The direct and indirect effects of language, literacy, transcription, and cognitive skills on writing among Chinese children

This study examined the direct and indirect effects of foundational language (vocabulary and syntactic knowledge) and literacy (orthographic knowledge) skills, transcription (spelling and handwriting fluency), and higher-order cognitive skills (comprehension monitoring and inferencing making) on writing among Chinese children. Participants were 155 Chinese (Mandarin)-speaking third graders. Structural equation modeling analyses showed that inference making, spelling, and handwriting fluency directly predicted writing. Syntactic knowledge contributed to writing via the mediation of spelling and inference making. Vocabulary had an indirect effect on writing via the mediation of spelling. Total effects (beta weights), accounting for direct and indirect effects, were 0.43 for inference making, 0.43 for syntactic knowledge, 0.32 for handwriting fluency, 0.30 for spelling, 0.15 for orthographic knowledge, 0.11 for vocabulary, and 0.02 for comprehension monitoring. These findings highlight the direct and indirect pathways and effects of higher-order cognitive skills, transcription, foundational language, and literacy skills on writing in Chinese.