Introduction:
Narration is a type of discourse that usually concerns real or imagined memories of something that happened [1]. It has a characteristic sentence structure, use of lexical choices and story organization which is described as features of language [2]. The structure of narration can be viewed from a microstructure and macrostructure perspective. The microstructure refers to the way that words and sentences work together to build a cohesive story. It is determined on the basis of semantic and syntactic productivity, complexity, and accuracy. Macrostructure can be described as overarching coherence and organization of narration, which is produced by an individual [3]. It determines the number of episodes occurred in a narrative sample, from the beginning of the story, where the setting and characters are introduced; middle of the story, where characters encounter conflicts or tensions; and the end of the story where these problems are resolved [4]. Both microstructure and macrostructure represent the central aspect of narrative language in school-age children.
Considering the analysis of the macrostructure of narratives that are done on the basis of the completeness of the levels of episodic structure [5], only a vague distinction of the language abilities of the child can be attained. However, when taking into account the components of Story Grammar (SG), this issue can be resolved. In addition to following the SG model [6], studies considered the information quantity present in the narratives as well [7]. The SG model which is a frequently used approach to analyze narratives, consists of classes of information that is provided in a particular order within episodes of a story. This consists of a Setting component which includes an introduction of the character and description of the story in physical, social, or temporal setting. A story can comprise of one or more episodes which can be related to each other in numerous ways. An episode can include six components in sequence: An Initiating Event which influences a character, the Internal Response of the character, the internal Plan of the character to solve the problem, the Attempt made by the character to solve the problem, a Consequence which is caused by the attempt, and the Reaction of the character to the consequence. Researches have indicated that certain components which includes initiating events, actions, and consequence are portrayed by children during their elementary schooling [8].
Oral narratives have been found to significantly manifest itself in the early preschool and middle-school years. Being a noble indicator of language development [9], narratives can discriminate children during late preschool and school age years. Munoz, Gillam, Pena, and Gulley-Faehnle (2003) investigated the narrative structural complexity of 4 and 5 year old English speaking children, and found the 4 year-olds to produce incomplete narratives compared to the 5 year-olds who included at least one complete episode. Similarly, Bahr, Nelson, and Meter (1996) found 5 year-olds to narrate stories ordered in the form of goals and plans; whereas the 7 and 8 year-olds narrated stories with complete episodes [12]. Examining a similar age group (7 through 9 year-olds), Hall-Mills and Apel (2015) found the 7 year-olds to attain lower scores on narrative and expository organization, text structure, and cohesion than the two older groups. Kaderavek, Gillam, Ukrainetz, Justice, and Eisenberg (2001) examined oral narrative production in children aged between 5 and 12 years, and found the 10 year-olds to be more accurate in self-evaluating their narrative performance than the children below 10 years of age. Subsequent to this, Westby, Moore, and Roman (2002) found children between 8 and 11 years of age to generate narratives increasing in SG and syntactic complexity.
A narrator synchronizes the knowledge about the person, knowledge about social interactions and context, knowledge about narrative structures, and linguistic knowledge [16]. Sequencing of verbal utterances into a narrative form is a basic principle of discourse structure. Story narration tasks have become popular in clinical assessment in the field of speech language pathology. Stories being part of everyday lives, involves the interaction with an individual’s environment, in educational settings, and for recreation purposes such as film, books, and television. Studies demonstrate an increased rate of usage of SG components in stories with age [10]. Pearce, McCormack, and James (2003) indicated that wordless picture book facilitated the production of complex narratives rather than a single picture. This type of narrative elicitation follows bottom-up processing, as the child forms a conclusive perception of the narration [18]. Using oral narration being a worldwide practice [19], is found to be a more natural and easy way of eliciting narratives especially in younger children. Recent studies done on school-age children have preferred oral mode of narrative elocution over written mode [13,20].
