The relationship between grammatical understanding and writing skills in Finnish secondary L1 education

Abstract Previous studies have indicated that students’ writing skills benefit from contextualized L1 grammar teaching, in which language structures are observed and analyzed authentic texts as embedded into teaching of reading writing. The approach is also promoted by the current Finnish curriculum for basic education. This study investigates relationship between grammatical understanding using statistical methods well a complementary qualitative analysis student texts. data derived large cross-sectional assessment learning achievement year 9 students ( N = 6,044). Linear regression analyses indicate significant predictor correlates strongly with syntactic, stylistic, genre-related, orthographical quality argumentative Weaker writers use less complex vocabulary sometimes “lose control” syntactic structures. Learning related to metalinguistic which, turn, helps analyze control their use, thus produce better