Oral and Written Language Mode Adaptations in Stories by Kindergarten Children

The study describes differences between two kinds of oral production, told and dictated stories, by kindergarten children who vary in emergent reading ability. Two replications of told, dictated, and handwritten story sets were elicited from 24 kindergarten children who were not being instructed in reading and writing. Re-reading attempts were collected and used to derive Judgments of Emergent Reading Abilities for Dictated and Handwritten Stories. The Judgments and scores from a traditional readiness test were significantly correlated. Results from examination of story characteristics indicated that children's oral productions signalled differences between told and dictated stories; that children adapted told stories toward the related language mode of conversation and adapted dictated stories toward the related mode of handwritten composition; and that these adaptations were related to degree of reading-related abilities for children at extremes of the distribution.