Genre and creative writing: comparative study between children of primary schools and university students

Abstract

This research aimed to explore gender differences in the quality of introduction in creative texts, from the beginning to the final stages of adolescence. A total of 105 students from Primary Schools and 105 students at University of Extremadura wrote a narrative text. After that, the quality of introduction on each story was analyzed according to 12 criteria of evaluation about content, spelling and vocabulary richness of the text. Some of these criteria, belong to a standardized test (PROESC) and, others, are from a rubric for assessing the quality of narrative text. The results show that in Primary Education, girls were significantly better than children in writing the introduction of the story and, more specifically, in regard to physical and psychological description of the characters, but these differences were not demonstrated in texts produced by university students. In addition, we observed that, in Primary Education, children made fewer spelling mistakes in the phrase "once upon a time" than girls; also, they used a richer vocabulary than girls to indicate the time in which the story took place. This trend of results in spelling in favor of men changed at University, but they maintained a better semantic level than women.