIC to compare relative model fit, both the dual change score model (BIC = 9,720) and freed loading model (BIC = 9,719) were lower by at least 5 points from the linear latent growth (BIC = 9,735) and quadratic growth (BIC = 9,729) models but only differed by 1 point from each other. Based on the χ 2 /df ratio and the measurement simplicity, the freed loading model was selected for word reading. The results from the freed loading model indicated that 45% of the total growth in word reading having occurred between grades 3 and 4, 26% of growth occurring between grades 4 and 5, and 29% of growth occurring between grades 5 and 6. The comparison of the spelling growth models showed an advantage for the dual change score model over the freed loading and non-linear growth models by 11 points on the BIC, as well as a 41 point difference with the linear latent growth model.

Developmental model fit for word reading, spelling, reading comprehension, and writing

Outcome	Model	BIC	χ	df	RMSEA	RMSEA LB	RMSEA UB	CFI	TLI
Word Reading	Linear	9735	24.63	5	0.092	0.058	0.129	0.98	0.98
	Quadratic	9729	6.92	1	0.112	0.046	0.198	0.99	0.96
		9719	3.31	3	0.015	0.000	0.081	1.00	0.99
	Dual Change Score	9720	15.04	7	0.050	0.012	0.094	0.99	0.99

Spelling	Linear	9499	41.66	5	0.124	0.091	0.161	0.97	0.96
	Quadratic	9469	0.09	1	0.000	0.000	0.08	1.00	1.00
	Freed Loading	9469	5.73	3	0.040	0.000	0.098	0.99	0.99
		9458	6.7	7	0.000	0.000	0.055	1.00	1.00

Reading Comprehension	Linear	9038	15.75	5	0.068	0.032	0.107	0.98	0.98
		9034	0.66	1	0.000	0.000	0.114	1.00	1.00
	Freed Loading	9038	9.84	3	0.070	0.024	0.12	0.99	0.97
	Dual Change Score	9028	12.2	7	0.040	0.000	0.076	0.99	0.99

Writing	Linear	12976	130.33	62	0.048	0.037	0.06	0.95	0.94
		12973	115.59	58	0.046	0.034	0.058	0.96	0.95
	Freed Loading	12975	124.33	60	0.048	0.036	0.059	0.95	0.94
	Dual Change Score	13005	159.33	62	0.058	0.047	0.069	0.92	0.92

Note . BIC = Bayes Information Criteria, df = degrees of freedom, RMSEA = root mean square error of approximation, LB = 90% RMSEA lower bound, UB = 90% RMSEA upper bound, CFI = comparative fit index, TLI = Tucker-Lewis index.

For reading comprehension, the quadratic growth and dual change scores models fit better to the other two alternatives, and similar to the word reading model selection, the χ 2 /df ratio and the measurement parsimony led to the selection of the quadratic growth model. Finally, the quadratic growth model was selected for the writing outcome based on its relative fit to the dual change models (i.e., ΔBIC = 30), and its superior fit to the linear latent growth model (Δχ 2 = 14.74, Δdf = 4, p < .01) and the freed loading model (Δχ 2 = 8.74, Δdf = 2, p < .05).

Randomly selected individual growth curves ( n = 25) for each of the four outcomes are presented in Figure 1 . The word reading curves reflect the linear relation over time with slight individual differences in the amount of change occurring. Similarly, though spelling change over time appear non-linear, the variance in the linear and quadratic slope functions were minimal and resulted in relatively parallel development. Both the reading comprehension and latent writing trajectories demonstrated individual differences in change with large differences observed in the latent writing development.

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Randomly selected estimated individual curves from n =25 for word reading, spelling, reading comprehension, and latent writing across grades 3–6 (Times 1–4).

Research Question 2

The first structural analysis tested the relation between word reading intercept (centered in grade 3) and slope in predicting spelling intercept (centered in grade 3) and slope, χ 2 (22) = 27.92, RMSEA = .024, 90% RMSEA CI = .000, .047, CFI = .99, TLI = .99. Standardized path coefficients are presented in Figure 2 (Unstandardized model coefficients are reported in Appendix A1 ). Word reading intercept (initial status) and slope were moderately and negatively related (−.44), indicating that children who had higher word reading in Grade 3 had a slower growth rate in word reading. In contrast, spelling intercept and slope had a strong and positive relation (.73), indicating that children who had a higher spelling skill showed a faster growth rate over time. In terms of the relation between word reading and spelling, Grade 3 word reading scores significantly predicted Grade 3 spelling scores (.86) as well as the average spelling growth trajectory (.96). Word reading growth also uniquely predicted the average spelling growth trajectory (.22). In contrast, Grade 3 spelling scores did not significantly predict growth in word reading (.16, p > .50). A model including bi-directional paths from word reading slope to spelling slope did not converge; a final model included a covariance between word reading and spelling slopes with the correlation estimated as .08 ( p > .50). The inclusion of the word reading predictors resulted in 75% of the variance in Grade 3 spelling explained along with 84% of the variance in spelling growth.

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Latent word reading development predicting latent spelling development. LWID = Letter Word Identification

Standardized path coefficients for the predictive model of reading comprehension development to writing development are shown in Figure 3 : χ 2 (110) = 218.45, RMSEA = .045, 90% RMSEA CI = .037, .054, CFI = .95, TLI = .94 (Unstandardized model coefficients are reported in Appendix A2 ). Although our goal was to examine how growth trajectories (initial status, linear slope, and quadratic terms) in reading comprehension and writing are related to one another, this was not permitted due to zero variance in the linear slope and quadratic terms in reading comprehension as well as the quadratic term in writing. As shown in Figure 3 , Grade 3 reading comprehension significantly predicted Grade 3 writing (.69) 3 , but did not significantly explain differences in the linear writing slope (.10, p = .29). Grade 3 reading comprehension explained 48% of the variance in Grade 3 writing and 1% of the variance in the linear writing slope. Furthermore, intercept and linear slope in writing were not related (.09, p = .74); and the relation between intercept and linear slope in reading comprehension was not estimated due to lack of variance in the slope of reading comprehension.

