| While most educators agree that some type of an interrelationship between oral and written language exists, the exact nature of the interrelationship has yet to be empirically determined. The emphasis on language in schools creates a need to study this interrelationship to determine its instructional implications. It is the intent of this study to empirically investigate the following: the strength of the interrelationship between oral and written language with and without controlling for IQ, socioeconomic status, and age, the correlation of high and low oral language abilities with high and low written language abilities, and the determination of significant differences between groups in oral and written language proficiency.;The results of the statistical analyses indicated that a high correlation existed between the scores on the individual measures of oral and written language. A high correlation was also reported between the set of oral language variables and the set of written language variables. When IQ, socioeconomic status, and age were controlled, the relationship remained in the moderate range. Furthermore, the relationship between high and low performance on measures of oral and written language was significant. Significant differences were determined between groups rated high, middle and low in oral language proficiency on measures of written language.;Subjects were 80 five and six year old children enrolled in kindergarten. Four standardized instruments were administered: the Test of Early Language Development (Hresko, Reid & Hammill, 1981), the Test of Early Reading Ability (Reid, Hresko & Hammill, 1981), the Basic School Skills Inventory: Diagnostic (Hammill & Leigh, 1983) and the Slosson Intelligence Test (Slosson, 1983). The data was subjected to a series of correlational procedures. To determine the strength of the correlation between oral and writen language, Pearson Product-moment correlation coefficients were computed using raw scores. Canonical correlations were computed to analyze the strength of the relationship between sets of oral and written language variables. Crosstabulation procedures were performed to examine the relationship between high and low performance. Three one-way analyses of variance were performed to determine if significant differences existed between groups rated in oral language proficiency on measures of written language abilities. |
