An Exploratory Study on Young Children's Spoken and Written Narratives of Personal Experience

This study investigated how young children respond when asked to create spoken and written narratives. To examine aspects of 5-year-olds’ spoken and written narratives about their personal experiences, the level of narrative, developmental stage of writing, and use of cohesive devices were analyzed. The results showed two relationships between the spoken and written narratives. For some children, the same level was found for both spoken and written narratives. But for other children, levels of spoken and written narratives differed. There were more children with a higher level of written narrative compared to spoken narrative than children with a lower level of written narrative compared to spoken narrative. Further analysis of the correlations between the level of written narratives and developmental stage of writing showed statistical significance. Therefore, the result of this study suggests that a child’s developmental stage of writing could affect the level of 5-year-olds’ written narratives. Second, there were significant differences in 5-year-olds’ usage of cohesive devices when relating their personal experiences in their spoken and written narratives. The sum of conjunction and anaphoric references (i.e., cohesive devices) was higher in spoken narrative expressions than in written narrative expressions. In spoken narrative, children expressed de-contextualized language with cohesive devices to give additional explanation, considering the listener who had no knowledge of the event the child was relating. Further research about this aspect is proposed.