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Latent reading comprehension development predicting latent writing development. PC = Passage Comprehension; W = Writing quality

Two overarching questions guided the present study: a) what are the growth trajectories or growth patterns in reading and writing across Grades 3 to 6, and b) what is the developmental relation between reading and writing for children in these grades. We focused on development from Grades 3 to 6 when children are expected to have developed foundational literacy skills, but continue to develop reading and writing skills. Colloquially, they have moved from a learning to read to a reading to learn phase (Chall, 1983).

We found that different growth models described best the four different reading and writing outcomes. Overall, alternative models for the four literacy outcomes fit the data well. Unlike our hypothesis of nonlinear trajectories, for lexical-level literacy skills, word reading and spelling, linear models (freed loading and dual change models) described data best, at least from Grades 3 to 6. For word reading, results from the freed loading growth curve fit the data best and showed the amount of growth in word reading varied as function of development time points. The largest amount of growth (45% of total growth) occurred between grades 3 and 4 with less growth between grades 4 and 5 (26%) and between grades 5 and 6 (29%). This is convergent with a previous study, which found that growth in reading skills was larger in lower grades than upper grades ( Kieffer, 2011 ). For spelling, again the dual change score model described the data best. The dual change score model does not differ from the traditional growth model in terms of shapes of growth pattern. The dual change score model, however, adds nuances because it captures proportional (i.e., auto-regressive) growth parameters (changes between two time points) in addition to average growth parameters in traditional growth models (changes across all the time points).

Interestingly, however, for reading comprehension and written composition, nonlinear trajectories with a quadratic function described the data best. In other words, developmental trajectories were characterized by an initial linear development followed by slowing down (or plateau). This nonlinear trajectory in reading comprehension is convergent with previous work (e.g., Kieffer, 2011 ). The present study is the first one to describe any growth pattern over time in written composition beyond a single academic year and/or from Grades 3 to 6. Taken together with the limited extant work, it appears that reading comprehension and written composition develop in nonlinear trajectories, characterized by initial strong growth and followed by a pattern of deceleration, or slowing down, at least from Grades 3 to 6.

Another interesting finding about growth trajectories in reading and writing was the relation between initial status and linear growth rate. For word reading, children’s status in Grade 3 was negatively related to rate of growth (−.44) such that those who had advanced word reading in Grade 3 had a slower growth rate through the grades. Spelling, on the other hand, showed a different pattern with a strong positive relation between initial status and growth rate (.73), indicating that students with a higher spelling skill at Grade 3 developed at a faster rate from Grades 3 to 6. Although there might be several explanations, we speculate that these results are attributed, at least partially, to the fact that children in these grades are in different developmental phases in word reading versus spelling. In word reading, many children have reached high levels of proficiency by Grade 3, and therefore, their subsequent learning rate is slower as their learning approaches a ceiling. In spelling, however, students’ overall development in Grade 3 did not quite reach as high because spelling requires greater accuracy and precision in orthographic representations than reading ( Ehri, 2000 ). Therefore, there is sufficient room for further growth for the majority of learners, and those with more advanced spelling in Grade 3 continue to grow at a fast rate in subsequent grades, presumably because they have more solid foundations in component skills of spelling. Another possible explanation may relate to instruction; that is by third grade, relatively little reading instructional focus is at the word level, because students are expected to have mastered learning to read whereas spelling instruction may continue, particularly for more complex word patterns. This speculation, however, requires future studies.

Results for discourse-level literacy skills were less clear. Unfortunately, the relation between initial status and growth rates was not estimable for reading comprehension due to the lack of variance in the linear slope and quadratic parameters. In written composition, although there was variation in the linear slope, the relation between initial status and linear slope was not statistically significant. This finding suggests that initial student writing levels do not necessarily predict future growth in writing. However, given that this was the first study to explicitly examine the relations between initial status and growth trajectories in writing, our findings cannot be compared to any previous research, and so will require replication in future studies.

Turning to the relation between reading and writing, we hypothesized a dynamic relation between reading and writing as a function of grain size – differential relations for the lexical-level skills versus discourse-level skills, hypothesizing a stronger relation between word reading and spelling than between reading comprehension and written composition. This hypothesis was supported such that bivariate correlations between word reading and spelling were strong across grades (.73 ≤ r s ≤ .80). The strong correlation between word reading and spelling is convergent with theoretical explanations and empirical evidence that word reading and spelling rely on a limited number of highly similar skills such as phonological awareness, orthographic awareness (letter knowledge and letter patterns), and morphological awareness ( Apel, Wilson-Fowler, Brimo, & Perrin, 2012 ; Berninger et al., 1998 ; Ehri, Satlow, & Gaskins, 2009 ; Kim, 2011 ; Kim et al., 2013 ;Treiman, 1998).

