Coherence in Children's Written Narratives

Abstract

This study uses de Beaugrande's (1980) concept analysis system to analyze a group of children's written narratives. In addition to ascertaining the potential of this system as a means of assessing coherence, the purpose of this study was to describe how 20 third graders employed narrative concepts at the local and global levels. An analysis of a maximum of nine writing samples from each child produced in response to a weekly request to write a story revealed that (1) most children were able to establish coherence consistently at a local level, (2) children varied in their establishment of coherence across samples, (3) writing reflected degrees of coherence on a continuum from less to more coherent samples, and (4) a minority of children wrote narratives that were consistently coherent at the global level. The study also supported the value of the concept analysis system as one means of assessing coherence in written narratives.