A compensatory approach to acquired dysgraphia: Developing sublexical spelling skills through a keyword relay strategy

This single case study evaluates the efficacy of therapy for a client, GK, who has acquired dysgraphia. A compensatory therapy approach was taken, aimed at improving GK's sound-to-letter correspondences for word-initial sounds by way of a keyword relay strategy. The strategy was broken down into three stages for each item which was presented: (1) naming a picture and segmenting its initial sound, (2) matching this sound to its corresponding keyword picture, and (3) matching the keyword to its corresponding letter on a keyboard letterboard. Comprehensive pre-therapy investigations were carried out into GK's cognitive and language skills, with a particular focus on his writing abilities. A combination of a multiple baseline and an item-specific therapy design was employed. Quantitative and qualitative information was gathered throughout by recording GK's verbatim responses and observing the strategies which he used to map sounds to letters. Post-therapy assessment results show that this approach was effective in significantly improving GK's sublexical spelling skills and indicate that the strategy had generalised to a variety of items and tasks