Narrative is also called storytelling, which refers to the ability of producing a coherent language without context. Narrative can be divided into oral narrative and written narrative. Due to hearing impairment, the development of deaf students’ language is relatively poor. Narrative is often used as an intervention method for language rehabilitation and development. Deaf students’ narrative is widely concerned. Previous studies have revealed that both deaf students’ oral narratives and written narratives are inferior to normally hearing peers, but the comparison of the two narratives has not been widely concerned. The present study was aimed to examine the developmental characteristics of deaf students’ oral narrative and written narrative, and make a comparison with normally hearing students, revealing the specificity of deaf students’ narrative development. A total of 87 elementary school students were adopted in the study, including 42 deaf students and 45 normally hearing students. Three factors mixed design were used: 3(Grade: Grade3, Grade 4, Grade 5)×2(Group: Deaf students, Normally hearing students)×2(Modality: Oral narrative, Written narrative). Children were asked to conduct the oral narrative first and then carry out the written narrative. The narratives were analyzed through macrostructure and microstructure, and the microstructural device contained three indexes: Lexical diversity, lexical density and mean length of utterance. The results showed that there was no significant difference between the two groups on the macrostructure. However, the results revealed a significant grade difference, a group difference and a modality difference in microstructure. There was a significant interaction between the grade and the group in terms of lexical diversity and lexical density, deaf students and normally hearing students show a difference in grade development. In addition, in the lexical diversity index, the interaction between the grade and the modality was significant. For children in Grade 3 and Grade 4, the performance of written narratives was significantly better than oral narrative. For children in Grade 5, there were no significant differences between oral narrative and written narrative. In the lexical density index, there was a significant interaction between the group and the modality. For the normally hearing students, there were no significant differences between oral narrative and written narrative. For the deaf students, the lexical density of oral narrative was significantly higher than that of written narrative. Based on the above findings, the conclusions were:(1)Regardless of oral narrative or written narrative, deaf students and normally hearing students behaved fairly in macrostructure, but deaf students performed poorly in microstructure. (2)In macrostructure and the mean length of utterance, both deaf and normally hearing students’ written narrative scores were higher than oral narrative. (3)In terms of lexical density, deaf students behaved similarly in oral and written narratives, but the deaf students’ lexical density showed deficiency in oral narrative. (4) According to the lexical diversity and the lexical density, there were differences in the developmental characteristics between deaf students and normally hearing students. The results of the study have important implications for the narrative teaching of deaf students.