Difficulty in producing oral narratives has extensive consequences for individuals, which can include negative evaluation [21], bullying, rejection by the peers [22] and isolation. Children with difficulty in construction of oral narratives have the disadvantage in classroom setting, where the proficiency in narrative skills contribute to achievement in the academics [23]. Oral narratives which are considered to form a bridge between oral and written language styles [24], are a natural and easy way of eliciting narratives in younger children. The development of oral narratives has been found to be significant during the early and middle-school years [13]. With only a handful of language assessment tests accessible and appropriate to determine the narrative development in young children, there exists a dire need to develop culturally appropriate stimuli for the same. Though there has been attempts to use western standardized tests to assess narrative forms of language, it has resulted in drastic limitations when considered to be used in the Indian scenario. Various methods are found to provoke oral narratives from young children, but there is no clear indication regarding which method is effective and reliable in the identification of narrative skills [19]. With the study of oral narratives being an important linguistic measure, the present study aimed at assessing the macrostructure of oral narratives using picture sequence stimuli in typically developing English speaking children between of 6-11years of age. The objectives of the study were to develop a suitable task for the same, to administer it on the target population, and to analyze the macrostructural form of the generated oral narrative.
Method
With a cross-sectional design majorly considered as an efficient study design in developmental studies, the current study adopted the same. This study was conducted in Mangalore between December 2016 and January 2018. The protocol was presented to the Institutional Ethical Board and ethical approval was obtained prior to the commencement of the study. A non-random convenient sampling procedure was implemented for the present study to accommodate the accessibility and convenience in recruiting participants. The sample size for the present study was calculated using the formula: n= Za²s²/d² wherein Za= 1.96 at 95% confidence level, s=standard deviation, and d=mean difference based on the study done by Soodla and Kikas (2010), wherein the authors studied the macrostructure of narratives between typically developing children (aged 6–7 years), and children with and without language impairment (aged 6–8 years).
Participants
A total of 90 typically developing children aged 6 – 11 year olds participated in the present study. The target age range used in the present study has been found undergo major development in oral narratives [25]. The participants selected for the study were allocated into 6 groups based on their age, with each group consisting of 15 participants. The following table (Table 1) shows the distribution of the participants under each age group. With children improvising their language skills with every subsequent year, the current study aimed at tracking the mastery of macrostructural components of young children with a one-year interval age gap.
| Table 1: Distribution of participants across age groups |
| Group |
Age (in years) |
Number of participants |
I |
6-6.11 |
15 |
II |
7-7.11 |
15 |
III |
8-8.11 |
15 |
IV |
9-9.11 |
15 |
V |
10-10.11 |
15 |
VI |
11-11.11 |
15 |
Total |
|
90 |
The study was carried out in a regular English medium school that followed Karnataka Secondary Education Examination Board. Prior to the commencement of the study, school authorities were explained about the purpose of the study, and an informed consent was obtained from all the participants prior to their inclusion in the study. The participants were selected based on the inclusion and exclusion which was provided to the school teachers. The inclusion criteria included children attending regular English medium school, children fitting the age criteria, children having a good proficiency in English (having it as L2), and children with their native language (Kannada/Tulu) as their L1. In addition, children were included who attained age appropriate language scores based in the Assessment of Language Development [26], Speech and Language Developmental Chart [27], and the COM-DEALL checklist [28]. The exclusion criteria included participants who had any cognitive issues [29], history of any speech, language and hearing problems [30], uncorrected visual impairments, history of transfer from one medium of instruction in the school to another, and/or a history of any academic failures. Participants who fitted the selection criteria and based on the teacher’s report were recruited for the study.
Procedure
The present study was carried out in three phases. Phase I comprised of the development of stimuli for the study; Phase II comprised of the data collection; Phase III included transcription, data analysis and statistical analysis.
