The Development of Expository and Narrative Writing Skills in Upper Elementary School Students

Abstract

The study examined the longitudinal changes of writing skills in the expository and fictional narrative writings of 321 upper elementary school students. First, the number of letters and sentences in writing stagnated or decreased slightly, but the number of T-units increased, suggesting improved sentence maturity. Second, latent growth modeling confirmed a linear model for both explanatory and narrative writing. Third, factor analysis found that the quality of writing accounted for the highest proportion (weight) of writing skills. This study found that upper elementary school is an important period for qualitative changes in “discourse-level proficiency writing” based on the transcriptional skills and writing fluency acquired in lower grades. Practical guidance is thus needed to improve the skills of 4th to 6th graders in text organization and in identifying the purpose and reader of the writing.