This paper examines the referential strategies used by Japanese children and adults in two story telling tasks focusing upon the following discourse contexts: (1) first mentions of story characters, (2) references in subject position to the same character, and (3) references to another character. The subjects, 60 children and 10 adults, were…

A study investigated what fourth grade students understand about composing personal narrative discourse. Specifically, the study explored what the subjects understood about structuring personal narrative texts and about evaluating a narrated experience for an audience. Subjects were 13 fourth grade students, and the methodology consisted of…

Presents four studies which examined the ability of kindergarten and second-grade children to regenerate the order of events expressed in narrative sequences using recognition, reconstruction, and recall as the response modes. (Author/ED)

The purpose of this book is to provide a reasoned account of narrative structure, the elements of storytelling, and their combination and articulation. As explained in the introductory chapter, the "what" of narrative is the story, its events (actions, happenings) and existents (characters and settings); the "way" of narrative is discourse, or…

An experiment was carried out to examine individual story schemata and a story theory. The theory proposed relating structural characteristics of narratives to the reader's affective response and the reader's intuitions about what constitutes a story. Two levels of narrative structure are distinguished by the theory: the chronological sequence of…

An artistic verbal performance is something more than words, yet most critical commentary on this genre focuses on the word, on the linguistic level. A methodology for making performance-centered texts is described based on the performance of "Stagolee," a story that originated from Julius Lester's book, "Black Folktales." A…

This study investigated the pattern of growth in syntactic fluency of college-preparatory students in grades 7-12. Its primary purpose was to examine the syntactic structures employed in samples of narrative writing by the 12 different groups (totaling 216 students) that comprised the study sample. A secondary purpose was to determine which of…

The importance of soil, its use and suitability for agriculture and building construction, and the need for and value of soil surveys are emphasized in this pamphlet. It serves as the script for a set of color slides and filmstrip produced by the Soil Conservation Service, U.S. Department of Agriculture. Each of the 73 frames is illustrated with…

Narratives from part-Hawaiian children 5 to 12 years old in a variety of circumstances were collected for several years. Typical verbal routines, ways of analyzing the data, tendency of routines to structure speech events, functions of nonnarrative routines in narrative performance, and establishing a context for narration are considered. (EJS)

Abstracts the International Reading Association's outstanding dissertation, a study examining narrative accounts in the day-to-day conversations of five- to seven-year olds with their friends, the range of narrative forms they produce, and the social and interactional functions served by such narratives. (SR)

Narrative abilities of 24 learning disabled (LD) and 27 nondisabled children (ages 7-12.5 years) were compared. Although LD students were able to reconstruct stories as well as were nondisabled students, narrative analysis of both original and retold stories can provide useful information on language skills beyond the sentence level. (Author/DB)

Discusses the value of using narrative structures in college-level psychology instruction. States that the organization imposed by such a structure may become a key factor in learning and retention. Concludes that undergraduates prefer the narrative mode and consider it more enjoyable and more useful for learning. (Author/GEA)

Describes an historical narrative assignment that stimulates students' interest in questions of rhetoric and scholarship as it requires students to combine role-playing, research, and revision. Discusses how students' role as participant/persona in writing the story prompts an intricate multiplicity of decisions as it forces them to filter data…

To evaluate the relative effectiveness of two media for conveying narrative information, young children and adults were presented the same story via television or radio. Media differences were found, with children in the radio condition showing significantly more errors in comprehension and memory than children in the television condition.…

Third and sixth graders read an illustrated story and were presented with either a television or radio version of another story. Across a range of comprehension and memory measures, performance in the radio condition and reading were related, while performance in the television condition and reading were not. (Author/CB)