Phase 1 began with the identification of various stories (‘Jack and the Beanstalk’, ‘Hare and the Tortoise’, ‘The Thirsty Crow’, ‘Fox and the Grapes’, ‘The Golden Egg’) from books which were available in the Indian market, suitable for young children aged between 4 and 12 years. After a close scrutinization of the stories, the story ‘The Golden Egg’ was short listed based on its familiarity and its potential to generate a complex narrative sample in young and older children. This was followed by the formulation of 6 picture sequences which had a potential to generate a narrative sample following the SG model [6]. The pictures were professionally painted by an artist, with each picture depicting an event in the story. The developed pictures were colorful, making it interesting for young children to take part in the task, with a scope to elicit a rich narrative sample as young children are attracted and show interest in exploring pictures (see Appendix A). As per the guidelines imposed by Stein and Glenn (1979) for the SG model of analysis, each picture depicted its corresponding SG component (as shown in Table 2). For the present study, a total of six sequence pictures were noted to be sufficient to portray the complete story having all the SG components in place. Instructions were given to the participants before the elocution of the narrative sample and the instructions were as follows; “Look at these pictures one after another and tell me a story”.
| Table 2: Details of the developed stimuli for the narration task. |
| Picture |
Scene description |
Event narration |
SG component |
Key elements |
Scores |
1
|
A farmer in a village near a river holding a stick and there are many ducks and also a duck which lay a golden egg. |
Once upon a time, there lived a farmer in a village
He had many ducks in his house. |
S |
Time |
1 |
Farmer |
1 |
Village |
1 |
Many ducks |
1 |
In his house |
1 |
One of the duck lay. |
1 |
2 |
A farmer sitting with a stick near a hut in front of a duck which is laying a golden egg. |
One of the ducks would lay a golden egg every day |
Golden egg |
1 |
Subtotal (S) |
|
|
|
7 |
3 |
Farmer sitting on a couch in his house with hookah and some fruits in the plate. |
He sold the golden egg and became rich
But the farmer was not satisfied with what he used to get daily |
IE |
Sold the golden egg. |
1 |
Became rich. |
1 |
Farmer was not satisfied. |
1 |
Subtotal (IE) |
|
|
|
3 |
4 |
Farmer sitting on a couch in his house with the duck and thinking. |
One day he thought there would be more golden eggs in the stomach of the duck.
He wanted to get all the eggs from the stomach of the duck. |
IR |
He thought there will be more eggs. |
1
|
Inside the stomach of duck. |
1 |
He wanted to get all the eggs. |
1 |
Subtotal (IR) |
|
|
|
3 |
|
|
He decided to kill the duck and get all the eggs together |
P |
He decided to kill the duck. |
1 |
Subtotal (P) |
|
|
|
1 |
5 |
Farmer holding knife in one hand and neck of the duck in other hand and cutting its body while laying a golden egg and blood coming out of the duck’s stomach |
So next day when the duck laid a golden egg, the farmer caught hold of it and took a knife and cut its body open |
A |
Next day |
1 |
When duck laid egg |
1 |
He caught it |
1 |
Took knife |
1 |
Cut its body open |
1 |
Subtotal (A) |
|
|
|
5 |
|
|
There was only one egg and blood all around and no more eggs inside the stomach |
C |
One egg |
1 |
Blood all around. |
1
1 |
No more eggs |
|
Subtotal (C) |
|
|
|
3 |
6 |
Farmer sitting on a couch with hands on his face with sad face |
The farmer was sad because now he would not get even a single egg |
R |
Sad |
1 |
He will not get any eggs anymore |
1 |
Subtotal (R) |
|
|
|
2 |
Note: Setting (S); Initiating Event (IE); Internal Response (IR); Plan (P); Attempt (A); Consequence (C); Reaction (R) |
The scoring scheme was assigned based on the inclusion of the components of the SG. Each component was identified to have key elements which were essential to be present in the narrative sample based on which the scoring was assigned. For example, in the ‘S’ component, a score of 1 was given if the participant either had a mention of ‘Time’, ‘Farmer’, ‘Village’, ‘Many ducks’, ‘In his house’, ‘One of the duck laid’, or ‘Golden egg’ in his/her narrative sample. The total score attainable by an individual under the ‘S’ component was a maximum of 7. All SG components were identified to have their respective key elements and were therefore assigned their corresponding scores (as shown in Table 2). A maximum total score of 24 (S-7 + IE-3 + IR-3 + P- 1 + A-5 + C-3 + R-2 = 24) was assigned. This scoring system to study the macrostructural forms were done to determine the quantity of story information units included in the story
Content validation was performed to check the appropriateness of the developed stimuli for assessing the narrative development of children between the ages of 6 to 11 years. The validation process included scrutinizing the formulated sequence pictures, the corresponding instructions for the task, and the constructed story (that followed the SG model). Five experienced SLPs rated for their appropriateness based on a scale of 3 (appropriate, inappropriate, and modifications required). The sequence pictures and instructions required no modifications. However, minor modifications were suggested for the construction of the story. Changes included reducing the syntactic complexity of sentences (for example “The farmer was highly grieved” into “The farmer was sad”) and excluding the protagonist’s wife from the story, as there was no active role played by the character contributing to the story narration. Table 2 provides details of the stimuli. The table is arranged based on each picture - the description of the scene, the expected narration for each picture, the corresponding SG component, the relevant key elements, and the assigned scores corresponding to each key element.
