Going from oral to written discourse: Norwegian students’ grammatical challenges when writing persuasive texts

Abstract

The Norwegian curriculum states that schools should enable students to apply their grammar competence in working with both written and oral texts. Oral and written texts are used in different contexts with different conditions for communication and are therefore characterized by different grammatical patterns. This study investigates the extent to which 31 persuasive texts written by Norwegian sixth graders contain typical ‘oral grammar patterns’, which most children have experience with. The data material was obtained from the Norwegian Norm Project (2012–2016). Our main findings are that the written texts contain typical oral grammar characterized by intricate clause complexes and few elaborated nominal groups. We discuss whether this oral writing style may be connected to the writing practices in the schools where the texts were collected and, more generally, to the Norwegian writing culture, where spoken language traditionally has been a model for writing.