Reading and writing are forever intertwined.

They draw upon shared knowledge bases, and they work together in helping students learn
about a particular subject. And it turns out they also help each other, says researcher Steve
Graham.

Graham is the Mary Emily Warner Professor in the Division of Leadership and Innovation at
Arizona State University’s Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College. For more than 30 years, he has
studied how writing develops, how to teach it effectively, and how writing can be used to
support both reading and learning.For many years reading and writing were (and sometimes
still are) taught separately. Though the two have almost always been taught by the same
person (the English/Language Arts teacher) during the Language Arts period or block, educators
rarely made explicit connections between the two for their students. Over the last ten years
research has shown that reading and writing are more interdependent than we thought. The
relationship between reading and writing is a bit like that of the chicken and egg. Which came
first is not as important as the fact that without one the other cannot exist. A child’s literacy
development is dependent on this interconnection between reading and writing.

Recently, Graham was a guest on a podcast series produced by Turnitin, called The Written
Word. During the 40-minute podcast, he talked about the relationship between reading and
writing, specifically how students become better writers the more they practice reading—and
how the opposite holds true as well: As students write more frequently, their reading skills
improve.

Graham has co-authored two meta-studies that delve into existing research to determine
writing’s impact on reading and vice versa. In the first meta-study, he found that when students
write about material they are reading, they tend to understand the material better and retain it
longer over time.

He also found that as teachers increased the amount that students in grades 1-6 were writing,
there was a corresponding improvement in how well they understood texts. And when
educators taught writing as a skill, not only did students’ writing improve—but their reading
skills also got better.

“To put this in very simple terms, if you teach writing, you get better readers,” he said. “We
found improvements in how well students read words, how fluent they were, and how well
they comprehended texts.”
Practicing their writing skills helps students identify with the author as they are reading a text,
Graham explained. “When you’re planning a (writing assignment), you have to think about
who’s going to be reading it and what your goals and purposes are. That makes you more
aware of the reader. And so, when you’re reading texts, there is more likelihood that you’ll put
on that metacognitive hat and think about what the writer is doing, because you’ve been
engaged in that same process as the writer was.”

Similarly, the second meta-study found that when educators teach reading skills, “there is a
corresponding positive effect in how well students write,” Graham said. “We also found that
when you increase how much students read, they become better writers. Reading allows us to
capture information that is useful when we write.”

Graham also revealed other important insights about writing instruction. For instance, the
biggest challenge to boosting literacy skills is that students aren’t writing nearly enough.

Similarly, the second meta-study found that when educators teach reading skills, “there is a
corresponding positive effect in how well students write,” Graham said. “We also found that
when you increase how much students read, they become better writers. Reading allows us to
capture information that is useful when we write.”

Graham also revealed other important insights about writing instruction. For instance, the
biggest challenge to boosting literacy skills is that students aren’t writing nearly enough.

1. The Relationship Between Reading and Writing

Basically put: reading affects writing and writing affects reading. According to recommendations
from the major English/Language Arts professional organizations, reading instruction is most
effective when intertwined with writing instruction and vice versa. Research has found that
when children read extensively they become better writers. Reading a variety of genres helps
children learn text structures and language that they can then transfer to their own writing. In
addition, reading provides young people with prior knowledge that they can use in their stories.
One of the primary reasons that we read is to learn. Especially while we are still in school, a
major portion of what we know comes from the texts we read. Since writing is the act of
transmitting knowledge in print, we must have information to share before we can write it.
Therefore reading plays a major role in writing.

At the same time practice in writing helps children build their reading skills. This is especially
true for younger children who are working to develop phonemic awareness and phonics skills.
Phonemic awareness (the understanding that words are developed from sound “chunks”)
develops as children read and write new words. Similarly, phonics skills or the ability to link
sounds together to construct words are reinforced when children read and write the same
words. For older children practice in the process of writing their own texts helps them analyze
the pieces that they read. They can apply their knowledge about the ways that they chose to
use particular language, text structure or content to better understand a professional author’s
construction of his or her texts.

2. Harnessing the Reading-Writing Relationship to Help Children Learn

Simply knowing that reading and writing are intimately connected processes isn’t enough. In
order to help children develop these two essential skills, parents and teachers need to apply
this knowledge when working with them. Here are a few strategies for using reading and
writing to reinforce development of literacy skills.

3. Genre Study

One of the most effective ways to use the relationship between reading and writing to foster
literacy development is by immersing children in a specific genre. Parents and teachers should
identify a genre that is essential to a grade level’s curriculum or is of particular interest to a
child or group of children. They should then study this genre with the child(ren) from the
reading and writing perspectives. Children should read and discuss with adults high quality
examples of works written in the genre focusing on its structure and language as well as other
basic reading skills including phonics and comprehension. Once children have studied the genre
to identify its essential elements, they should be given opportunities to write in the genre. As
they are writing, adults should help them apply what they have learned from reading genre
specific texts to guide their composition. This process should be recursive to allow children to
repeatedly move between reading and writing in the genre. In the end children will not only
have a solid and rich knowledge of the genre, but will also have strengthened their general
reading and writing skills.

4. Reading to Develop Specific Writing Skills

Parents and teachers do not have to engage in an extensive genre study to foster their
children’s reading and writing abilities. Texts can be used on limited basis to help children learn
and strengthen specific writing skills. Parents and teachers should first identify writing skills that
a particular child or group of children need support in developing. For example, many students
in a seventh grade class might have difficulty writing attention getting introductions in their
essays. One of the most effective ways to help children build specific writing skills is to show
and discuss with them models that successfully demonstrate the skill. Adults should select a
number of texts where the authors “nail” the area that they want to help their children grow in.
For our sample seventh graders we’d want to find several pieces of writing with strong,
engaging introductions and read and analyze these with the students. Once children have
explored effective models of the skill, they should be given opportunities to practice it. They can
either write new pieces or revise previous pieces of writing emulating the authors’ techniques.

5. Integrating “Sound” Instruction in Reading and Writing

Phonemic awareness and phonics are two of the pillars of reading. Without understanding the
connection between sounds and letters, a person cannot read. The connection between
reading and writing can help solidify these skills in young readers. Parents and teachers should
help children “sound out” words in both their reading and writing. When a child comes to a
word in their reading that is unfamiliar, the adult(s) working with her can model or guide her in
sounding out the word using knowledge of phonemes (sound “chunks”). Similarly, if a child
wants to write a new word the adult(s) can use the same technique to help her choose which
letters to write. If the child is younger, accurate spelling is not as important as an understanding
of the connection between particular sounds and letters. Therefore helping the child pick letters
that approximate the spelling is more appropriate than providing him with the actual spelling. If
the child is older and has an understanding of some of the unique variations in the English
language (such as silent “e”), the parent or teacher should encourage him to use that
knowledge to come up with the spelling of the word.

6 Choice in Reading and Writing

Another effective method for using the relationship between reading and writing to foster
literacy development is simply giving children the choice in their reading and writing
experiences. We learn best when we are motivated. If children are always told exactly what to
read and what to write, they will eventually either come to see reading and writing as
impersonal events or will “shut down”. Often in classrooms, teachers allow children to select
their own books to read during independent reading time, but they rarely give them the
opportunity to pick their own writing topics. In order to encourage ownership over their
reading and writing, children should be given chances to read and write what is interesting and
important to them.