Difficulty in Writing Perceived by University Students: A Comparison of Inaccurate Writers with and without Diagnostic Certification

Malagoli, Chiara; Zanobini, Mirella; Chiorri, Carlo; Bigozzi, Lucia

doi:10.3390/children8020088

Submit to this Journal Review for this Journal Edit a Special Issue

Article Menu

...

Open AccessArticle

Difficulty in Writing Perceived by University Students: A Comparison of Inaccurate Writers with and without Diagnostic Certification

^1,*,

² and

Department of Education, Languages, Intercultures, Literatures and Psychology (FORLIPSI), University of Florence, Via di San Salvi 12, 50135 Firenze, Italy

Department of Education Sciences (DISFOR), University of Genoa, C.so A. Podestà 2, 16128 Genova, Italy

Author to whom correspondence should be addressed.

Academic Editors: Pietro Muratori and Chiara Pecini

Children 2021, 8(2), 88; https://doi.org/10.3390/children8020088

Received: 24 December 2020 / Revised: 19 January 2021 / Accepted: 21 January 2021 / Published: 27 January 2021

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Increasing Knowledge on Learning and Behavioral Difficulties in Children)

View Full-Text Download PDF Citation Export

Abstract

Research has shown that academic success is strongly associated with positive academic self-efficacy beliefs and that individuals with learning disabilities (LDs) usually report a lower perception of competence than their peers in most learning domains. The aim of this study was two-fold: (1) To compare the performance of inaccurate writers who were not diagnosed with an LD with that of students who were diagnosed with an LD, in order to identify which tasks were the most challenging for individuals with LDs, and (2) to investigate whether inaccurate writers with and without a diagnosis differ in terms of self-perceived difficulties. Two groups were selected from a total sample of 639 students attending seven Italian universities: The first group included 48 participants (24 females) with scores on writing tasks below the 5th percentile, and the second included 51 participants (24 females) who were diagnosed with an LD. The results showed that the two groups significantly differed in the articulatory suppression condition tasks, but not in the standard condition tasks. When groups were matched for performance on writing tasks, students who were diagnosed with an LD reported significantly more perceived difficulties than students without an LD. The implications of these results in terms of the self-efficacy beliefs of students with an LD are discussed. View Full-Text

Keywords: learning disabilities; university students; writing skills; transparent orthography perceived difficulties

This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited

Share and Cite

MDPI and ACS Style

Malagoli, C.; Zanobini, M.; Chiorri, C.; Bigozzi, L. Difficulty in Writing Perceived by University Students: A Comparison of Inaccurate Writers with and without Diagnostic Certification. Children 2021, 8, 88. https://doi.org/10.3390/children8020088

AMA Style

Malagoli C, Zanobini M, Chiorri C, Bigozzi L. Difficulty in Writing Perceived by University Students: A Comparison of Inaccurate Writers with and without Diagnostic Certification. Children. 2021; 8(2):88. https://doi.org/10.3390/children8020088

Chicago/Turabian Style

Malagoli, Chiara, Mirella Zanobini, Carlo Chiorri, and Lucia Bigozzi. 2021. "Difficulty in Writing Perceived by University Students: A Comparison of Inaccurate Writers with and without Diagnostic Certification" Children 8, no. 2: 88. https://doi.org/10.3390/children8020088

Find Other Styles

Note that from the first issue of 2016, MDPI journals use article numbers instead of page numbers. See further details here.

Article Metrics

Abstract views Pdf views Html views

Article Menu

Difficulty in Writing Perceived by University Students: A Comparison of Inaccurate Writers with and without Diagnostic Certification

Abstract

Share and Cite

Article Metrics

Article Access Statistics

Article Access Map by Country/Region

Further Information

Guidelines

MDPI Initiatives

Follow MDPI