When reading-writing relations were examined at the discourse level, the relation was weak (.21 ≤ r s ≤ .37), convergent with previous evidence ( Ahmed et al., 2014 ; Berninger & Swanson, 1994 ; Berninger & Abbott, 2010 ; Kim et al., 2015a ). The overall weak relation indicates that reading comprehension and written composition have shared variance, but are unique and independent to a large extent, at least during the relatively early phase of development examined in the present study (Grades 3 – 6). Reading comprehension and written comprehension draw on complex, similar sets of skills and knowledge such as oral language, lexical-level literacy skills, higher-order cognitive skills, background knowledge, and self-regulatory processes (e.g., Berninger & Abbott, 2010 ; Berninger et al., 2002 ; Conners, 2009 ; Cain, Oakhill, & Bryant, 2004 ; Compton, Miller, Elleman, & Steacy, 2014 ; Cromley & Azevedo, 2007 ; Graham et al., 2002; Graham et al., 2007 ; Kim, 2015 , 2017 ; Kim & Schatschneider, 2017 ; Kim & Schatschneider, 2018; Vellutino et al., 2007 ). However, as noted earlier, higher order skills such as reading comprehension and written comprehension which draw on a number of knowledge, skills, and factors are likely to be divergent as a construct. Furthermore, demands for reading comprehension and written composition differ. As a production task that involves multiple processes of planning (including generating and organizing ideas), goal setting, translating, monitoring, reviewing, evaluation, and revising (Hayes, 2012; Hayes & Flower, 1980), skilled writing requires regulating one’s attention, decisions, and behaviors throughout these process ( Berninger & Winn, 2006 ; Hayes & Flower, 1980; Hayes, 2012). Therefore, although reading comprehension and written composition draw on a similar set of knowledge and skills (e.g., oral language, self-regulation), the extent to which component skills are required for reading comprehension versus writing tasks might vary, resulting in a weaker relation ( Kim & Graham, 2018 ).

The hypothesis about the interactive nature of relations between reading and writing was not supported in the present study. Instead, our findings indicate a unidirectional relation from reading to writing both at the lexical and discourse levels. Initial status in word reading strongly predicted initial status (.86) and linear growth rate of spelling (.96). In other words, children who had higher word reading in Grade 3 also had higher spelling in Grade 3 and experienced a faster growth rate in spelling. Growth rate in word reading also predicted growth rate in spelling (.22) after accounting for the contribution of initial status in word reading, indicating that children who had faster growth in word reading also had faster growth in spelling. When the contribution of spelling to word reading was examined, initial status in spelling was positively related to word reading slope, but was not statistically significant. When growth rate in spelling was hypothesized to predict growth rate in word reading, the model did not converge. Although the causes of model non-convergence is unclear, overall the present findings indicate that development of word reading facilitates development of spelling skills but not the other way around at least from Grades 3 to 6. The unidirectional relation from word reading to spelling is convergent with a previous longitudinal study from Grades 1 to 4 ( Ahmed et al., 2014 ), but divergent with a meta-analysis reporting a large effect of spelling instruction on word reading (average effect size = .68; Graham & Hebert, 2010).

Furthermore, reading comprehension in Grade 3 fairly strongly predicted writing in Grade 3 (.69). However, neither initial status in reading comprehension (in Grade 3) nor in written composition predicted linear growth in written composition. The relation from reading comprehension to writing is convergent with an earlier study by Ahmed et al. (2014) with younger children, and suggests that knowledge of and experiences with reading comprehension are likely to contribute to written composition, but not the other way around, at least during Grades 3 to 6. This appears to contradict previous findings on the effect of writing instruction on reading (Graham & Hebert, 2010) or the positive effects on reading and writing when instruction explicitly targets both reading and writing ( Graham et al., in press ). These discrepancies might suggest that for writing to transfer to reading at the discourse level, explicit and targeted instruction might be necessary. Although writing acquisition and experiences may help children to think about and to reflect on how information is presented in written texts, which promotes awareness of text structure and text meaning, and, consequently, reading comprehension ( Graham & Harris, 2017 ; Langer & Flihan, 2000 ), these might be beneficial for children who have highly developed meta-cognition or might require instruction that explicitly identifies these aspects to promote transfer of skills between writing and reading comprehension. Future studies are warranted for this speculation.

Limitations and Conclusion

Results of the present findings should be interpreted with the following limitations in mind. First, there was a lack of variance in the linear parameter of reading comprehension as well as in the quadratic parameter of reading comprehension and written composition. These indicate that children in Grades 3 to 6 did not vary in linear growth rate in reading comprehension and quadratic function in reading comprehension and written composition. While these are potentially important findings themselves, these limited the scope of relations that could be estimated in the present study. Measuring a construct (e.g., reading comprehension) using multiple tasks would be beneficial in several aspects, including reduction of measurement error and addressing the issue of zero variance in future studies. Furthermore, previous studies have shown that reading comprehension measures vary in the extent to which they tap into component skills ( Cutting & Scarborough, 2006 ; Keenan, Betjemann, & Olson, 2008 ). Therefore, the extent to which our present findings are influenced by the use of a particular reading comprehension task (i.e., WJ Passage Comprehension) is an open question and requires future work. Second, the foci of the present study were developmental trajectories and reading-writing relations; and thus, an investigation of component skills and their relations to growth trajectories of reading and writing was beyond the scope of the present study. Such an investigation would shed light on shared and unique aspects of reading and writing development (see Kim & Graham, 2018 ). Third, we did not observe the amount or quality of instruction in reading or writing; future research might explore how instruction and interventions mediate growth trajectories. Moreover, variation across classrooms across the grades was not accounted for in the statistical model for its complexity. Finally, our findings should be replicated with different samples of students in terms of both ethnicity, English language proficiency, and free and reduced lunch price status.

In conclusion, we found that linear developmental trajectories describe development of lexical-level literacy skills whereas a nonlinear function describes development of discourse-level literacy skills from Grades 3 to 6. We also found that reading-writing relations are more likely to be from reading to writing at lexical- and discourse levels, at least during these grades. Future longitudinal and experimental investigations are needed to replicate and extend the present study to further reveal similarities and uniqueness of reading versus writing, and the nature of their relations.

Acknowledgments

This research was supported by [masked for blind review]. The authors appreciate participating children, their parents, and teachers and school personnel.

