Children's discourse skill: Form and modality requirements of schooled writing

Abstract

This article describes a psycholinguistic investigation of children's competence in the production of extended discourse. Two factors are of special interest: Discourse Form (specifically narrative versus expository) and Production Modality (written versus spoken). Analyses of 240 elementary school texts reveal interactions between these two factors and provide insights into the process of text production. Theoretical explanations are offered that involve interactions among access of information from a knowledge base and structural characteristics of the two discourse forms examined here.