This article presents a longitudinal study of a comprehensive experiment carried out in a natural learning environment. Its issue has been to consider the relationship between development and growth by intra-individual comparisons. According to an evolutionary scale, pure literature has been selected in the course of a modular curriculum, developed for the Gymnasium level. With respect to the comprehension of the main idea of five literary works at five occasions during three years two students were asked for a spontaneously written response. The test occasions were embedded into the ordinary course. Five discourses have been processed in order to establish their language spaces and corresponding information structures. The analyses have laid bare the persons’ potential for growing with the evolutionary materials. The essential result of the study is that the student, who is using a rudimentary and descriptive writing style, has produced restrained language spaces and correspondingly restrained informational structures. However, the contours of the spaces and their structural levels show, irrespective of the materials, stability in style. This result is discussed in contrast to the other student’s writing style, which is reasoning, reflective and differentiated in relation to the materials. Finally, it is concluded that development is dependent on structural constraints within every single individual.