Rewriting a Complex Story for a Young Reader: The Development of Audience-Adapted Writing Skills

Abstract

The aim of this study was to describe the development of audience-adapted writing skills between the end of elementary school and the beginning of college. Students in grades 5, 7, 9, and 11, and college freshmen, were given the task of rewriting a linguistically complex story for a young reader. Analyses of rewritten stories showed significant, agerelated decreases in mean lexical and syntactic complexity, as well as significant increases in mean reading ease. Further analyses of the alteration of difficult lexical items and rewriting of the moral of the story suggested a shift from extensive use of “word-oriented” strategies in the lower grades to increasing use of a “meaning-oriented” approach in the higher grades.