Presenting a longitudinal study of factors influencing the text-forming strategies children employ in early stages of writing development, this report focuses on the differences between children's oral and written texts and the development of writing ability. The first two chapters present cohesion results, with the first chapter providing dictation and writing data for the grades 1 and 2 population and the second chapter presenting replication results comparing kindergarten-grade one and older population (grades 1-2) groups' cohesion in both dictation and writing. The third chapter discusses story structure results in terms of their theoretical significance and implications for writing development, while a fourth chapter integrates cohesion and story structure conclusions into an analysis of the transition to writing emphasizing patterns of development. Finally, the fifth chapter presents a case study of the development of a kindergarten child's writing abilities. Appendixes include (1) a description of study procedures, (2) cohesion MANOVAs by mode and grade for urban and suburban schools, (3) cohesion MANOVAs for school, mode and observation, (4) story structure MANOVAs in retelling dictation and writing at urban and suburban schools, and (5) a discussion of text length and syntactic complexity. (HOD)