Written expression of students with and without learning disabilities: differences across the grades

This study compares the written expression of 48 students with learning disabilities (LD) and 48 normally achieving (NA) students (Grades 4, 8, and 11). Productivity, syntactic maturity, vocabulary, and mechanics were examined using writing samples obtained in response to a standard stimulus. Results indicate that, compared to their NA peers, students with learning disabilities write fewer words and sentences, write more words per sentence, produce fewer words with seven letters or more and fewer sentence fragments, and have a higher percentage of capitalization and spelling errors. No group differences were found for the number of T-units produced or the number of morphemes per T-unit. Comparison of group differences at each grade level and differences by groups across the grades reveals persistent written expression difficulties and signals a need for a careful review of current instructional practices and how they can be improved.