Examines responses of graduate students preparing to teach English to an invitation to relate something that was remarkable about their new classroom experiences. Considers the power of narrative for expressing emotions and intellectual growth. (HB)

Provides a report of research conducted as the authors read and analyzed preservice English teachers' writing. Studies the personal teaching metaphors composed by students upon the request of the instructors. Finds that the creation of personal teaching metaphors can illuminate preservice teachers' beliefs. (HB)

Discusses the process by which individuals come to claim authority and assume responsibility for their moral thoughts, feelings, and actions. Examines links between narrative and moral experience. Suggests that the development of moral authority is enhanced when individuals make the words of others their own. (LB)

A focus on narrative as representation shows how individuals understand and make meaning of their actions. In this critical perspective on narrative approaches to moral development, it is argued that a focus on narrative as action is necessary to grasp what really happens in individuals' everyday moral lives. (LB)

Forty-six Spanish-speaking children, ages 4-8, were asked to explain what happened in a silent film. Compared to younger children, older children demonstrated increased use of elliptical reference to refer to places in stories, an increase in appropriate phrases, and a decrease in ambiguities and additions. (Author/JDD)

The production of speech pauses and repairs in story narratives produced by autistic, mentally retarded, and normal children, matched on verbal mental age, was analyzed. Children with autism produced fewer nongrammatical pauses, and their nongrammatical pausing was correlated with measures of story length and complexity, suggesting that their…

Reports the findings of a study designed to investigate children's deictic changes, use of speech act verbs, and preference for reporting system in their retold narratives. Claims that a linear age function emerged and that children's mastery of direct and indirect speech extends over many years. (HB)

Analyzes the referential strategies used in narrative discourse by 10 adults and 60 Japanese children aged 3 to 7 years. Determines the factors underlying choice of nominal versus elliptical forms. Discusses results in terms of cognitive, social, and linguistic factors underlying referential choice. (HB)

Describes the Nebraska Literacy Project, a 5-week workshop for K-12 teachers modeled after the Nebraska Writing Project. Shows how teachers can encourage students to look closely at their own literacy histories and their daily practices as readers and writers. Presents the literacy histories as recorded by some participants. (HB)

Describes recent critical and theoretical works dealing with the topic of narrative and storytelling. Provides citations and brief annotations of 13 works. (HB)

This study compared the spontaneous oral narratives of 10 underachieving and 10 achieving gifted eighth graders. Results found significant differences across the dimensions of story length, episodic integrity, story grammar, and sentence complexity between the two groups, suggesting the presence of narrative language problems in underachieving…

This study compared the syntactic skills of Spanish-speaking children with low and average school achievement from kindergarten to fifth grade using oral narratives that were elicited with book and film retelling tasks. Results indicated that low achieving children exhibited limited use of complex syntax and greater formulation difficulties in…

Attempts to use a construct of literary theory to solve a linguistic problem: the notion of narrative perspective to explain tense variation in Bulgarian narrative. The specific phenomenon of variation is between the past indefinite and the indirect tenses in passages where all the verb forms should be indirect. (24 references) (Author/CK)

This paper advances the hypothesis that young children use narrative play and stories to construct two types of fiction, the worlds of "what is" and "what if." Heinz Werner's conceptualization of children's spheres of reality, in which actions, symbols, and events are constructed in particular ways, is used as a theoretical framework for…

This study examined the effects of the children's TV program Arthur on the development of narrative skills over an academic year for Spanish-speaking English-language learners. In October, February, and June of their kindergarten year, children were asked to tell a story, in English, prompted by 3 pictures. Before the 2nd and 3rd assessments, half…