Used experimental tasks--spontaneous telling of a story, reading, and parsing--to determine whether empirical data reflect narrative structure of stories. It was concluded that spontaneous pausing reflects the narrative structure and can be used as a guide to constructing theories of narrative structure and deciding between competing theories.…

Investigation of commonalities in children's language across tasks showed that children with literate and oral speech styles made both contrastive and similar types of adaptations when portraying events through play and oral narration. As they moved from playing to narrating, both groups edited more carefully and employed more explicit language.…

Describes how the retelling of stories can reveal (1) the point or points students see in the stories they read and (2) the problems students have organizing the different elements of a story into a coherent whole. (HOD)

Describes four basic features that distinguish narrative from expository discourse and suggests that teachers who recognize those differences can guide their students to use reading strategies appropriate to particular text structures. (HOD)

Verbs of motion and location in Irish Sign Language have a characteristic lexicalization pattern, which influences the lexical choices signers make in denoting the motion and location of entities. Perceived characteristics of referents govern the type of verb root selected. Animate and inanimate referents are signified by different types of verb…

This paper places the text of a Kashaya traditional narrative in cultural context and analyzes linguistic, poetic, and rhetorical features that contribute to its artistry. In part, this necessitates a reconstruction of the culture that gave rise to the narrative itself, in the tradition of much Native American anthropology, as both the language of…

Two studies utilized different conditions under which kindergarten children encountered the same narrative material and were tested for recall at 30 seconds and one week after the encounters. Children who enacted the story while hearing it significantly recalled more narrative content and implicit and explicit information. (DS)

Narrates the author's experience and insights regarding the power of stories from an individual's own family. Discusses the power of learners' family stories, story in the freshman English classroom, learning how story structure works, family stories in remedial college classes, and writing for publication classes. Describes a year-long writing…

States that the alliance between story and music within Native American culture can be carried over into the curriculum. Provides a rationale for utilizing story while teaching Native American music, specifically related to the multicultural curriculum. Discusses the value of cultural music to the multicultural curriculum. (CMK)

Sampling spontaneous expressive language through video narration is offered as a means of reducing variability among language samples over time or from different speakers. Advantages include content stability, high interest value, and high processing demands. Disadvantages include brevity of the samples, lack of information on dyadic communication…

Volunteers (n=55) who produce narrated tape recordings of textbooks for use by visually handicapped students were surveyed to determine their recording experience, equipment, guidance, and feedback. Eighty visually handicapped students who used the recordings in higher education were also surveyed concerning waiting time for books, listening…

The predictions that 48 students with deafness in grades 4-8 made while reading narrative text were analyzed to explore the influence of the children's expectations for text structure and content on reading comprehension. Findings indicated that interacting at a deep level with narrative text was more related to reader characteristics than to…

Analyzes how 1,037 high school students rated work values that were embedded in stories about students' future work life. On average, higher pay and supportive supervisor feedback made a job more attractive--reactions varied by sex and ethnicity. Suggests that work values be included in occupational narratives to help clients explore careers. (RJM)

Considers the role of obligation in counselors' motivation to do their work. Observes that narrative practices related to the humanities, and to religious and spiritual traditions, may help counselors when obligation-based motivation is overwhelmed by the harsher elements of human nature and of the counseling profession. (RJM)