Investigations into children's ability to comprehend and compose stories have been increasing steadily during the past 10 years. As a result, a body of information exists that has important implications for educators. In this article we will present background information about the most influential sources in children's understanding of stories. Also, we will report an investigation of the written composition skills of normal and handicapped learners.
Get full access to this article
View all access options for this article.
References
1.
ApplebeeA.N. (1978). The child's concept of story. Chicago: TheUniversity of Chicago Press.
2.
BarenbaumE. (1983). Writing in the special class. Topics in Learning & Learning Disabilities, 3, 12–20.
3.
BrittonJ.F. (1970). Language and learning. Harmondsworth England: Penguin Books.
4.
BrownL.SherbenouR.J.DollarS. (1982). Test of nonverbal intelligence. Austin, TX: Pro-Ed.
5.
BruceB. (1978). What makes a good story?Language Arts, 55, 460–466.
6.
CrowhurstM.PicheG.L. (1979). Audience and mode of discourse effects on syntactic complexity in writing at two grade levels. Research in the Teaching of English, 13, 101–109.
7.
GrinnellP.C.BurrisN.A. (1983). Drawing and writing: The emerging graphic communication process. Topics in Learning & Learning Disabilities, 3, 21–32.
8.
HuntK.W. (1970). Syntactic maturity in school children and adults. Monographs of the society for research in child development. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
9.
Johnson-LairdP.N. (1983). The coherence of discourse. Mental models: Towards a cognitive science of language, inference, and consciousness. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
10.
LobanW. (1976). Language development: Kindergarten through grade twelve. Research report no. 18. Urbana, IL: National Council of Teachers of English.
11.
MaimonE.P.NodineB.F. (1978). Measuring syntactic growth: Errors and expectations in sentence-combining practice with college freshmen. Research in the Teaching of English, 12, 232–244.
12.
MandlerJ.M. (1984). Stories, scripts, and scenes: Aspects of schema theory. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.
13.
McConaughyS.H. (1980). Using story structure in the classroom. Language Arts, 57, 157–165.
14.
McConaughyS.H. (1982). Developmental changes in story comprehension and levels of questioning. Language Arts, 59, 580–589.
PoulsenD.KintschE.KintschW.PremackD. (1979). Children's comprehension and memory for stories. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 28, 379–403.
17.
PrinceG. (1973). A grammar of stories. The Hague: Mouton.
18.
SteinN.L.GlennC.G. (1982). Children's concept of time: The development of a story schema. In FriedmanW. (Ed.), The developmental psychology of time. New York: Academic Press.)
19.
SteinN.L.PolicastroM. (1984). The concept of a story: A comparison between Children's and teachers' viewpoints. In MandlH.SteinN.L.TrabassoT. (Eds.), Learning and comprehension of text (pp. 113–155). Hillsdale, NJ: Ablex.)
20.
TempleC.A.NathanR.G.BurrisN.A. (1982). The beginnings of writing, Boston: Allyn and Bacon.
21.
WhaleyJ.F. (1981a). Readers' expectations for story structure. Reading Research Quarterly, 17, 90–114.
22.
WhaleyJ.F. (1981b). Story grammars and reading instruction. The Reading Teacher, 17, 762–771.