Learning disabled students' composing under three methods of text production: Handwriting, word processing, and dictation

The purpose of this study was to investigate how different methods of text production affect the writing processes and products of LD students. Eleven fifth and sixth grade LD students, selected for their experience with word processing, composed and revised stories using handwriting, dictation, and word processing. Dictated stories were significantly longer, were of higher quality, and had fewer grammatical errors than handwritten or word processed stories. The handwritten and word processed stories did not differ on any of the product measures, including length, quality, story structure, mechanical or grammatical errors, vocabulary, or mean T-unit length. However, differences between handwriting and word processing were found on the process measures of composing rate and revisions. Implications for writing in struction with LD students are discussed.