Clinical Question: Do students with language disorders and those who have low language skills benefit more from classroom-based instruction on narratives or from instruction outside of the classroom to improve comprehension of and retelling of narratives? Method: Systematic Review. Search Terms: narrative intervention AND service delivery,…

Here, at "FORUM's" invitation, is the text of the 2014 Godfrey Thomson Trust public lecture at the University of Edinburgh. Its backdrop is the centralisation of educational decision-making in England since 1988 and the power and patronage exercised by the Secretary of State. Taking as examples recent policies on childhood, curriculum…

Forty middle-class American mothers and their preschool children were observed in a narrative activity which involved telling a story using the Berenstain Bears Play Set as a stimulus. The goal of the study was to examine the presence of story grammar elements in both maternal and preschool narratives. In addition, the study sought to explore the…

Investigation of learning-disabled elementary school students' (N=29) ability to comprehend narrative text when important information was systematically dispersed or centralized within the text revealed no significant effect for input mode on measures of comprehension and recall. (Author/CB)

The children's use of cohesion in spoken narratives was compared across three groups of children all between seven and 10 years old: normal, language disordered with good story comprehension, and language disordered with poor story comprehension. Good comprehending language disordered and normal children used similar linguistic cohesive…

Forty language-disordered and nondisordered elementary children viewed a nonverbal film, wrote the story, and narrated it to language-disordered and nondisordered peers unfamiliar with the film. Language-disordered Ss made fewer references to the orientation clauses of props and activities than nondisordered Ss. Neither group modified their…

Examines and characterizes student use of narrative and paradigmatic expression in elementary science discourse. Focuses on the narrative and paradigmatic modes of expression used by combined first-, second-, and third-grade students in a semi-structured, fairly autonomous, whole-class conversational format. Over time students moved toward more…

Among results of a comparison of 20 language disordered and 20 control children (ages 7-10) were that only the nonhandicapped children changed the number of complete episodes narrated as a function of the listener's shared information, while neither group altered the accuracy of conjunctive use as a function of the listener. (Author/DB)

Spontaneously generated oral stories were analyzed from 93 learning-disabled (LD) and normally achieving (NA) students (8-13 years old). Results showed significant group and age differences. The stories told by the LD Ss contained fewer propositions and complete episodes and contained significantly fewer minor setting statements than those of…

Uses de Beaugrande's concept analysis system to describe how 20 third graders employed narrative concepts at the local and global levels in written stories, and to assess the coherence of those stories. (SR)

Advances two processes describing the relationship between message behaviors and narrative comprehension that differ in the likelihood that specific interpretations will be drawn given the presence of message cues. Finds that, in general, cues biased young children toward drawing a particular representation but that fifth graders delayed choosing…

Short-term stability of cohesion scores for spoken narratives of 39 language-impaired and 39 normally developing elementary-aged children was investigated. Mean cohesive adequacy scores were stable across narratives, but stability coefficients were only moderately large. Results also indicated that stability increases as children gained experience…

This study was an investigation of the effects of narration and level of picture detail on children's recall of illustrated materials. Third and sixth grade students were randomly assigned to one of four treatment groups: groups one and two viewed two 7-frame stories accompanied by oral narration; groups three and four viewed the same stories…

This study investigated whether instruction aimed to heighten awareness of narrative structure would enhance fifth-grade children's use of story elements during comprehension and composition. Results are discussed. (Author/MT)

Describes a study of the features of British children's narrative writing, at ages 7, 10, and 13. The results indicated a progression from a simple chronicle of events, through simple stories based on a disruption of the probabilities, to more highly developed stories. (HTH)