Unstandardized model coefficients for passage comprehension and writing structural equation model

			Estimate	S.E.	-value
Loading	Construct	Indicator

	PC Intercept	G3 PC	1.00	0.00	999
		G4 PC	1.00	0.00	999
		G5 PC	1.00	0.00	999
		G6 PC	1.00	0.00	999
	PC Slope	G3 PC	0.00	0.00	999
		G4 PC	1.00	0.00	999
		G5 PC	2.00	0.00	999
		G6 PC	3.00	0.00	999
	PC Quadratic	G3 PC	0.00	0.00	999
		G4 PC	1.00	0.00	999
		G5 PC	4.00	0.00	999
		G6 PC	9.00	0.00	999
	Write Intercept	G3 Write	1.00	0.00	999
		G4 Write	1.00	0.00	999
		G5 Write	1.00	0.00	999
		G6 Write	1.00	0.00	999
	Write Slope	G3 Write	0.00	0.00	999
		G4 Write	1.00	0.00	999
		G5 Write	2.00	0.00	999
		G6 Write	3.00	0.00	999
	Write Quadratic	G3 Write	0.00	0.00	999
		G4 Write	1.00	0.00	999
		G5 Write	6.00	0.00	999
		G6 Write	9.00	0.00	999
	G3 Write	WG3_1	1.00	0.00	999
		WG3_2	0.29	0.01	<.001
		WG3_3	0.26	0.01	<.001
	G4 Write	WG4_1	1.00	0.00	999
		WG4_2	0.29	0.01	<.001
		WG4_3	0.26	0.01	<.001
	G5 Write	WG5_1	1.00	0.00	999
		WG5_2	0.29	0.01	<.001
		WG5_3	0.26	0.01	<.001
	G6 Write	WG6_1	1.00	0.00	999
		WG6_2	0.29	0.01	<.001
		WG6_3	0.26	0.01	<.001

Paths		PC Int. -> WRITE Int.	0.14	0.02	<.001
		PC Slope -> Write Slope	0.01	0.01	0.303
		PC Int. <-> PC Slope	1.70	2.45	0.49
		Write Int. <-> Write Slope	0.08	0.23	0.715
		WG4_1 <-> WG4_2	0.78	0.22	<.001
		WG5_1 <-> WG5_2	0.75	0.21	<.001
		WG6_1 <-> WG6_2	0.74	0.21	0.001

Mean/Intercept		PC Intercept	491.01	0.55	<.001
		PC Slope	4.83	0.63	<.001
		PC Quadratic	−0.46	0.21	0.028
		Write Intercept	0.00	0.00	<.001
		Write Slope	−2.86	3.66	0.435
		Write Quadratic	−0.10	0.06	0.131
		G3 PC	0.00	0.00	999
		G4 PC	0.00	0.00	999
		G5 PC	0.00	0.00	999
		G6 PC	0.00	0.00	999
		WG3_1	60.74	7.31	<.001
		WG3_2	15.51	2.03	<.001
		WG3_3	12.85	1.95	<.001
		WG4_1	59.44	7.33	<.001
		WG4_2	15.51	2.03	<.001
		WG4_3	13.53	1.95	<.001
		WG5_1	59.44	7.33	<.001
		WG5_2	15.51	2.03	<.001
		WG5_3	13.53	1.95	<.001
		WG6_1	59.44	7.33	<.001
		WG6_2	15.51	2.03	<.001
		WG6_3	13.53	1.95	<.001

Var./Res. Var.		PC Intercept	81.46	8.83	<.001
		PC Slope	0.00	0.00	999
		PC Quadratic	0.00	0.00	999
		Write Intercept	1.66	0.54	0.002
		Write Slope	0.49	0.15	0.001
		Write Quadratic	0.00	0.00	999
		G3 PC	41.82	5.92	<.001
		G4 PC	42.90	4.98	<.001
		G5 PC	43.05	4.61	<.001
		G6 PC	53.39	7.40	<.001
		WG3_1	3.82	0.43	<.001
		WG3_2	0.40	0.04	<.001
		WG3_3	0.71	0.06	<.001
		WG4_1	9.74	1.05	<.001
		WG4_2	0.56	0.06	<.001
		WG4_3	0.66	0.06	<.001
		WG5_1	7.80	0.77	<.001
		WG5_2	0.40	0.04	<.001
		WG5_3	0.53	0.05	<.001
		WG6_1	9.92	1.00	<.001
		WG6_2	0.68	0.07	<.001
		WG6_3	0.46	0.05	<.001

Note . WG3= grade 3 writing, WG4 = grade 4 writing, WG5 = grade 5 writing, WG6 = grade 6 writing; PC = passage comprehension; Int. = intercept; Var./Res. Var. = model variances and residual variances. p -values of 999 are indicative of model coefficients that were assigned a fixed value.

Unstandardized model coefficients for word reading and spelling structural equation model

			Estimate	S.E.	pvalue
Loading	Construct	Indicator

	WR Intercept	G3 LWID	1.00	0.00	999
		G4 LWID	1.00	0.00	999
		G5 LWID	1.00	0.00	999
		G6 LWID	1.00	0.00	999
	WR Slope	G3 LWID	0.00	0.00	999
		G4 LWID	1.00	0.00	999
		G5 LWID	2.00	0.00	999
		G6 LWID	3.00	0.00	999
	SG3	Spell G3	1.00	0.00	999
	SG4	Spell G4	1.00	0.00	999
	SG5	Spell G5	1.00	0.00	999
	SG6	Spell G6	1.00	0.00	999
	SG34	SG4	1.00	0.00	999
	SG45	SG5	1.00	0.00	999
	SG56	SG6	1.00	0.00	999
	Spelling Int.	SG3	1.00	0.00	999
	Spelling Slope	SG4	1.00	0.00	999
		SG5	1.00	0.00	999
		SG6	1.00	0.00	999

Paths		SG3->SG4	1.00	0.00	999
		SG4->SG5	1.00	0.00	999
		SG5->SG6	1.00	0.00	999
		SG3->SG34	−0.33	0.04	<.001
		SG4->SG45	−0.33	0.04	<.001
		SG5->SG56	−0.33	0.04	<.001
		WR Int.->Spelling Int.	0.78	0.04	<.001
		WR Int.->Spelling Slope	0.28	0.04	<.001
		WR Slope-> Spelling Slope	0.17	0.05	0.001
		Spelling Int <-> Spelling Slope	12.20	3.36	<.001
		WR Slope <-> Spelling Int.	5.09	11.36	0.65
		WR Int. <-> WR Slope	−41.38	17.65	0.019

