The Development of Writing the Problem

As for writing the body of the story, including the starter event, the goal and the action, it seemed that it was more challenging for the participants to provide a logical connection between the starter event and the goal in their pretest and the first few story writings. Besides, the descriptions of the actions taken by the main character

were not very detailed and substantive at the earlier stage.

In the pretest, some of the participants presented the participating event that caused the character to establish a goal, but they were unable to clearly articulate the goal or present the causal relation between them. What was worse, some of them even failed

to present the two story elements in the story as shown below.

The old elephant Queen and the old elephant King here the big house. The old elephant Queen see three elephant babys. She 趕緊抱起 three elephant babys go in to she’s bedroom. The old elephant King Happy. They all go in to the big house 有 pepore 帶了 big cake 有 pepore 帶了 beautiful flower go in to the big house.(Winnie, pretest)

In this excerpt, the starter event that Elephant Queen brought in the three elephant babies after she saw them was established. However, the purpose or the goal of this

event was not presented in the following utterances.

Similarly, in the previous few story writings, some of them still failed to establish the starter event or the goal, while the others were able to establish either one of them but did not clearly articulate the casusal relation between them as indicated in the following excerpt from Winnie.

One day. The gorilla is black and naughty. He takes the Joe’s key chain and opens he’s cage. The gorilla follows the Joe. Joe goes to elephant’s, lion’s, hyena’s, giraffe’s, armadillo’s cage say good night to animals. (Winnie, second story writing)

In the excerpt above that Winnie did not clearly present the casual relation between the starter event that the naughty gorilla took the zookeeper’s key chain and the goal.

Instead, she skipped it and shifted to the description of the actions. At the earlier stage, like Winnie, many participants found it difficult to present the starter event and the goal with a logical connection as Winnie reported “I don’t know how to connect.”﹝不知道要怎麼接﹞

However, the participants became more familiar with the two story elements and more capable of producing a logical connection between the two in the middle of the writing program. As indicated in the following excerpt, Winnie became able to clearly present the casual relation between the starter event and the goal. In the excerpt below, the old woman who liked pancakes wanted to eat pancakes; as a result, she started to make some right away. The causal relation between the two was clear and

reasonable.

On the winter morning in the small house There is an old lady, dog and cat. Old lady is very like pancakes and she is thin and quiet. In the morning, she wants to eats some pancakes, she makes the pancakes food right away. (Winnie, third story writing)

Furthermore, it was also found that many of the participants demonstrated ingenuity into the logical connection between the starter event and the goal in their

later story writings. As indicated in the excerpt below, Winnie creatively made up the starter event that the frogs made magic rugs, which explained why something so surprising as the frogs could fly would happen, and she also successfully connected it

to the goal that they wanted to fly to the city at night in a clear manner.

On Tuesday at 9:00 pm in the forest by the pond There are frogs. They make magical rugs, thinking at night fly. The clock strikes nine. They fly to a small city. (Winnie, fifth story writing)

As for the description of the action, it was found that almost all of the participants failed to present the events that the character initiated in order to achieve the goal substantively before the wordless picture books writing program. Instead, they tended to provide very little information or even skipped the whole description, and jumped

to the ending as indicated in the excerpt from Dora.

Because today is their baby’s birsday. Everyone can come to birsday party.

There cows, elephants, birds, ckichen, and butterfly, They take eggs, apples, flowers, cake and difrent gift come to party. They are happy. (Dora, pretest)

In this excerpt, it could be found that Dora only summarized the action with one sentence, “They take eggs, apples, flowers, cake and difrent gift come to party.”

without presenting any further descriptions. The presentation of the actions involved

was short, insufficient and lack of details.

However, as soon as the participants began their first story writings, many of them started to present a series of events and actions with clarity and detail as indicated in the following excerpt.

Then he went to the house and he looked at table….He went on the table and ate

father’s soup and it was yuck He didn’t like it….Now he wanted to sat and have a rest. So he sat on father’s chair and it was big. He didn’t like it….The baby bear was tired. He wanted to sleep. He went to the father’s bed and it was hard.

He didn’t like it. (Dora, first story writing)

In the excerpt, Dora clearly presented the actions taken by the little bear in the different rooms of the house. She even added the bear’s reactions and emotions toward the events. At this stage, many of the participants, like Dora, showed great improvement in the description of the actions although the presentation of the events

seemed slightly repetitive and lack of variety.

Gradually, the participants became able to narrate the events in a logical order with appropriate transitions, provide vivid and detailed descriptions of the actions and even show originality or creativity in the story toward the end of the writing program as

indicated in Dora’s fourth story writing.

Suddenly the boy, the dog, and the frog run after me, and the dog quickly run to me and fight with me. We are fight with each other. I can seem to hear the boy and the frog say, “Stop! Don’t fight!” But I am angry, so I don’t want to stop.

Then I bite the dog. The boy and the frog are very surprised. The boy quickly come here and save the dog. But I don’t want to let go. But the boy pick up the dog and run away. And I fall into the pond. I feel hurt. I hear the dog cried by the pond. But he doesn’t know I am very hurt, too. (Dora, fourth story writing)

In the excerpt above, Dora presented a series of actions taken by the characters with vividness and detail in a logical order. The character’s different feelings and emotions were clearly depicted. Besides, she employed dialogues in the actions so that the descriptions of the scenes seemed more vivid to the readers.

To sum up, the participants were more familiar with the writing of the starter event