The Impact of Specific Language Impairment on Adolescents' Written Text

This study examined the writing performance of 58 students with a history of specific language impairment, assessing them at ages 8, 11, 12, 14, and 16 to evaluate longitudinal trajectories of writing performance and relationships with oral language, reading, and handwriting fluency. At age 16, participants continued to experience problems with oral language and literacy: Their writing evidenced short texts, poor sentence structure, and difficulties with ideas and organization. Concurrent measures of vocabulary and spelling were significant factors in explaining writing performance. Handwriting fluency remained a particular difficulty for the current cohort and directly affected writing performance. Path analysis indicated that previous levels of literacy mediated the impact of oral language skills.