ABSTRACT

This paper investigates frequencies and changes in usage for grammatical forms in four different reading levels of children’s storybooks. In particular, it is explored whether differing patterns exist in the appearance of grammatical forms from lower to higher reading levels. The data consists of 56 storybooks divided into four reading levels. The texts of each storybook were segmented by sentence and analyzed according to which grammatical forms appear in the texts. The findings reveal that modals, negatives,coordinate clauses, and adverb clauses are the basic grammatical forms to know because readers would encounter these frequently across all storybook reading levels. At higher levels, the grammatical forms showing a notably greater frequency were participles, adjective clauses, infinitives, and interrogatives. Interestingly, a cumulative frequency pattern for grammatical forms was found from easier to more difficult levels. The modals, and subsequently, negatives, adverb clauses, coordinate clauses, and participles become frequently occurring grammatical forms. The paper ends by drawing some pedagogical implications and suggestions.

KEYWORD

grammar, grammatical forms, children’s storybooks, elementary

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