This study analyzed the correlation between subareas of reading and writing abilities among middle school low achievers. With a total of 25 low achievers in the middle school in Seoul, the reading and writing test of KISE-BATT was administered during late October. The results of analyses were as followed: First, the mean of reading total scores was relatively higher than the mean of writing total scores. This suggested that the middle school low achievers experience more difficulties in writing than reading Second, the correlation coefficient between the total scores of reading and writing was found as .416, which indicated that the reading and writing abilities of the middle school low achievers have moderate relationships. Third, when the reading subareas were analyzed for their correlation to each other, most correlation coefficients were not statistically significant except for the coefficients with vocabulary choice. Lastly, when the correlation was analyzed among the writing subareas, most relationships were statistically significant. Overall, the correlation coefficients we found in this study were relatively lower than the ones presented by KISE-BATT developers which was based on the scores from the normally achieving middle schoolers. Based on these results, this study suggests that the reading and writing intervention for middle school low achievers would be more effective when the subareas of reading and writing are specified and explicitly taught and the connections among the skills are more explicitly explained.
Key words : reading development, writing development, reading and writing correlation, low achiever