Mean/Intercept		WR Intercept	498.38	0.91	<.001
		WR Slope	21.31	0.73	<.001
		Spelling Intercept	109.71	20.29	<.001
		Spelling Slope	28.19	7.70	<.001
		G3 LWID	0.00	0.00	999
		G4 LWID	0.00	0.00	999
		G5 LWID	0.00	0.00	999
		G6 LWID	0.00	0.00	999
		Spell G3	0.00	0.00	999
		Spell G4	0.00	0.00	999
		Spell G5	0.00	0.00	999
		Spell G6	0.00	0.00	999
		SG3	0.00	0.00	999
		SG4	0.00	0.00	999
		SG5	0.00	0.00	999
		SG6	0.00	0.00	999
		SG34	0.00	0.00	999
		SG45	0.00	0.00	999
		SG56	0.00	0.00	999

Var./Res. Var.		WR Intercept	307.37	25.51	<.001
		WR Slope	48.35	20.39	0.007
		Spelling Intercept	63.67	10.89	<.001
		Spelling Slope	4.30	1.51	0.005
		G3 LWID	32.75	2.06	<.001
		G4 LWID	32.75	2.06	<.001
		G5 LWID	32.75	2.06	<.001
		G6 LWID	32.75	2.06	<.001
		Spell G3	47.86	11.03	<.001
		Spell G4	42.87	5.36	<.001
		Spell G5	69.02	6.78	<.001
		Spell G6	41.92	8.52	<.001
		SG3	0.00	0.00	999
		SG4	0.00	0.00	999
		SG5	0.00	0.00	999
		SG6	0.00	0.00	999
		SG34	0.00	0.00	999
		SG45	0.00	0.00	999
		SG56	0.00	0.00	999

Note . SG3= grade 3 spelling, SG4 = grade 4 spelling, SG5 = grade 5 spelling, SG6 = grade 6 spelling; SG34 = grade 3–4 latent change score, SG45 = grade 4–5 latent change score, SG56 = grade 5–6; latent change score, WR = word reading; LWID = letter word identification; Int. = intercept; Var./Res. Var. = model variances and residual variances. p -values of 999 are indicative of model coefficients that were assigned a fixed value.

1 The similarities that reading and writing draw on do not indicate that reading and writing are the same or a single construct ( Kim & Graham, 2018 ). Instead, reading and writing differ in demands and thus, in the extent to which they draw on resources. Spelling places greater demands on memory for accurate recall of word specific spelling patterns than does word reading, and word reading and spelling are not likely the same constructs (see Ehri, 2000 for a review; but see Kent et al., 2015; Mehta, Foorman, Branum-Martin, & Taylor, 2005 ). Written composition is also a more self-directed process than reading comprehension, and thus, is likely to draw on self-regulation to a greater extent than for reading comprehension ( Kim & Graham, 2018 ).

2 There is a dip in sample size in Grade 4. This was primarily because a few schools’ decision not to participate in the study during that year with changes in the leadership.

3 An alternative model tested a covariance between reading comprehension and written composition initial status, resulting in a .67 correlation between the constructs.

Contributor Information

Young-Suk Grace Kim, University of California Irvine.

Yaacov Petscher, Florida Center for Reading Research.

Jeanne Wanzek, Vanderbilt University.

Stephanie Al Otaiba, Southern Methodist University.

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JWU Students Create Eastern-Inspired Cuisine in the Wild West

Annie Kennedy
20 June 2024

Carly McCrumb ’24 A.A. in Culinary Arts , '25 B.S. in Culinary Nutrition , and Sophia Tingle ’24, A.A. in Baking & Pastry Arts , didn’t meet on campus at Johnson & Wales University due to their different programs and ages. But after working and living together in one of the remotest corners of the U.S. and getting to create a successful five-course meal, the two are now good friends.

What It’s Like Interning in Big Sky Country

Carly and Sophia met representatives from Averill Hospitality , a family-run resort and hotel management company in Montana, at JWU career fairs. When both decided to do an internship this spring, they were attracted to the outdoorsy environment that Montana promised.

“It was a bit of a culture shock, with everything being so different,” says Sophia, a native Rhode Islander, who eventually adjusted to Flathead Valley’s sights of bald eagles, elk and deer that can be fed by hand. “It’s not only the locals but how people act in kitchens that’s different.”

“That’s what you signed up for, that experience, and we definitely got that,” Carly, who grew up in Michigan, adds. “We got to go to rodeos and other Western events, and we got to ride a horse. We get to ski on a nearby mountain in the morning and work by night; it was all a really cool experience.”

photo collage of a woman on a snowboard on a mountain paired with her bent over spooning food into dishes in a restaurant kitchen

In Montana, the students say, everyone knows each other. “It feels like we’ve been in a Western movie the past four months,” Carly says of the more laid-back culture. “The chivalry of the men, the cowboy boots; people are ski bums, or hippies, and they’re all just living life.”

Immersion in an All-Day Kitchen

The Lodge at Whitefish Lake offers multiple food and drink experiences from 6am-midnight daily, including a lakefront dining room serving breakfast through dinner, a bar and lounge, and a Coffee Dock that provides smoothies, coffee, pastries and grab-and-go items.

“They have a prep team, catering, line crew and night team to cover everything, so there are endless opportunities to choose where you’d like to go,” Carly explains. “You just have to start somewhere and work your way up.”

She began by helping with breakfast, then got into sautéing and grilling, eventually trying out every position making everything from sauté to pizza to salad to dessert. “That was a great experience for the fast-paced linework and under-pressure style you expect JWU students to have,” she notes. “It’s all hands-on work with food and chefs who’ve been there a long time and know their stuff.”

