The study evaluated narrative production in seven severe to profoundly hearing impaired adolescents in an attempt to determine whether syntactic prowess would predict which subjects would be more adept at narrative production, in terms of the story grammar conventions used, and the cohesive devices used when narrating a story to a naive listener. The oral narratives of the subjects were analyzed according to three different narrative analysis systems: an analysis of cohesive markers, an analysis of story grammar development, and an analysis of the conceptual development of the story. Results were compared with syntactic analyses performed on the subjects' complete language samples (reflecting both conversational and narrative language production). Since the syntactic competencies of the students did not predict ability to produce sophisticated narratives, it was concluded that although syntax is an important component of narratives, it is probably not a sufficient component in and of itself to ensure adequate narrative production. Results also suggested the need to teach expressive syntax use and the use of cohesive devices across sentences and not exclusively within sentence frameworks. Five overhead displays used in the presentation are included. (DB)