Spoken Language and Written Expression—Interplay of Delays

Children with histories of early phonology disorders were assessed at school age for both spoken language and written expression skills. Results showed that children with a history of a phonology disorder performed more poorly on writing tasks than siblings developing normally. Children with histories of phonology disorders + additional language disorders performed more poorly on writing tasks than children with histories of phonology disorders alone. Spoken language abilities, as measured by the CELF-R, best predicted written expression skills for both groups of children with phonology disorders. However, measures of the semantic and syntactic capacity of spoken language abilities did not correlate with corresponding aspects of written expression.