Copying Fluency and Orthographic Development

Abstract

This exploratory study examined the relationship between stages of orthographic development (Henderson, 1990) and writing fluency. It was hypothesized that subjects in the beginning stages of orthographic development would copy less fluently than subjects at more advanced levels of orthographic development and reading achievement. Forty-one first- through third-graders copied separately four nonsense illegal letter strings. A standardized reading achievement test and a 20-word developmental spelling inventory were administered. Based on the results of the spelling inventory, subjects were placed in one of two stages of developmental word knowledge. The beginning readers and spellers approached the orthography in a linear fashion, and tended to copy in smaller unit, often copying letter-by-letter. Children with a more sophisticated knowledge of words copied in larger units, and often at the whole word level. The results support the hypothesis that the graphemic output lexicon of beginning readers and writers is not sufficiently detailed to allow a fluent output.