This blog post is part of our Research Article of the Month series. For this month, we highlight “Automaticity in Writing in Response to Reading: Relations Between Oral Reading Fluency and Compositional Writing Fluency in Grades 3–5,” an article written by Laura S. Tortorelli and Adrea J. Truckenmiller. Truckenmiller is a featured speaker at the 2026 Iowa Science of Reading Summit. To learn more about Truckenmiller and the summit, visit the summit webpage.
Find more information on terminology specific to literacy learning in our reading glossary. Important words related to research are bolded throughout this post, and definitions of these terms are included at the end of the article in the “Terms to Know” section.
Key Takeaways
- Reading and writing automaticity are significantly associated in Grades 3–5, especially among the most proficient writers.
- The late elementary school years are a key period for the co-development of reading and writing skills.
What Did the Researchers Examine?
Reading and writing are often understood as related skills. Literacy educators and advocates Timothy Shanahan and Jill Fitzgerald describe them as "two buckets dipping from the same well" of knowledge. However, the empirical relationship between reading and writing automaticity—the ability to perform reading and writing tasks accurately and effortlessly—is still being examined.
The researchers of this study aimed to analyze the relationship between reading and writing automaticity in late elementary school students when performing writing-in-response-to-reading tasks. In these tasks, students read a short passage and then receive a question or prompt that requires them to respond to what they read in writing. Thus, writing-in-response-to-reading tasks provide an opportunity to explore the functional relationship between reading and writing skills—the overlapping processes and goals of reading and writing during the completion of a specific task.
Furthermore, by exploring the relationship between these skills for students across grade levels, the researchers aimed to identify key periods in the co-development of reading and writing automaticity.
What Did the Researchers Find?
Reading and writing automaticity showed a significant association for students in Grades 4 and 5 and the strongest writers in Grade 3. Furthermore, the highest performing writers in Grade 5 demonstrated a significantly stronger association between reading and writing automaticity than their less proficient peers. However, the results also indicate that reading automaticity accounts for only 14–30% of the total variance in writing automaticity. This suggests that reading automaticity alone does not account for all the variability in students’ levels of writing automaticity; other factors, such as typing fluency, spelling, etc. may contribute to differing writing automaticity scores as well.
What Are the Implications of These Findings?
While this study does not suggest that reading automaticity alone accounts for variability in writing automaticity scores, it does demonstrate that reading and writing automaticity are more significantly associated in the highest performing writers across grade levels. This indicates that automaticity in reading skills may facilitate stronger performance in writing-in-response-to-reading tasks.
That said, because higher scores in reading automaticity do not always correlate with increased writing automaticity, these findings also indicate that explicit instruction in both reading and writing, as well as the integration of these skills, is necessary for achieving proficiency in writing-in-response-to-reading tasks. Additionally, some other studies suggest that increasing writing achievement (especially spelling) has an impact on reading fluency (Graham & Santangelo, 2014). Furthermore, it appears that the late elementary school years are a key period in the co-development of these skills.
How Did the Researchers Find This?
The researchers conducted a tightly controlled cross-sectional study of 422 students in Grades 3–5. Each student received a reading and writing task related to one of six grade-level appropriate passages. These tasks aimed to measure their reading and writing automaticity.
- Reading automaticity measurement: Students were asked to read aloud for 1 minute, during which time, any words read incorrectly were recorded. Reading automaticity was then calculated as words read correctly per minute (WCPM): the total number of words read minus the number of recorded errors.
- Writing automaticity measurement: After reading the entire passage, students were given 10 minutes to type their responses into a computer. At the end of 7 minutes, the computer calculated writing automaticity as a measure of correct minus incorrect writing sequences (CIWS). A correct writing sequence refers to two consecutive words, or a word and a punctuation mark, that are written with correct spelling, capitalization, and punctuation, and demonstrate appropriate syntax and grammar.
Statistical tests were used to measure the relation of WCPM to CIWS between grade levels. The study controlled for reading comprehension skills using the Reading Comprehension Task (RCT) from the Florida Center for Reading Research Reading Assessment. Controlling for reading comprehension in the statistical analyses allowed researchers to examine the relationship between reading and writing automaticity independent from students’ reading comprehension skills.
Next, the researchers analyzed whether the relations between WCPM and CIWS varied between students with lower and higher writing proficiencies.
What Are the Limitations of This Paper?
This study did not include a secondary observer to record WCPM, meaning that it was not possible to verify the reliability of WCPM scores.
Additionally, while passages were controlled for grade level and assigned randomly to students, there is a possibility that the content of each individual passage could have contributed to variance in CIWS. In other words, students with background knowledge of the passage topic may have performed better than students with less background knowledge in that area.
Furthermore, as this was a cross-sectional study, examining data from only one point in time, specific conclusions about the association of reading and writing automaticity across grade levels cannot be drawn.
Terms to Know
Cross-sectional study: A cross-sectional study is a type of research that observes and analyzes data collected from a group of individuals at a specific point in time.
References
Laura S. Tortorelli & Adrea J. Truckenmiller (2024). Automaticity in writing in response to reading: Relations between oral reading fluency and compositional writing fluency in grades 3–5. Reading & Writing Quarterly, 40(2), 103–117, https://doi.org/10.1080/10573569.2023.2172757
Graham, S., & Santangelo, T. (2014). Does spelling instruction make students better spellers, readers, and writers? A meta-analytic review. Reading and Writing, 27(9), 1703–1743. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11145-014-9517-0