# name
Exploring Spanish Writing Abilities of Children with Developmental Language Disorder in expository texts

# metadata.dc.description.abstract[].value
Introduction: Numerous studies have shown that children with developmental
language disorder (DLD), in addition to oral language difficulties, exhibit
impaired writing abilities. Their texts contain problems in grammar, organization,
cohesion, and length of written output. However, most of these studies have
been conducted with English speakers. English is characterized by complex
phonological structure, opaque orthography, poor morphology and strict word
order. The aim of this research is to observe the writing abilities of children with
DLD in a language with simple phonological structure, transparent orthography,
rich morphology and flexible word order like Spanish in the production of
expository texts. Methods: Twenty-six children with DLD (mean age in months = 128.85) and 26 age-and sex-matched typically developing (TD) children (mean age in
months = 124.61) wrote an expository text about their favorite animal. Results: In order to analyze how the two groups plan and encode written texts, we looked at word frequency and sentence structure, grammatical complexity and lexical density, and omissions and errors. Compared to the TD group, the children with DLD omitted more content words; made more errors with functional words, verb conjugation and inflectional morphemes, and made a large number of spelling errors. Moreover, they wrote fewer words, fewer sentences, and less structurally and lexically complex texts. Discussion: These results show that children with DLD who speak a transparent orthography language such as Spanish also have difficulties in most language areas when producing written texts. Our findings should be considered when planning and designing interventions.

# metadata.dc.rights[].value
cc-by (c) Balboa Castells, Raquel et al., 2024

# metadata.dc.source[].value
Articles publicats en revistes (Cognició, Desenvolupament i Psicologia de l'Educació)

# metadata.dc.title[].value
Exploring Spanish Writing Abilities of Children with Developmental Language Disorder in expository texts