Let's eat grandma: Awareness of punctuation and capitalization rules' violations predicts the development of reading comprehension

Abstract

An increasing body of evidence indicates that reading and writing are interconnected, but more studies are needed to investigate the mechanisms through which these two skills are associated. In this paper we report a study where we explored the relationship between second grade students' awareness of punctuation and capitalization rules' violations (a component of writing process) and their reading comprehension. The results showed that students' awareness of punctuation and capitalization rules’ violations was moderately corelated with reading comprehension (r = .64) and predicted reading comprehension tested in Spring after accounting for reading comprehension tested in Fall, word decoding fluency, listening comprehension, general cognitive ability, and demographic variables. Our findings outline an under-researched association between reading and writing and point out to a potential new avenue to improve reading comprehension.