Linguistic Features in Narrative and Opinion Genres and Their Relations to Writing Quality in Fourth Grade Writing

Background: We examined linguistic features in fourth graders' narrative and opinion writing and their relations to writing quality. We analysed narrative and opinion essays in terms of lexical sophistication and diversity as well as syntactic complexity, syntactic accuracy, and morphological complexity. Methods: Data were from English-speaking students in Grade 4 (N = 129; 50% female) in the United States, majority of whom were from low socioeconomic status background. Paired t tests were used to analyse differences of linguistic features between the two genres. Hierarchical regression models were run to examine how language features are related to writing quality. Results: Words in the narrative task were more diverse and included more diverse verbal inflectional morphemes than those in the opinion task; syntactic complexity was significantly greater in the opinion genre, manifested by longer T-units and the more frequent use of adverbial and relative clauses. Approximately 80% of T-units were grammatical and 20% were ungrammatical. Syntactic accuracy and verbal morphological complexity of words were positively related to writing quality in the narrative task. Additionally, syntactic complexity measured by clauses per T-unit, verbal and nominal morphological complexity of words were uniquely related to writing quality in the opinion genre. Conclusions: The findings highlight the limited extent to which Grade 4 students use complex syntax in their writing. The study also supports the critical role of linguistic features in writing quality and shows both similarities and differences in language use in two important writing genres, narrative and opinion, in elementary grades.