Swedish (L1) and English (L2) Argumentative Writing of Upper Secondary Students with Reading Difficulties

Writing has been identified as a challenge for students with reading difficulties. This study contributes to previous research by exploring argumentative writing in L1 (Swedish) and L2 (English) group of difficulties upper secondary school. Participants were 19 typical reading, poor decoding, 9 comprehension. A majority attended vocational programmes. Written text quality was assessed using an adapted version Jacobs et al.’s (1981) analytic scoring scheme including content, organisation, cohesion, vocabulary, language use, spelling, punctuation. Students (regardless reader subgroup) found perform poorly all categories both L2, spelling being particularly challenging L1, punctuation L2. Significant differences between comprehension use Few other significant possibly due overall outcome also reading. general is discussed relation studies on among