In a study of differences and similarities between children's oral and written stories, 23 third grade pupils wrote stories about a given topic and then, two weeks later, told stories about the same topic. Analysis of the stories revealed five types of narrative structures, of which the most commonly used was a "situation-problem-solution" pattern, and the least commonly used was a pattern in which a problem is repeated with variations until a solution is found. Among other results were that the oral stories tended to be longer than the written stories, more oral stories ranged over structures with more complex events than did the written stories, and the difference in length of T-units between the two modes was not statistically significant. Oral story telling caused more problems for many children than did the written form, due to a belief that oral stories must be based on other people's stories, to fears of performing before an audience, and to problems in losing their train of thought. The two most original stories revealed a sense of detail and dialogue that arose from a natural language context; that these stories were low in syntactic complexity shows that a total language product should not be judged by just one standard. The study suggests the desirability of providing opportunities for oral story telling and of giving real, legitimate, and specific feedback. (Examples of children's stories are included.) (GT)