Adult second language learners often learn both written and spoken language more or less simultaneously. The orthography of the world’s languages is, however, not in a one-to-one relationship with the phonological and phonetic realisations of its words. Sometimes orthographic cues as a clue for learners can be found and taught. If not, the pronunciation of the word has to be learned from other cues than orthography. In Swedish, there is an important quantity distinction in stressed syllables, often signalled by single or double consonantal letters.

Minimal pairs with a quantity distinction shown in the orthography were used to study to what extent that might be a cue for second language learners when reading sentences in Swedish. We found a difference between speakers that can be correlated to the learner’s first language. Obvious relationships between orthographic and phonological quantity patterns make it easier to use orthography as a cue for quantity distinction and pronunciation

The present study investigates the writing process in Swedish of 17 multilingual children by focusing on temporal aspects such as pauses and the number of key strokes in relation to the final length of the text (i.e. the number of words and characters). By using the keystroke-log-ging software ScriptLog, the children’s writing process was thus related to the final product. 34 logging files taken from two different narratives written by 9-year-old children were used. Analyses showed inter- and intra-individual differences in their writing process but a clear correlation between text fluency and text lengths.