A study investigated what fourth grade students understand about composing personal narrative discourse. Specifically, the study explored what the subjects understood about structuring personal narrative texts and about evaluating a narrated experience for an audience. Subjects were 13 fourth grade students, and the methodology consisted of participant observation, introspective interviewing, and analyses of written texts. The results indicated that the subjects were able to articulate a narrative schema closely paralleling descriptions of narrative discourse that text linguists offer. They also expressed a preference for more highly evaluative ways of reporting events when presented with alternative ways of expressing their narratives. The findings suggest that fourth grade students have internalized a narrative schema that may influence the structure of their written productions. The findings also suggest that the students employ a variety of syntactic constructions in their texts to mark the significance of narrated events for the reading audience. (Author/HTH)