Effects of Instruction in Narrative Structure on Childrens' Writing

A study investigated whether direct instruction in story constituents and their interrelationships could enhance children's organization in story writing. It was hypothesized that the special instruction could provide children with an internalized prototype story structure that could serve as a...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors Fitzgerald, Jill, Teasley, Alan B
Format Report
LanguageEnglish
Published 1983
Subjects
Coherence
Cohesion (Written Composition)
Creativity
Direct Instruction
Grade 4
Intermediate Grades
Language Usage
Narration
Planning
Prewriting
Reader Text Relationship
Reading Comprehension
Story Structure
Syntax
Teaching Methods
Writing Instruction
Writing Readiness
Writing Research
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Summary:A study investigated whether direct instruction in story constituents and their interrelationships could enhance children's organization in story writing. It was hypothesized that the special instruction could provide children with an internalized prototype story structure that could serve as a heuristic or planning device for organizing compositions, and that the instruction might indirectly affect other features of writing, such as creativity, cohesion/coherence, syntactic complexity, and length of protocols. Subjects, 19 fourth grade students identified (through story telling and scrambled story recall tasks) as lacking a keen sense of narrative structure, were randomly assigned to one of two treatment groups. The first group received instruction in knowledge of story structure, while the second received instruction in dictionary word study. Results showed that direct instruction in narrative structure did have a strong positive effect on organization in children's story writing. In addition, the instruction enhanced overall creativity, uniqueness, and language usage, and reduced cohesive errors. There were no meaningful effects on syntax or length of protocols. (Author/FL)