The act of writing is an ability that requires the activation of self-regulation strategies and cognitive processes. Also, we need to use grammar skills related with knowledge about text genres to writing a composition (Graham & Harris, 2000, Hayes, 1996). Sometimes, students have to write about text genres or themes that they do not know or do not remember (Cho, 2003). In addition, if students have little time to write a text, they will have problems to do it (Polio y Glew, 1996; Powers y Fowles, 1996). Both aspects, knowledge about genres and time used to write a composition, affect to text quality. For these reason, we chose a narrative genre. This type of text is easy to be written, because it is related to writer's previous knowledge (Graesser y cols. 1994). The narrative texts have an episodic structure that facilitates the inferencial activity unlike other texts (Singer, Harkness y Stewart, 1997).

About text quality, teachers often pay attention to orthographic criteria when they assess written production.  Also, they revise others criteria related to the sentences and correct use of vocabulary (Matsumura, Patthey-Chavez, Valdés y Garnier, 2002). According to Cassany (1999), teachers not only have to pay attention to graphic aspects; they have to assess others aspects like vocabulary (adequacy and variety), grammar (agreement, proper use of anaphora and connectors) and structure of the text (Morales, 2004). However, there is not agreement about the number of assessment criteria to evaluate adequately a text. The important is that assessment give information about which aspects could be improved by students. Moreover, the assessment criteria are dependents on the aspects required by the type of text.

Creative or expressive texts need different assessment criteria if we compare with others texts, as compositions used to verify the knowledge of a subject (Morales, 2004). There are tools and tests that can be used by teachers to assess a narrative essay, as the PROESC (Cuetos, Ruano y Ramos, 2002). This battery allows assess spelling rules, phoneme-grapheme conversion, punctuation and planning narrations. The PROESC has two criteria to assess the introduction of a story (when and where, and characters). In this way, we have to pay attention to the place of the story, the time and the description of the characters. These aspects formed the introduction of a narrative text (Thorndyke, 1977). Also, various studies have documented the criteria that we have to assess when we evaluate a narrative text. Benítez (2008) drafted a rubric for assessing a narration's theme, characters (variety, description...), the story's context (time, place...), plot (clarity and structure of chapters), and other linguistic aspects (grammar, spelling, vocabulary...). Ochoa-Angrino, Aragón, Correa, and Mosquera (2008) tested a planning and evaluation system for writing stories in two stages, individually and jointly. In the case of individual correction, it was found that the children focused on superficial features related to grammar and spelling; however, in joint correction, the students were able to pick up on errors linked to deep content and text coherence.

Objectives

In this theoretical framework, the assessment in narrative texts have been widely documented in Primary Education stage, we have less evidence in the University level. So, the main objective of the present research is to gain information on the quality of introduction in creative texts elaborated by University students. Additionally, we want to know if differences exist in the quality of introduction in creative texts depending on the educational level of the writers (University, Primary Schools).

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