Experiential processes in narratives about daily situations written by primary schools students

Abstract

The purpose of this article is to describe the processes represented in finite clauses which are part of written narratives produced by elementary school students. In order to achieve this objective, verbs and verb phrases are analyzed as central elements in the configuration of experience, which is expanded by inherent participants in the represented process and circumstantial-type adjuncts. Clauses are considered the central process unit, as they convey the speakers’ choice in terms of the different systemic networks that are syntagmatically structured. The methodological approach corresponds to a quantitative description. The corpus presents a collection of 180 texts written by students in Grades 3, 5 and 7 attending one of two types of schools: a state school or a state-subsidized private school. The material processes that construct the experience as an external event, are significantly predominant in the corpus. However, such trend steadily decreases as students are promoted to the next grade, as evidenced by an increase of clauses with attributive and mental relational processes. It can be concluded that students describe concrete events from a perceptively external point of view, which tend to localize time and space.