The topic is actually worth researching. Empirical studies need to be conducted though we observe that some learners who are fluent speakers of English are not good in writing and vice versa. Anyhow, it is a topic that deserves discussion and research.

Yes, I think so. These two skills are productive skills that need a considerable competence to perform appropriately in communication. If a a learner acquired adequate linguistic competence of the language, stock of vocabulary, a reasonable understanding of language grammar, and pragmatics, then he/ she can can generate sentences in the two forms oral and written easily.

From my experience in teaching English in English speaking countries, the vast majority of learners who live as immigrants have a higher competency in the speaking/ Listening skill than their r/w, mainly because they are immersed in the speaking/l modes. They have more opportunities to sp/l than r and write because they interact daily in these modes.

In contrast, those who come to such countries just to work our study for professional reasons, may have higher r/w skills die top their academic background and relatively limited exposure to these modes.

I don't want to generalise too much as there may be many exceptions to the above observations.

These two skills are supposed to be correlated but from my experience I can tell you that one with excellent writing skill might not be equally good in speaking.

The topic is actually worth researching. Empirical studies need to be conducted though we observe that some learners who are fluent speakers of English are not good in writing and vice versa. Anyhow, it is a topic that deserves discussion and research.

In addition, I think that there are some differences in performance between the two productive skills rather than linguistic competence. Confidence and the speaker personality have effects on being a speaker even in ones native language. In writing, a student should learn writing as a skill including spelling, writing mechanism, capitalization, paragraphing, coherence, unity, etc. which cannot be acquired by knowing the oral skill.

Please refer to the following article:

Hubert, M. D. (2011). The Speaking-Writing Connection: Integrating Dialogue into a Foreign Language Writing Course. Electronic Journal of Foreign Language Teaching, 8(2), 170-183. https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/4c42/41c0e6247ff44f04afe88adaa4a767d8c1bf.pdf

Of course, there is a strong relationship between these two productive skills. They require much more effort to be mastered by the speakers.

it needs investigating inspite of the superficial relationship due to their being as different linguistic skills. perhaps, some contexts are fostering writing skills while in other socio-cultural contexts speaking is pivotal.

I do agree with Farangis Shahidzade

Both writing and speaking skills are categorized as encoding skills ; however, each follows a unique mode of expression. Although the two are substantially similar, the speaking skill follows the normative features of informal style which are absent in written forms of text production.

Yes, strong correlation.

From my students I would say there is a good correlation. Of course, there are those who speak well, but can't write as good due to poor practice during their school years. They say, they didn't need to write much at school, but that was at aboriginal schools which are not well staffed.

What also need to be researched is the relationship between speaking, writing and reading aloud. This is based on my own experience. As a dyslexic (unrecognized) child, reading aloud for me was a nightmare which eventually affected my writing ability as I wanted to conceal my problem of b d and other inversions at any cost as people made fun of me. Writing not only involves what we write but how we write it - ie hand writing. With the advent of computers, that last issue is no longer a recognisable problem but it can still be in schools. From my Spanish I speak it well, but do not write it well but with an accept - I feel my lack of writing skill in Spanish might also be related to how I hear sounds.

Warm regards - Tina

Based on my teaching experience I would say yes and no. I have seen excellent writers who experience stage fright (social anxiety) when asked to present information in front of an audience. At the same time I have seen some who can talk well but write only fairly. It depends to a large extent what environment they grew up in. By grade 3 if a child has mastered reading and writing skills to the same competency then the correlation would be strong. There is evidence based on schools in the United States that the performance in grade 3 is pivotal to the child's performance in the future academically.

Does anyone know if any correlation that exists depends on the spelling system and writing system. As regards the first, English, is much harder to spell than Spanish for example as English spelling is highly irregular (and non-phonetic) whereas Spanish is highly regular and phonetic. As regards the second, I've heard anecdotally that Hebrew is easier for dyslexics to learn than English as only the consonants are symbolic, while the vowels are rendered as diacritics under the consonants and not used at all beyond third grade books. After that, vocalic pronunciation is inferred from context. I believe though I'm not certain, that something similar holds true for Arabic. Looking forward to replies on all of this.

Yes Aref Nassi Abduh Nasser , I support you suggestion for an empirical study to further investigate the direction and extent of correlation. It would be interesting to see if the results in Libya and Yemen have any similarities.

In a SFL or ESL environment, to master any skill well is a task that a learner has to invest large quantity of time and energyl. To this extend, the correlaton is the amount of time they take to learn specific skill, speaking or writing, and it is the explicit factor. Personel trait , mental , cognitive and psychological , can be the correlation to determine what side of target language skill is stronger.

I have not researched this question, but based on anecdotal evidence in my own writing classes, I am convinced that speaking and writing use two different parts of the brain. Some students who are proficient at verbal communication have great trouble expressing themselves in writing.

I have also wondered whether L1 writing proficiency translates into L2 proficiency, but have not researched that either. :-)

Michael W. Marek I think L2 writing will depend on L2 proficiency more so than L1 writing skills, but that is not to say that once L2 proficiency improves correlation between the two is out of the question.

Michael W. Marek do you have any reference(s) concerning the proposition of having two parts of the brain for speaking and writing? On the assumption that this is factual, isn't it also a fact that that the sections of the brain do not function independently and therefore a speaker with accurate grammar is very much likely to produce grammatically acceptable text?

it should be investigated. they are encoding skills but some learners are good at speaking but not writing. some commonalities and some varibilites can affect them

Both of them are productive skills and have similar principles. For example, any piece of writing should have introduction, body and conclusion, and when we speak we usually do so.

In response to Michael Marek. Speaking and writing do indeed involve different parts of the brain. There are two separate syndromes dysgraphia (seems to be associated with children, and agraphia which is diagnosed in adults subsequent to brain lesions and often associated with aphasia. In terms of brain areas the adult variety further subdivides into two types--central and peripheral. According to Wikipedia (search for Agraphia), there are 12 different areas of the brain associated with agraphia. Speaking is always associated with the frontal lobes (Broca's area) side associated with dominant handedness. Disorders of intonation (prosody) are likewise associated with anterior parts of the brain on the nondominant side

Hope this helps.

Skills are interrelated. I have noticed that many non native speakers of English who are competent in the speaking skill are also good writers. But there are some cases where some students are excellent in speaking, but they do not write well. They have a lot of problems in grammar, punctuation and style. They have a lot of problems that are related to first language interference.

I think this has to do with the environment the person is living in. Not having a direct contact with native speakers may result in an incompetency in speaking the language. Reading, on the other hand, is the cause of improving writing. Many education systems (especially in the Arab World) focus on grammar more than the listening skill, which will in turn improve speaking.

Generally speaking in the current era, based on my current research, I can say that the words individuals uses shows many aspects of individuals' life from the social order to the mental problems. Based on this notion, I can conclude that the level of speaking and writing is overlapped in several aspects. However, it may not be shown in the tests! Thanks

Mehrdad F. Falavarjani Isn't it possible to carry out a corrolational study of students' writing scores against their speaking test scores for a particular group of learners? It is also possible to conduct student-t test to compare such correlation across learner levels.

@Reda Elmaburk It's certainly possible. However, since speaking skill more relates to family backgrounds and writing relates to learning environments( such as school) and it is the last skills that individuals learned, you should control the effect of SES, age, level of IQ, number of spoken language and type of schools your sample attends and then run your correlation or t-test comparison. Please noted that what I said is for messuring the correlation between speaking and writing the mother tongue, not the 2nd language.

However, since such effects are really difficult to control, I thought the correlational studies are not the best design! Cheers.