Characteristics of Syntactic Ability of School-age Children and Adolescents in Expository and Narrative Tasks

Kim, Ja Seong; Kim, Jung-Mee

ORIGINAL ARTICLE

Commun Sci Disord. 2011;16(4): 540-558.

Ja Seong Kim^` , and Jung-Mee Kim^`

김자성(Ja Seong Kim)| 김정미(Jung-Mee Kim)

ABSTRACT

Background & Objectives
Children continuously develop syntactic ability through adolescence. The present study aimed to examine syntactic abilities of children and adolescents in spoken and written expositories and narrative discourses.
Methods
Sixty typically developing 4th and 6th grade elementary students and 8th grade junior high students were recruited from Seoul, Kyonggido and Chungchugnamdo. After the students read two passages which included a peer conflict situation occurring in a school setting, they produced spoken and written discourse in expository and narrative form. The spoken and written materials were analyzed according to the total number of T-units and TNW, MLT-w, clausal density and percentage of subordinate clauses per T-unit.
Results
Productivity measures including total number of T-units and TNW were significantly different by grade, genre and mode. Syntactic complexity as measured by MLT-w and clausal density were also significantly different in grade, genre, and mode, and there was an interaction effect between genre and mode. The percentage of subordinate clauses per T-unit including nominal clause, relative clause and adverbial clause were significantly different by grade, genre and mode.
Discussion & Conclusion
Based on the results, the group effect, genre effect, and mode effect are discussed in the present study, and suggestions as to what should be considered before analyzing spoken and written materials are given.