Presentation matters: Surface text features and text quality in written narratives of Dutch high school students with and without dyslexia

Presentation features such as spelling, punctuation and handwriting can influence the evaluation of general text quality. High school students with dyslexia might therefore be at a disadvantage, as at least their spelling performance is typically poor(er). Furthermore, these students might show less...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Dyslexia (Chichester, England) England), 2024-11, Vol.30 (4), p.e1786-n/a
Main Authors: Bazen, Loes, Boer, Madelon, Bree, Elise H., Jong, Peter F.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Adolescent
Dutch language
Dyslexia
Errors
Female
Handwriting
high school
High School Students
Humans
Linguistics
Male
Narration
Narratives
Netherlands
Punctuation
rating of text quality
Reading
Secondary school students
Sentences
Spelling
Spelling errors
Students
Students - psychology
Teachers
Texts
Word length
Writing
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Summary:Presentation features such as spelling, punctuation and handwriting can influence the evaluation of general text quality. High school students with dyslexia might therefore be at a disadvantage, as at least their spelling performance is typically poor(er). Furthermore, these students might show less sophisticated linguistic features of texts, such as word length and sentence complexity, that might also be related to text quality. We compared narratives written by Dutch high school students (mean age 13.7 years) with (n = 28) and without (n = 29) dyslexia. Students with dyslexia's texts contained more spelling errors and poorer handwriting quality, but not more punctuation errors. Teacher‐rated general text quality was lower for the texts of students with dyslexia in uncorrected versions. When spelling and punctuation errors were corrected, no teacher‐rated text quality differences emerged. No differences in linguistic text features were found. Furthermore, spelling, punctuation and, to a lesser extent, number of words per sentence clause were related to ratings of text quality across participants. These results confirm the influence of presentation features on text quality rating. They encourage teachers to be aware of this effect and emphasize the importance of spelling and writing support and interventions for students with dyslexia throughout education.
ISSN:1076-9242
1099-0909
1099-0909
DOI:10.1002/dys.1786