Understanding Preschool Children’s Composing Development: Attention to Relevance, Language, and Cohesion

• In Event: Pedagogical Practices and Classroom Quality in Early Learning

Abstract

This study investigates preschool children's early composing by examining the coherence between their pre-writing verbalizations, written text, and post-writing verbalizations during a narrative writing task. A total of 108 children, aged 3.67 to 6.47 years, participated. Most children were in the early stages of transcription development, yet they demonstrated genre-relevant idea generation and thematic alignment in their verbalizations. Verbal-print coherence was significantly related to transcription skills, suggesting that stronger transcription abilities may support more coherent composing. Findings highlight the developmental complexity of early writing and underscore the importance of assessing both verbal and written aspects—especially pre-writing verbalizations—of children’s composing. Implications for early writing assessment and instruction are discussed.

Authors

• Yanfang Zeng, Texas A&M University

• Tianshu Yang, Texas A&M University

• Hope K. Gerde, Texas A&M University

• Gary E. Bingham, Georgia State University

• Margaret F. Quinn, Texas A&M University