Sophia chose to work in the mornings, prepping breakfast sandwiches and pastries for the Coffee Dock before moving on to making desserts for lunch and dinner. “I’d get to make occasional dessert specials, or I’d help the prep team if I was done early. I’d pitch in wherever,” she says. She also wanted to experience working at night, so she chose one night shift a week, mainly stocking the Coffee Dock.

a photo of Carly McCrumb and Sophia Tingle taking a selfie in a restaurant kitchen

Being the only two interns on site meant freedom to express themselves in the kitchen. “We created dessert specials; we could do whatever we wanted as long as we communicated,” Carly says. “This was exactly the experience I sought: not a Michelin fine-dining experience but getting your foot in the door and understanding how the kitchen works. In reality, kitchens are hard work with long hours. But other places wouldn’t give you the voice we were able to speak; we created dinner specials they would actually put on the line.”

She adds some advice: “The Lodge at Whitefish Lake offers something for everyone, but you have to take the initiative and tell them what you want to do.”

Applying JWU Skills to a Culinary Internship

“JWU taught me time management, and I applied that a lot at the Lodge,” Sophia says. “I had to get a certain number of tasks done before the night crew came in. And I applied social skills, because you have to use your kitchen voice in the industry. You have to get out of your comfort zone and voice your opinions and thoughts and concerns.”

She also leaned on her culinary foundations skills when she created dessert specials. “I did a chocolate truffle special for Valentine’s Day, so I knew how to temper and work with chocolate from JWU’s lab,” adds Sophia.

Carly credits JWU for her knife skills. “They were impressed with my level of understanding how to process vegetables and meats,” she said. “Plus, JWU taught me to be prepared. The strict rules of uniform and enforcing always having a pen, Sharpie and thermometer on you — that helped a lot when I was in charge of my own dishes. JWU teaches you to always professional, and not every culinary school really preaches that.”

Discovering a JWU Connection in Montana

Carly and Sophia soon discovered that the Lodge’s beverage team included a JWU alum. “He made us a welcome cocktail from one alum to the next,” Carly explains. “That was really sweet. There was definitely some school spirit there!”

That alum was Zachary Ralph ’08, who holds an A.S. in Hotel Management with a concentration in Beverage and a B.S. in Travel & Tourism. Originally a Delaware native, Zachary worked and traveled up and down the East Coast after graduating from JWU, mainly working in Miami Beach with international and domestic hospitality brands, before returning to his home state for another stint with the restaurant group he started with. Next he moved out to Portland, Oregon in 2018 with his fiancée, taking a position as director of food and beverage for the KEX Hotel. There, Zachary enjoyed working alongside famous bartender and author Jeffrey Morgenthaler at Pacific Standard. But he and his partner desired to be closer to the mountains — and they ended up in Montana.

“We moved to Whitefish for all that the area’s geography has to offer, and I was happy to find an up-and-coming food and beverage scene,” shares Zachary. “So far, I am happy managing and executing a craft-oriented bar program at the Boat Club, and I look forward to providing the impetus for others to level up the experience for our guests.”

photo collage of a glass of wine being poured against a sunset, left, and three people posing inside a restaurant, right

Oh, and what was that welcome cocktail the certified sommelier made for Carly and Sophia?

“That was a fun hybrid,” he reports. “Aperitif meets Spritz that combined citrus, fresh herb, bitter elements and palate-cleansing bubbles to stir the appetite.”

Executing an Event Menu

Carly and Sophia’s proudest moment was planning and executing a Rising Star Chef Series dinner at The Lodge at Whitefish Lake’s Boat Club Dining Room. The students wanted to fuse Asian flavors with Italian techniques. “The area is a food desert for different cuisines, and we wanted to make Asian food accessible to patrons,” Carly explains. “The managers knew a lot about Asian cuisine and I knew European techniques, so it was a perfect fit to create something ‘MediterrAsian.’”

The pair collaborated well; while Sophia handled the elements such as dessert and bread, Carly applied her background in catering to plotting a 5-course menu. “I’ve always helped plate meals, and it was amazing to put my mind on a plate this time,” she says. “A lot of places wouldn’t have let an intern do that. They were literally calling me ‘Chef’ in the kitchen."

a photo collage of two young women presenting to a room, left, and diners seated at table clapping, right

Carly planned the cuisine (mini bao buns containing candied pork belly, pickled vegetable, cilantro and fresno chili; yuzu endive salad consisting of baby endive, miner’s lettuce, poached pear, crushed hazelnuts and yuzu miso vinaigrette; mushroom ravioli dumpling with soy mushroom duxelles and edamame chili oil ) and how it was plated. “Seeing your vision actually executed on the plate is a special experience,” Carly says. “It was something people hadn’t tasted before, so they were excited!”

“Being able to experience the dinner, the media, having the pressure on you which is an environment I thrive in — I am so glad they gave us the opportunity,” Sophia says.

Twenty-one diners attended the reservation-only event, which was a higher turnout than usual for a Tuesday night. The Lodge’s sommelier worked with a local producer on wine pairings, identifying the perfect complement for each course.

a photo collage showing two of the courses executed by JWU interns at a dinner at The Lodge at Whitefish Lake

Sophia worked closely with Carly, creating the intermezzo course (chiso melon granita with shaved ice, mint and candied kaffir lime leaves) as well as the dessert (purple carrot cake with ube ice cream, honey marshmallow sauce and salted caramel tuile). Carly is still praising her co-intern’s execution of the baked elements. “Sophia’s bao buns looked storebought, they were so well made!”

Both students are quick to add that the event was a team effort. “You can’t pull off a dinner like that with just two interns,” Carly notes. “It takes a big team, and it shows how much they wanted to invest in us and how much they appreciated our time.”

