Table 2.

Description of Writing Variables

Writing Variable	Measurement	Definition
Lexical complexity	Frequency of large words	The number of words with seven or more letters divided by the total number of words (Brown et al., 2014; Houck & Bilingsly, 1989).
Syntactic complexity	Subordination index	The frequency of clauses/T-unit. Subordinate clauses referred to verb complements, adverbial clauses and relative clauses. Coordinated clauses with a deleted second co-referential subject were also counted for purposes of calculating the subordination index.
	Syntactic diversity	The number of different types of complex syntactic devices employed within the text (adverbial, relative, coordinated clauses and verb complements; max score = 4).
Writing conventionsa	Frequency of punctuation errors	The total number of punctuation errors/number of T-units.
	Frequency of spelling errors	The total number of spelling errors/number of T-units.
	Frequency of capitalization errors	The total number of capitalization errors/number of T-units.
Grammatical errors	Frequency of grammar errors	The total number grammar errors/number of T-units. Errors included omitted obligatory tense markers or arguments, missing grammatical morphemes, wrong forms of verbs, pronoun number or case errors, difficulties with main and subordinate clause relationships, and utterance level-errors (Scott & Windsor, 2000).
Evaluation	Frequency of evaluation	Total number of evaluative devices/number of T-units. Evaluative devices included: (1) emotive/cognitive states and behaviors, (2) causality, (3) negatives, (4) hedges, (5) character speech/onomatopoeia/sound effects, (6) intensifiers, and (7) subjective remarks. See Losh & Capps (2003) for more information.
Productivity	Total T-units	Total number of T-units.
Qualitya (score 0–12)	Coherence (0–4)	The degree to which ideas were connected, topic changes were smooth, and the writing was understandable.
	Structure (0–4)	The degree to which essential narrative structural elements existed in the text (i.e., initiating event, problem/conflict, plans, resolution, ending).
	Content (0–4)	The degree to which essential narrative background information was provided (e.g., setting, characters, story actions). These three coding schemas were adapted from Brown (2013).
Personalization	Frequency of personalized narratives	Personalized narratives, or stories, needed to have two or more temporally ordered clauses that were related from an evaluative perspective, and that focused on a specific event in which the child was the protagonist (Losh & Capps, 2006). Children received a score of 1 if their narrative was personalized, and a score of 0 if their narrative was not personalized.

Note.

^aChildren received total scores for the frequency of writing convention errors and quality.