Quality of Writing by Elementary Students With Learning Disabilities

Abstract

Teaching students with learning disabilities to write often presents great challenges. In this article, we describe studies of a HyperCard stack that was developed over a four-year period to assist beginning writers and their teachers. Students enter words from a keyboard or by selecting from prepared lists (a 1,000 word core list; four teacher-generated lists; a first names list; and a user-generated, private list). All text can be spoken using a speech synthesis system (robotic voice). Records of students’ writing are created automatically. Student’s “certificates” with writing samples and pictures, together with teacher feedback, may be printed. ROBO-Writer was compared with paper-and-pencil writing and a commonly used word processing application for groups of students with learning disabilities at two school sites. Using four rating criteria, texts created by students with learning disabilities who used ROBO-Writer showed significantly higher scores than did those of matched students using other writing tools.