The Lodge proudly posted a reel of Carly and Sophia’s Rising Star Chef Series dinner on Instagram:

View this post on Instagram A post shared by Lodge at Whitefish Lake (@lodgeatwhitefishlake)

Internship Guidance at the Lodge

Carly and Sophia say they couldn’t have had the internship they had without Executive Sous Chef Mike Tipton and Executive Chef Johnny Morrision, who both made sure their experience was what they wanted.

“They are both great chefs but really good people, too,” says Sophia. “Tipton was always there for us in the kitchen at all times, providing feedback and helping out.”

Adds Carly: “There’s so much you learn in an internship, so it’s great that JWU has you do that. You just can’t duplicate some things in a lab setting.”

She notes the importance of getting along with people, now that she’s worked many shifts as the only woman in a kitchen full of 30+ men. “It takes a specific type of person to thrive in this environment; it’s not for everyone,” Carly reveals. “But even though the managers know you won’t stay, they’re here to build your experience and build you as a person and as a chef. They help you become better because they know you’re off to bigger and better things.”

Employers and Colleagues React to JWU's Interns

Boat Club Executive Chef Johnny Morrision spent a lot of time in the kitchen with the JWU students. "Both were a pleasure to work with; both were very passionate and eager to learn, use and show their skills," he reports. "They fit right in with the team. Carly was very outgoing and outspoken, Sophia a bit more reserved. I instructed Sophia to find her kitchen voice and to be confident in her value and worth with what she brings to the team. Overall, they were fantastic and we miss them."

"It was such a pleasure to have Carly and Sophia intern with us," adds Culinary Director for Averill Hospitality Nathan Kulchak.

"Carly and Sophia were amazing, and their dinner was phenomenal," states Averill Hospitality's Corporate Director of Food & Beverage Bryan LaFontaine. "It is great to see that our industry is in great hands moving forward."

What’s Next for Sophia and Carly

At 19 years old, Sophia has a lot of options ahead of her. In April, she was wrapping up a thoroughly enjoyable internship at The Lodge at Whitefish Lake and was hoping to work at a bakery — preferably one at a hotel — over the summer. In early June she had an update: “I just accepted a job in Aspen, Colorado. I will be starting the position in early August at a five-star hotel called The Little Nell . I am beyond excited for the opportunity and cannot wait to delve into pastry again!”

a photo collage of two different young women posing and smiling in JWU shirts

Carly, meanwhile, will play her last year of soccer for JWU this fall. “I plan to do another internship again next spring to finish my culinary nutrition degree, so the fall will be more athletic-based,” she explains. “I have a big interest in athletics and nutrition and health, so I’m diving more into that. My goal is to work for a pro sports team at my next internship and eventually go private, being the best chef I can be for clients with an interest in healthy cooking.” She is also considering getting a master’s degree in dietetics and starting her own private practice, and she hopes for an experience cooking in either Spain or Italy after graduating from JWU next year.

