The mechanical and creative skills required to write an original composition may be beyond the abilities of a student with a learning disability. These skills can be characterized, respectively, as constituting the roles of secretary and author. The author has to get ideas, organize his or her thoughts, and select and arrange words and phrases. The secretary, on the other hand, deals with the physical effort of writing and is concerned with the mechanical aspects of the writing task. Learning disabled (LD) writers have difficulty with both the author and secretary roles, but educators are not agreed as to which should be emphasized first in instruction. The purpose of this paper is to (a) present a way of looking at the complexities of written language from the perspectives of both the secretary and the author; (b) discuss four approaches to providing assistance to the struggling writer; and (c) recommend a model of written language on which curriculum should be based.
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