Phase 2 was carried out individually on each participant in a quiet room within their school environment. The participant’s demographic details as well as information regarding the standard, section, and school were noted. Participants were asked to narrate a story using the prepared stimuli. The instructions were verbally presented by the examiner. The verbally narrated samples were audio recorded so as to analyze them for the presence of SG components. The recording was done using a hand held voice recorder (Sony ICD – UX533F/SCE) placed at a distance of 8-10 inches from the participants. Each participant took 5 – 10 minutes to complete the task. Phase 3 included the recording of narrative samples from each of the participants were transcribed for the experimenter’s convenience in order to check for the presence of SG components. The narrative samples were analyzed according to the SG model [6]. Sample of narrative analysis is enclosed in the Appendix B. Inter-rater reliability was done between two raters (experimenter of the study and another SLP) in order to check the reliability of the scoring of each of the samples.
Statistics
The obtained data was statistically analyzed using SPSS software (version 16.0). Descriptive statistics was done in order to determine the mean and standard deviation (SD) of the 7 dependent variables (S, IE, IR, P, A, C, and R) for each group. Kolmogorov-Smirnov and Shapiro-Wilk tests were done to determine the normality. One-way ANOVA was done to obtain the level of significance of the dependent variables across the age groups. Bonferroni Post hoc analysis was done to compare the scores between Groups I and II, II and III, III and IV, IV and V, V and VI. Inter-rater reliability was measured using Cronbach’s alpha for each of the samples across all six groups.
Results
The present study focused on assessing the macrostructure of oral narratives in typically developing English speaking children between 6 – 11 years of age. The results are discussed based on the performance exhibited by each group on their macrostructural components of oral narrative. The following table (Table 3) depicts the mean and SD of all SG components across Group I – VI.
| Table 3:
The mean and SD of the SG components of all six groups. |
|
Group I |
Group II |
Group III |
Group IV |
Group V |
Group VI |
SG Components |
Mean |
SD |
Mean |
SD |
Mean |
SD |
Mean |
SD |
Mean |
SD |
Mean |
SD |
S |
3.73 |
1.09 |
3.06 |
0.88 |
3.80 |
1.26 |
4.60 |
0.63 |
4.53 |
1.30 |
4.46 |
0.63 |
IE |
0.26 |
0.59 |
0.40 |
0.50 |
0.86 |
0.51 |
1.13 |
0.74 |
1.40 |
0.98 |
1.93 |
0.70 |
IR |
0.13 |
0.35 |
0.06 |
0.25 |
0.60 |
0.82 |
0.86 |
0.91 |
1.13 |
0.91 |
0.73 |
0.79 |
P |
0.00 |
0.00 |
0.00 |
0.00 |
0.20 |
0.41 |
0.20 |
0.41 |
0.26 |
0.45 |
0.46 |
1.06 |
A |
1.06 |
0.96 |
0.93 |
0.45 |
1.40 |
0.82 |
1.46 |
0.83 |
1.80 |
1.20 |
2.20 |
1.37 |
C |
0.60 |
0.63 |
0.46 |
0.63 |
1.00 |
0.75 |
1.20 |
0.67 |
1.06 |
0.70 |
1.13 |
0.74 |
R |
0.93 |
0.25 |
1.00 |
0.00 |
0.86 |
0.51 |
0.86 |
0.51 |
0.93 |
0.70 |
0.73 |
0..45 |
| Note: Setting (S), Initiating Event (IE), Internal Response (IR), Plan (P), Attempt (A), Consequence (C), Reaction (R). |
When considering the S component, an increasing total score was evident across the six groups. However, scores were significantly increasing with every alternate group. For example, there was an escalating score seen from Group I to III to V. A similar trend was evident across Group II to IV to VI. Considering the IE component, an increase in the total scores was seen across the groups. Scores seem to be increasing significantly with each group. There was an increase in the total scores obtained for the IR, P, A and C components which was evident across six groups; along with a significant increase in scores obtained for every alternating group (I to III to V and Group II to IV to VI). Considering the R component, scores obtained were not indicating any significant increase in the total scores across the six groups. The mean and SD of the total SG scores obtained by each age group is represented in the following figure (Figure 1).