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COMMENTS

11.1 The Purpose of Research Writing
You will need a way to put your thoughts together in a logical, coherent manner. You may want to use the facts you have learned to create a narrative or to support an argument. And you may want to show the results of your research to your friends, your teachers, or even the editors of magazines and journals. Writing a research paper is an ideal ...
Chapter 1: What is Research and Research Writing?
Writing is a journey—it is seldom a straight line. Writing is thinking. It's witnessing, observing, and sharing. Writing is powerful—it can change the world by communicating a new discovery or challenging someone's pre-existing beliefs, and it can also change you.
11.1: The Purpose of Research Writing
Step 6: Revising and Editing Your Paper. In the final step of the research writing process, you will revise and polish your paper. You might reorganize your paper's structure or revise for unity and cohesion, ensuring that each element in your paper flows into the next logically and naturally. You will also make sure that your paper uses an ...
The Purpose of Research Writing
Step 4: Organizing Research and the Writer's Ideas. When your research is complete, you will organize your findings and decide which sources to cite in your paper. You will also have an opportunity to evaluate the evidence you have collected and determine whether it supports your thesis, or the focus of your paper.
A Journey to Understand Enjoyment in Academic Writing
Writing Enjoyment as a Pursuit. Somewhat understandably, there is disagreement on the "enjoyability" of writing. In Paul Silvia's How to Write a Lot, he states that while elements of research (e.g. study design, data collection, data analysis) are enjoyable to most academics, "writing is frustrating, complicated, and un-fun." 3 After a session of slogging through endless word choices ...
Developing Scientific Thinking and Research Skills Through ...
The four quadrants of skills identification and development have emerged from a range of research projects and experience with supervision, research writing, and workshopping. They concern conceptual, scientific thinking skills, practical skills, research writing, and academic identity development. Each need attention in any development process.
Research Skills: What They Are and Why They're Important
Critical thinking. Critical thinking refers to a person's ability to think rationally and analyze and interpret information and make connections. This skill is important in research because it allows individuals to better gather and evaluate data and establish significance. Common critical thinking skills include: Open-mindedness.
7.1: The Purpose of Research Writing
For similar reasons as professionals, students do research to answer specific questions, to share their findings with others, to increase their understanding of challenging topics, and to strengthen their analytical skills. Having to write a research paper may feel intimidating at first. After all, researching and writing a long paper requires ...
Skills and Strategies for Effective Writing
In addition to research and reading skills, college or university students are also expected to effectively engage in the process of writing. Writing is an essential component of communication and critical thinking, and a student's ability to write is considered a critical factor that influences their persistence and success in any course modality (Rovai, 2003; Stephen, 2022; Tinto, 2012).
PDF Research and Writing Skills for Academic and Graduate Researchers
research skills across four domains: (i) knowledge and intellectual abilities, (ii) personal efectiveness, (iii) research governance and organisation, and (iv) engagement, influence and impact. As a PhD or Masters by research candidate, you will develop your skills in these areas.
Honing Your Academic Writing Skills
This chapter on academic writing serves as a reference for a number of topics discussed throughout the textbook. Writing is often considered as your most important academic skill. Honing your academic writing skills, and eventually writing your dissertation is a crucial part of your PhD trajectory, and is intrinsically related to your research ...
Learning to Improve: Using Writing to Increase Critical Thinking
These results indicate that the process of writing helps students develop improved analytical and inference skills. Prior research indicates that the writing to learn strategy is effective because students must conceptually organize and structure their thoughts as well as their awareness of thinking processes (Langer and Applebee, 1987 ...
Empowering students to develop research skills
Empowering students to develop research skills. February 8, 2021. This post is republished from Into Practice, a biweekly communication of Harvard's Office of the Vice Provost for Advances in Learning. Terence D. Capellini, Richard B Wolf Associate Professor of Human Evolutionary Biology, empowers students to grow as researchers in his Building the Human Body course through a comprehensive ...
Learning to Do Research Is a Lifelong Skill
Learning to Do Research Is a Lifelong Skill Courtney L. Young is the head librarian and an associate professor of women's studies at Penn State Greater Allegheny. Updated August 29, 2011, 5:05 PM
2: Critical Thinking, Research, Reading, and Writing
Here you will find useful advice about how to approach research, reading, and writing in philosophy. 2.1: The Brain Is an Inference Machine. 2.2: Overcoming Cognitive Biases and Engaging in Critical Reflection. 2.3: Developing Good Habits of Mind. 2.4: Gathering Information, Evaluating Sources, and Understanding Evidence. 2.5: Reading Philosophy.
Why It Matters: Research Skills
Why It Matters: Research Skills. Not all sources or pieces of evidence are created equal, even when we are discussing academic sources; that is why in this book we review basic research skills that will help you ensure that your research rests on valid sources of information. Remember that even when a source is peer-reviewed, it is important to ...
4 Ways Reading and Writing Interlock: What the Research Says
1. Reading and writing are intimately connected. Research on the connections between the two disciplines began in the early 1980s and has grown more robust with time. Although there are elements ...
Learning in Research: Importance of Building Research Skills for
Learning in research helps to expand your horizons, explore new areas of interest, and broaden your knowledge base so you can develop pioneering solutions for scientific problems. Lifelong learning also enhances critical thinking and problem-solving abilities, enabling researchers to approach challenges from multiple perspectives. By taking up ...
2 Foundations of Reading and Writing
As Chapter 3 makes clear, except for a few intervention studies, the study of component literacy skills and processes has not been a priority in research with adults, nor has the research fully incorporated knowledge of the practices that develop reading and writing skills in K-12 students. The population of adult learners is highly diverse.
Higher Education Students' Reflective Journal Writing and Lifelong
Reflective journal (RJ) writing has been recognized as an effective pedagogical tool for nurturing students' lifelong learning skills. With the paucity of empirical work on the dimensionality of reflective writing, this research sought to qualitatively analyze students' RJ writing and design a generic reflection scheme for identifying dimensions of reflective thinking.
(PDF) Enhancing Writing Skills: A Review
speaking, reading and writing. These skills are equally. related to and supportive of each other. Writing is. considered as a very important skill among all the skills. Most people believe that ...
Learning to Read and Write: What Research Reveals
But they also will need to learn that the power of writing is expressing one's own ideas in ways that can be understood by others. As children's capabilities develop and become more fluent, instruction will turn from a central focus on helping children learn to read and write to helping them read and write to learn.
Improving student athlete research skills at U of Arizona
University of Arizona librarians partnered with an athletics support program to help students hone their research and writing skills. For many students, the biggest barrier to accessing support resources is not knowing that the services exist. A July 2023 study by Tyton Partners found 60 percent of students are not aware of the full scope of offerings at their institution, limiting their ...
Relations between Reading and Writing: A Longitudinal Examination from
Abstract. We investigated developmental trajectories of and the relation between reading and writing (word reading, reading comprehension, spelling, and written composition), using longitudinal data from students in Grades 3 to 6 in the US. Results revealed that word reading and spelling were best described as having linear growth trajectories ...
JWU Students Create Eastern-Inspired Cuisine in the Wild West
Carly McCrumb '24 A.A. in Culinary Arts, '25 B.S. in Culinary Nutrition, and Sophia Tingle '24, A.A. in Baking & Pastry Arts, didn't meet on campus at Johnson & Wales University due to their different programs and ages.But after working and living together in one of the remotest corners of the U.S. and getting to create a successful five-course meal, the two are now good friends.

11.1 The Purpose of Research Writing

Reasons for Research

Research Writing and the Academic Paper

Research Writing at Work

Writing at Work

Steps of the Research Writing Process

Step 1: Choosing a Topic

Step 2: Planning and Scheduling

Step 3: Conducting Research

Step 4: Organizing Research and the Writer’s Ideas

Step 5: Drafting Your Paper

Step 6: Revising and Editing Your Paper

Key Takeaways

Chapter 1: What is Research and Research Writing?

Write here, write now.

Writing is life

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The Purpose of Research Writing

Reasons for Research

Research Writing and the Academic Paper

Research Writing at Work

Writing at Work

Steps of the Research Writing Process

Step 1: Choosing a Topic

Step 2: Planning and Scheduling

Step 3: Conducting Research

Step 4: Organizing Research and the Writer’s Ideas

Step 5: Drafting Your Paper

Step 6: Revising and Editing Your Paper

Key Takeaways

Honing Your Academic Writing Skills

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Empowering students to develop research skills

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2: Critical Thinking, Research, Reading, and Writing

Research Skills

4 Ways Reading and Writing Interlock: What the Research Says

1. Reading and writing are intimately connected.

2. Writing matters even at the earliest grades, when students are learning to read.

3. Like reading, writing must be taught explicitly.

4. Writing can help students learn content—and make sense of it.

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Learning in Research: Importance of Building Research Skills for Students

Learning in research and academic progress

Benefits of lifelong learning in research

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Relations between Reading and Writing: A Longitudinal Examination from Grades 3 to 6

Yaacov Petscher