Writing development is understood to be a multidimensional task, heavily constrained by spelling in its early stages. However, most available evidence comes from studies with learners of the inconsistent English orthography, so our understanding of the nature of early writing could be highly biased. We explored writing dimensions in each language by assessing a series of text-based features in children’s texts between mid-Grade 1 to mid-Grade 2. Results revealed that two constructs, writing conventions and productivity, emerged in both languages, but the influence of orthographic consistency started to be evident in the later time points. Other constructs of text generation seemed to emerge later and were less stable over time. The article thus highlights the language-general underpinnings of early text-writing development and the impact of orthographic consistency; furthermore, it strengthens the view that some writing components develop before others. We discuss implications for the assessment of early written products.

中文翻译：

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英语和西班牙语早期写作的维度

写作发展被认为是一项多维任务，在早期阶段受到拼写的严重限制。然而，大多数可用的证据来自对不一致的英语正字法学习者的研究，因此我们对早期写作本质的理解可能有很大的偏见。我们通过评估 1 年级中到 2 年级之间儿童文本中的一系列基于文本的特征来探索每种语言的写作维度。结果显示两种语言中都出现了写作习惯和生产力这两种结构，但在较晚的时间点，正字法的一致性开始变得明显。文本生成的其他结构似乎出现得更晚，并且随着时间的推移不太稳定。因此，这篇文章强调了早期文本写作发展的语言基础和拼写一致性的影响；此外，它强化了某些书写成分先于其他成分发展的观点。我们讨论了对早期书面产品评估的影响。