Repeated measures ANOVA The development of text writing in early elementary school: Children´s narrative and information texts in grades 2 - 4 Rannveig Oddsdóttir, Ph.D. student, Hrafnhildur Ragnarsdóttir Ph.D., Freyja Birgisdóttir Ph.D. Introduction With increasing educational demands and dependence on written information from multiple sources, text writing ability is more important now than ever before. Consequently, learning to compose meaningful texts of different kinds should be an important part of children’s education. From the beginning of writing children are able to produce different kinds of text, but their lack of knowledge about text genres and limited writing ability impact their performance. Their texts tend to be short, lacking both in coherence and cohesion and do not follow a genre specific structure. Few longitudinal studies have focused on the development of text writing during the first grades of elementary school and hardly any have included more then one kind of text genre. Previous research indicates that young children are most familiar with and first become able to compose narrative texts. Aims and research questions The main purpose of this longitudinal study was to explore the development of writing among Icelandic children between grades 2 and 4 and to compare their proficiency in writing two different text genres, narratives and information texts. Main research questions : Do children show significant progress in text length, text structure and cohesion between 2nd and 4th grade? Is performance and progress in writing similar or different for the two text genres? Is there a significant correlation between children´s performance in the two text genres? Results Table 1. Mean scores (and standard deviations) for children´s text writing in grades 2 to 4 Table 2. Progress in writing narratives and information texts between 2nd and 3rd grade and between 3rd and 4th grade Table 3. Correlations between scores for overall text quality, text length, structure and cohesion in narratives and information texts in grades 2, 3 and 4 Grade 2 Grade 3 Grade 4 Narratives Overall text quality 1,34 (0,43) 1,48 (0,33) 1,78 (0,39) Length 69 (51,23) 60 (32,78) 85 (51,91) Structure 3,1 (1,16) 3,9 (0,94) 4,4 (1,05) Cohesion 2,1 (0,99) 2,1 (0,70) 2,6 (0,75) Information texts 1,15 (0,42) 1,40 (0,39) 1,41 (0,45) 42 (33,03) 58 (33,36) 53 (40,37) 1,9 (0,68) 2,2 (0,51) 2,3 (0,62) 1,1 (0,75) 1,6 (0,70) 1,5 (0,63) The children´s scores for narrative writing were slightly better than their performance in information text writing at all three time-points. Narratives were significantly longer than information texts, in grade 2 and 4. Narratives showed stronger characteristic feature for that text genre than information texts did. Cohesion was significantly stronger in narratives than in information texts. Repeated measures ANOVA Grade 2–3 Grade 3–4 Narratives Overall text quality F(2,84)=21,397 P<0,001 Length F(2,84)=5,328 Structure F(2,84)=19,269 Cohesion F(2,84)=6,258 P<0,05 Information texts F(2,84)=8,289 F(2,84)=9,539 F(2,84)=7,428 P<0,01 There was a significant progress for information text writing between 2nd and 3rd grade and between 3rd and 4th grade in writing narratives Method Participants: 45 children were followed up through grades 2 to 4. The children composed two written texts each year; a narrative and an information text. The text analysis included : Text length: Number of written words. Text structure: Narratives: Score 0–5 Information texts: Score 0–3 Cohesion: Score 0–4 Overall test quality: a composite score including text length, structure and cohesion, each variable gets the same value. A significant correlation was found for overall text quality in narratives and information texts in grades 2 and 4 and for text length at all three time-points, but not for structure or cohesion. Grade 2 Grade 3 Grade 4 Overall text quality .356* .285 .350* Length .526*** .437*** .789*** Structure .270 .153 .007 Cohesion .119 .058 .044 Conclusions and implications Results are in line with other studies of young children´s text writing. Children´s ability to write narratives always seems to be one step ahead their ability to write information text. However the results also showed a different developmental pattern for narratives and information texts. Although significant progress was found at different time-points for both text genres, progress for information texts was slower. There was not a strong correlation between children´s performance in the two text genres, except for text length. Children who wrote narratives with a good structure and cohesion did not necessarily score high on the same dimensions in their information texts. According to the results of this study, progress in writing seems to be quite slow, especially in the ability to produce information text. This may suggest that Icelandic children do not get sufficient instruction in text writing and about different text genres in the first grades of elementary school.