Written Language and Composition Skills Flashcards

According to Berninger and Amtmann's Simple View of Writing (2003), written composition is represented as a *product* — not a sum — of transcription, executive functions, and text generation. What is the primary clinical significance of using multiplication rather than addition in this model?

Answer: A severe deficit in any single component will critically impair overall written output, even if the remaining components are fully intact

Using multiplication rather than addition means that if any one component approaches zero, the entire product approaches zero — regardless of how strong the other two components are. A student with rich ideas and good executive function but severely impaired transcription (e.g., dysgraphia or dysorthographia) will still produce very poor written compositions because the product of any value multiplied by near-zero is near-zero. This is why intervention must address all three components.

A ninth-grade student reliably spells 'resign' as 'rezine' and 'sign' as 'sine,' yet correctly spells 'resignation' and 'signal' without hesitation. A CALT would MOST accurately interpret this error pattern as evidence of:

Answer: Failure to apply morphological constancy — the principle that a base morpheme's spelling remains stable across its derived forms

The student correctly spells 'signal' and 'resignation' — forms in which the /g/ is phonetically realized — but misspells 'sign' and 'resign,' where the /g/ is silent. This reveals that the student has not connected the base morpheme spelling to its derived forms. Morphological constancy dictates that 'sign' retains its because it is the same morpheme as in 'signal.' Since the student CAN spell the derived forms, the problem is not phonological memory or orthographic storage of a specific word — it is the failure to apply morphological constancy backward to the base.

A student writes: 'The experiment failed. This was because the temperature exceeded the threshold. The researchers had not anticipated it.' An academic language therapist analyzing this passage identifies 'this' and 'it' as cohesive devices. Which description MOST accurately characterizes both?

Answer: 'This' is a demonstrative anaphoric reference; 'it' is a personal anaphoric reference

Both 'this' and 'it' are anaphoric — they point backward to previously mentioned information — but they belong to different reference subtypes within Halliday and Hasan's cohesion framework. 'This' is a demonstrative pronoun used anaphorically to refer back to a whole proposition ('the experiment failed'), while 'it' is a personal pronoun referring back to 'the threshold' or 'the failure.' Cataphoric references point forward in the text; exophoric references point to entities entirely outside the text. Neither substitution nor ellipsis applies here.

A CALT is calculating syntactic maturity measures from a student's written narrative. The student frequently uses short intentional fragments — such as 'Not a chance.' and 'Never.' — as stylistic responses to rhetorical questions within the story. Which unit of analysis should the therapist use, and why?

Answer: C-units, because they include communicatively adequate non-sentences, making them appropriate when intentional fragments are present

C-units (communication units) were specifically designed to accommodate communicatively adequate responses that do not contain a full main clause — including intentional fragments. A T-unit requires a minimum of one independent clause, so intentional fragments cannot be counted as T-units; they would be excluded or distort the analysis. MLU is primarily used in early language development for spoken language. Clause density is a derived measure that still requires a base unit (T-units or C-units) and would not resolve the fragment problem.

A student working on the TREE opinion-writing strategy can recite all strategy steps from memory and begins each writing session using self-statements unprompted ('What do I do first? I need my Topic sentence...'). However, after completing each draft, she still requires the teacher to review it and confirm whether all TREE components are present before she revises. According to Graham and Harris's SRSD model, this student is MOST likely in which stage?

Answer: Support It — she initiates the strategy independently but still requires external feedback on output quality

The 'Support It' stage is characterized by the student taking increasing ownership of the strategy — including initiating self-statements — while the teacher provides fading scaffolding. In this case, the teacher has withdrawn modeling and prompting, but still serves as an external quality-check on the written product. 'Independent Performance' requires the student to evaluate her own output without teacher feedback. 'Memorize It' precedes self-statement use in writing practice. 'Discuss It' is an early collaborative stage before memorization is achieved.

A CALT works with a 4th-grader who has severe dysgraphia but strong oral language. After 8 weeks of using speech-to-text software instead of handwriting, the student's compositions are dramatically longer, syntactically more complex, and better organized than his handwritten work. This outcome MOST directly supports which hypothesis about written language?

Answer: Transcription demands were acting as a bottleneck, consuming working memory resources that would otherwise support higher-order text generation

The dramatic improvement in composition quality when transcription demands are eliminated directly supports the transcription bottleneck hypothesis (Kellogg, 1999; Berninger et al.): laborious handwriting or spelling consumes working memory capacity that would otherwise support planning, organizing, and generating text. If the student had expressive language deficits (A), oral dictation would not produce richer compositions. Speech-to-text does not eliminate phonological processing demands (C) — the student still formulates language orally. Practice effects (D) are possible but cannot explain a modality-specific improvement of this magnitude tied specifically to the removal of handwriting demands.