Considering the mean total SG scores across the six age groups, there was an increasing trend observed from Group II (5.93) through Group VI (10.33) as depicted in Figure 1. However, Group I (6.73) exhibited a total SG score higher than its succeeding group (Group II). Group V and VI showed almost similar type scores (11.13 and 11.66 respectively).
 |
Figure 1: The mean and SD of the total SG scores obtained by each age group. This figure illustrates the developmental pattern of the macrostructure of oral narratives of children between the ages of 6 to 11 years. |
Considering the results of one-way ANOVA for each SG component, a good level of significance was obtained for the S component [F (27.56) = 5.51, p<0.05], IE component [F (29.46) = 5.89, p<0.05], IR component [F (13.12) = 2.62, p<0.05], A component [F (16.45) = 3.29, p<0.05], and C component [F (6.88) = 1.37, P<0.05]. However, a poor level of significance was obtained for the P component [F (2.32) = 0.46, P>0.05], R component [F (0.62) = 0.12, P>0.05]. A main significant difference (total of all the SG components) was obtained across the six age groups [F (420.08) =84.018, p<0.05]. The results of the pair-wise comparisons (between the age groups) of the mean total SG scores is depicted in the following table (Table 4).
| Table 4:
Pair-wise comparison between the groups. |
| Comparison (Groups) |
Mean Difference |
Standard Error |
Level of Significance |
I-II |
0.80 |
0.93 |
1.0 |
II-III |
-2.80 |
0.93 |
0.05 |
III-IV |
-1.60 |
0.93 |
1.0 |
IV-V |
-0.8 |
0.93 |
1.0 |
V-VI |
-0.53 |
0.93 |
1.0 |
The results of post hoc analysis revealed no significant difference (p>0.05) between Group I and II (p=1.00), Group III and IV (p= 1.00), Group IV and V (p= 1.00), and Group V and VI (p>0.05). There was a good significant difference obtained only between Group II and III (p<0.05). Intra class correlation was measured using Cronbach’s alpha for all six groups, revealing a high reliability value of 0.85, 0.84, 0.84, 0.68, 0.87 and 0.73 for Group I, II, III, IV, V and VI respectively.
Discussion
The present study focused on assessing the macrostructure of oral narratives in typically developing English speaking children between 6 – 11 years of age (Group I - VI). Participants were provided with six picture sequences and were asked to orally narrate the story. The narrative samples were recorded and analyzed according to the SG model. The mean and SD was calculated for all the 7 SG components (S, IE, IR, P, A, C, R) of each of the six groups. Parametric tests were done to obtain the level of significance across and between the age groups. An inter-rater reliability was done to ascertain the reliability of scoring the samples. The results of the present study are discussed as follows.
Considering the macrostructural development based on age, the present study indicated an increasing trend in the total SG scores generated across Group I (6-6.11 years) to VI (11-11.11 years), except for Group II (7-7.11 years) which attained lower scores than its preceding group (Group I). A similar age wise progression in narrative abilities have been demonstrated by Crais and Lorch (1994), who found 7 year-olds to use multiple episodes in story narration, when compared to the 9 and 10 year olds who used the complete episodic structure to narrate a cohesive story. The 11 year olds were however able to embed one episode within another. The results of the present study found a progressive usage of the key elements of each SG component with age, with the results of one-way ANOVA revealing a main significant difference (p<0.05) in the total SG scores generated by the six age groups.
