Analysis of written narratives produced by Elementary School students

Abstract

Objective: To analyze and characterize the written narrative production of Elementary School students using a specific protocol developed for this study. Methods: Participants were 82 fourth grade-students with ages between 9.0 and 10.2 years, from public and private elementary schools (ES) in the western region of São Paulo, Brazil. The essay was written based on a visual stimulus and analyzed according to the Written Essay Analysis Protocol, which includes three categories of analysis: Contextual Conventions, Contextual Language, and Story Development. In all categories, the analyzed criteria received a score ranging from 0 to 3. A descriptive statistical analysis was performed, and the Cluster Analysis technique was used to form homogeneous groups of individuals. The significance level for all inferential analysis was set at p=0.05. Results: The mean score for Contextual Conventions was 5.0; for Contextual Language was 21.2, and for Story Development, 11.2. Conclusion: The results obtained in the three categories of analysis indicate that, even though these children have not completely mastered the narrative writing scheme, most 4th grade students presented linguistic knowledge that allowed them to communicate original ideas in the form of stories. The protocol proved to be a practical tool for thorough assessment of the aspects involved in the writing process. The analysis by groups has shown, quantitatively and qualitatively, the text generation capacity of 4th graders, supporting the understanding of individual variations in the development of written texts.