Children's Ability to Write Stories as a Function of Variation in Task, Age, and Developmental Level

In this study of children's ability to write stories, written compositions were classified by means of a system consisting of the following categories: story, primitive story, action sequence, descriptive, and expressive. Three groups of children served as subjects: learning disabled, low achievers, and normal achievers in grades 3, 5 and 7. Findings permit conclusions pertaining to (a) the performance of the three ability groups; (b) the relationship between age / grade and writing ability; (c) the continuum of composition categories used; (d) composition consistency; and (e) effect of task on performance. Specifically, the percentages of the various composition categories varied according to subjects' age and learning capacity. Also, the structure of the writing tasks and the length of compositions produced by the subjects were found to relate to story category.