The lower scores obtained by Group II compared to Group I could be discussed by considering the individual performances of the participants of Group II. It was noted that, the raw scores (total SG scores) obtained by two of the participants from Group II were 3 and 4, while the rest of the participants from Group II obtained the scores ranging from 7 to 10. This could have had an overall impact on the overall total SG scores. It was also noted that the grammatical markers (adjectives, prepositions, nouns, verbs, adverbs, and personal pronouns) that were used by the participants of each group were found to increase with age, except for Group II who demonstrated the poor use of adjectives and prepositions in the narrative sample. As per the analysis done using Systematic Analysis of Language Transcripts (SALT), the total number of grammatical markers identified in the expected narrative sample were: 7-adjectives, 11-prepositions, 31-nouns, 8-personal pronouns, 21-verbs, and 9-adverbs. Children became linguistically advanced and proficient, tending to produce utterances that are longer both in number of morphemes and words [31]. An increase in the use of grammatical markers does imply a corresponding increment in the number of morphemes and words. Studies have indicated a parallel development in microstructural and macrostructural aspects of narratives [23], along with an increase in the number of grammatical markers with age [13]. As observed in the present study, the narratives obtained by the older children were grammatically rich when compared to the narratives of the younger children. This is in accordance with the study done by Schneider, Hayward, and Dubé (2006) and Soodla and Kikas (2010) who concluded children to mature in the use of narratives with age.
Considering the results of one-way ANOVA of each SG component, a good level of significance (p<0.05) was obtained for the S, IE, IR, A, and C components, indicating increasing narrative performance with age. These findings are in line with the study done by Munoz et al. (2003) who indicated the use of SG components to increase with age. Though there were SG components increasing with age, the present study obtained a poor level of significance (p<0.05) for the P and R component. When considering the assigned maximum scores under each SG component – Setting (7), Initiating Event (3), Internal Response (3), Plan (1), Attempt (5), Consequence (3), and Reaction (2), adding up to a total SG score of 24, the P and R components had the lowest maximum scores. It was noted that the participants who did not mention the only key element (‘He decided to kill the duck’) of P, received a 0 score, indicating a 0% performance. Similarly, for the R component, there were 2 key elements (‘Sad’ and ‘He will not get any eggs anymore’); and failure to produce both would result in a score of 0, also implying a 0% performance. This indicated a difficulty in attaining a 100% score in these two SG components, due to the restricted number of key elements for scoring. This was in contrast to the S component, which contained 7 key elements, with the participants having a probability to attain a maximum score of 7. In this component (S), if the participant missed 1 key element, he/she would have attained 14% compared to getting 0% for the P component. A similar range of possible scores were observed for IE (33.3%, 66.6% and 100% ), IR (33.3%, 66.6% and 100% ), A (20%, 40%, 60%, 80% and 100%) and C (33.3%, 66.6% and 100% ). It was noted that the 11-11.11 year-old group, though being the oldest age group, received a mean score of 11.66, indicating that the development in macrostructures are ongoing. Scores did not reach maximum suggesting that as age increases there is scope for the further improvement in the total scores. The scoring system followed in the present study followed an uneven scoring system across the SG components. Maintaining a uniformity in the scoring system across the SG components, keeping a maximum score of 5 or more (i.e. assigning 5 key elements) could have been considered for each SG component.
When considering the rating by experienced judges, the present study analyzed the narrative samples using two experts. High reliability value was obtained for all 6 age groups indicating that, both the experts were in consensus with each other. A recent study Hall-Mills and Apel (2015) has indicated that including more than one examiner for analyzing the obtained data would be more reliable and accurate than the analysis by one examiner. Other studies done on narrative assessment in children have incorporated reliability measures and have found it to be useful to validate the obtained results [20].
