| Thesis Abstract
The purpose of this study was to examine the similarities and differences in productivity, grammatical accuracy, and syntactic complexity in the oral and written narratives of typically developing fourth graders. In this study, 21 typically developing fourth graders produced an oral and a written narrative. The narratives were transcribed and coded for productivity, accuracy and complexity. The results indicated that oral narratives were more productive than written narratives. The oral narratives were also more accurate, containing fewer errors and having a larger proportion of grammatical sentences. Oral narratives also contained more words per sentence. Syntactic complexity was measured in two ways, but there were no significant differences between modalities for either measure. There were no significant differences found between modalities for any of the clause types. The results support further exploration of oral and written narratives across the age span. |