Oral and Written Narrative Skills of Primary School-Aged Children

Oral and written narrative skills were compared in normally achieving 8 and 10-year-old children. Ten 8-year-olds and 10 10-year-olds were asked to construct an oral and written story using the same wordless picture book. All narratives were analysed according to Stein and Glenn's (1979) story grammar, Perera's (1986) grammatical analysis, and Halliday and Hasan's (1976) cohesive devices. Similarities and differences between the oral and written narratives at the two age levels were examined. The data indicated that oral and written narratives at both age levels differed significantly only in the grammatical analysis. Explanations are offered to account for the similarities and differences, and implications for assessment, remediation and teaching processes are discussed.