Conclusion
The assessment of narrative development during the school age play a crucial role in the child’s overall development. The narrative developmental profile obtained from the present study may help in determining the narrative deficits encountered in children with language disorders, aiding in the formulation of age specific goals improving the pragmatic use of language. Though the oral narratives are the preferred form, future studies may be directed to explore the written form as well. An underperformance by the participants are inevitable, with the oral narrative samples generated at a single instance of time. Adolescence being a prime period with increased social and academic demands, there is scope to assess the narrative skills after 11 years of age as well.
Author contributions
Ms. Alisha Appose and Dr. Sudhin Karuppali was involved in the conceptual framework, method planning, and manuscript preparation. Ms. Alisha Appose was involved in the data collection and analysis.
Acknowledgment
We are grateful and thank the school authority for their cooperation to conduct our study and making it a good success. We thank the Dean, Kasturba Medical College, Manipal Academy of Higher Education, Mangalore, for supporting us to conduct such a study.
APPENDIX – A
APPENDIX – B
Narrative sample of a 10-year-old participant for Group V
Pic no |
Clauses |
S.G component |
Key Elements |
Score |
| 1 |
Once upon a time there was farmer who had many ducks. |
S |
Time. Farmer. Many ducks. One of the duck lay. Golden egg. |
5 |
2 |
One of the duck would lay golden eggs every day. |
3 |
He sold the golden eggs and became very rich. He was not satisfied with himself. |
IE |
Sold the golden egg.
Became rich. Farmer was not satisfied. |
3 |
4 |
So he will get many eggs inside the stomach and he can be rich at once. |
IR |
Many eggs inside the stomach. |
1 |
|
So one day he decided to cut the duck. |
P |
Decided to cut the duck. |
1 |
5 |
So next day while it lay the egg, while the duck laid the egg the farmer took the knife and cut its neck. |
A |
Next day. While the duck laid the egg. Farmer took the knife. Cut its neck. |
4 |
|
The farmer just saw blood all around with just one egg. |
C |
Blood all around. Just one egg |
2 |
6 |
The farmer was sad for he has killed his own duck. And no eggs for him, no eggs anymore |
R |
Sad. No eggs anymore. |
2 |
|
Total |
|
|
18 |
Story Grammar |
Description |
Setting (S) |
Character/ object introductions or descriptions; time, location, activity |
Initiating event (IE) |
Complications that cause a response |
Internal response (IR) |
Emotional responses, desires, thoughts of character |
Plan (P) |
How the character overcome the obstacles, solve the problem, or deal with the complications |
Attempts (A) |
Action taken by the character |
Consequence (C) |
Repercussions of the attempts to overcome the obstacles, solve the problem, or deal with complication |
Reaction (R) |
Thoughts, emotions, and actions of character at the end of the story |
References
- McCabe A, Bliss LS. Patterns of narrative discourse?: a multicultural, life span approach. Allyn and Bacon; 2003. 212 p.
- Greenhalgh K, Strong C. Literate language features in spoken narratives of children with typical language and children with language impairments. Lang Speech, Hear Serv. 2001;32(2):114–25.
- Hughes DL, McGillivray LR, Schmidek M. Guide to narrative language: Procedures for assessment. Thinking Publications; 1997.
- Justice L, Bowles R, Kaderavek J. The Index of Narrative Microstructure: A Clinical Tool for Analyzing School-Age Children’s Narrative Performances. Am J Speech-Language Pathol. 2006;15(2):177–91.
- Norbury CF, Bishop DVM. Narrative skills of children with communication impairments. Int J Lang Commun Disord. 2003 Jan;38(3):287–313.
- Stein N, Glenn C. An Analysis of Story Comprehension in Elementary School Children. New Dir Discourse Process. 1979;2.
- Soodla P, Kikas E. Macrostructure in the Narratives of Estonian Children With Typical Development and Language Impairment. J Speech Lang Hear Res. 2010 Oct 1;53(5):1321–33.
- John SF, Lui M, Tannock R. Children’s Story Retelling and Comprehension Using a New Narrative Resource. Can J Sch Psychol. 2003 Dec;18(1–2):91–113.
- Ukrainetz TA, Justice LM, Kaderavek JN, Eisenberg SL, Gillam RB, Harm HM. The Development of Expressive Elaboration in Fictional Narratives. J Speech Lang Hear Res. 2005 Dec;48(6):1363–77.
