Seventeen fourth and fifth graders with severe writing disabilities participated in a weekly, one-hour individual tutorial for over eight months on the average. The tutorial was equally directed to transcription (handwriting and spelling) and composition skills. Students showed reliable improvement in composition and handwriting automaticity but not in spelling. Although writing-related fine-motor, orthographic, orthographic-motor integration, and phonological segmentation skills were not directly trained, they improved. However, phonological memory skills did not improve and may be a major constraint in the development of spelling skills in students with severe learning disabilities involving written language. Remediation may need to focus on development of phonological memory and not just on teaching rules and strategies. Word recognition skills also seemed to limit response to spelling instruction, and remedial spelling instruction may need to focus on words students can already read. In addition, students with spelling disabilities may benefit from a connectionist approach that models sound-spelling connections without teaching rules and may need more repeated practice with specific words than was provided. This exploratory study generated hypotheses that require further instructional research to test.
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