- Munoz ML, Gillam RB, Pena ED, Gulley-Faehnle A. Measures of language development in fictional narratives of Latino children. Lang Speech Hear Serv Sch. 2003;34(4):332–42.
- Bahr CM, Nelson NW, Meter AM Van. The Effects of Text-Based and Graphics-Based Software Tools on Planning and Organizing of Stories. J Learn Disabil. 1996 Jul 19;29(4):355–70.
- Rollins P, McCabe A, Bliss L. Culturally sensitive assessment of narrative skills in children. Semin Speech Lang. 2000;21(3):223–34.
- Hall-Mills S, Apel K. Linguistic Feature Development Across Grades and Genre in Elementary Writing. Lang Speech Hear Serv Sch. 2015 Jul 1;46(3):242–55.
- Kaderavek JN, Gillam RB, Ukrainetz TA, Justice LM, Eisenberg SN. School-Age Children’s Self-Assessment of Oral Narrative Production. Commun Disord Q. 2001;26(1):37–48.
- Westby C, Moore C, Roman R. Reinventing the enemy’s language: Developing narratives in Native American Children. Linguist Educ. 2002;13(2):235–69.
- Hudson J, Shapiro L, McCabe A. From knowing to telling: The development of children’s scripts, stories, and personal narratives. Dev Narrat Struct. 1991;89–136.
- Pearce WM, McCormack PF, James DGH. Exploring the boundaries of SLI: findings from morphosyntactic and story grammar analyses. Clin Linguist Phon. 2003 Jun;17(4–5):325–34.
- Rookes P, Willson J. Perception: Theory, development and organisation. Psychology Press; 2000. 477 p.
- Ely R, Wolf A, McCabe A, Melzi G. The story behind the story: Methodological approaches to gathering narrative data from children. In: L Menn, & N Bernstein-Ratner (Eds), Methods for studying language production. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum Press; 2000. p. 225–48.
- Rao AP, Reddy MB, Narayanan S. Micro and macrostructure discourse analysis in persons with idiopathic Parkinson’ s disease. J Speech, Lang Hear. 2017;20(4):1–10.
- Hemphill L, Siperstein G. Conversational competence and peer response to mildly retarded children. J Educ Psychol. 1990;82(1):128.
- Conti-Ramsden G, Botting N. Social difficulties and victimization in children with SLI at 11 years of age. J Speech, Lang Hear Res. 2004;47:145–161.
- Crais ER, Lorch N. Oral narratives in school-age children. Topics in Language Disorders. Aspen Publishers, Inc; 1994.
- Westby C, Dezale J, Fradd SH, Lee O. Learning to do Science. Commun Disord Q. 1999 Dec;21(1):50–64.
- Kunnari S, Välimaa T, Laukkanen-Nevala. Macrostructure in the narratives of monolingual Finnish and bilingual Finnish-Swedish children. Appl Psycholinguist. 2016;37:1–30.
- Lakshanna S, Venkatesh K, Bhat JS. Assessment of Language Development. Bakersfield, CA: Omni Therapy Services; 2008.
- Gard A, Gilman L, Gorman J. Speech and Language Developmental Chart. 2nd ed. 1993.
- Karanth P. The Communication DEALL Developmental Checklists. Bangalore: Com DEALL Trust; 2007.
- Kim Y-SG. Direct and mediated effects of language and cognitive skills on comprehension of oral narrative texts (listening comprehension) for children. J Exp Child Psychol. 2016 Jan;141:101–20.
- Paul R, Smith RL. Narrative Skills in 4-Year-Olds With Normal, Impaired, and Late-Developing Language. J Speech Lang Hear Res. 1993 Jun;36(3):592.
- Morgan JL, Meier RP, Newport EL. Structural packaging in the input to language learning: Contributions of prosodic and morphological marking of phrases to the acquisition of language. Cogn Psychol. 1987 Oct;19(4):498–550.
- Schneider P, Hayward D, Dubé RV. Storytelling from pictures using the Edmonton narrative norms instrument. Can J Speech-Language Pathol Audiol. 2006;30(4):224–38.
|
