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…

In this article two computer-produced multimedia stories created by children in their after-school centre are analysed, building on the assumption that children draw that which is important for them. The aim is to make visible the significance of narrative structure, reaccentuation, intertextuality, multivoicedness and various levels of…

This article considers the role of the basic cognitive unit, called the "story engram," in young children's learning to read, including children ranging in ability from severe mental retardation to giftedness. It illustrates how the "Ball-Stick-Bird" method of beginning reading can facilitate this process because of the…

Oral history is the recording and preserving of planned interviews with selected people able to narrate recollected memory and thereby aid the reconstruction of the past. It can be used in the elementary and secondary school classroom as a way for students to capture the history and lives of people not recorded and become a part of preserving…

Over the years many different psychologists and psychoanalysts have found value in the concept of the self-narrative, or the "life story." Narrative thought demands an appreciation of the particulars of time and place and a focus on multidimensional understanding of events, people, emotion, and motivation. By using the life story or…

In considering academic success, equal emphasis should be given to oracy and literacy competencies. The view that oracy is achieved naturally while literacy requires taught methods needs to be revised, since both areas demand a framework to support their mutual development. The giving and receiving of spoken information is an area that has been…

When a graduate student at the University of Rhode Island was asked to take a seminar at the University of New Hampshire, she experienced a major disjunction between her theoretical perspective and that of the other students and the professor. The seminar, "History of Rhetoric and Composition," was to evolve into a book narrating 40…

Disadvantaged seventh graders were taught a ballad. The evaluation study was designed to explore to what extent the verbal transactions between the teacher and students were related to the three specified unit objectives: style, theme, and personal meaning. Congruence between intended and observed transactions was found. (BJG)

To examine the textual features that distinguish descriptions and fictional narratives in the products of eight- and nine-year old writers, a study analyzed 14 compositions (seven descriptions and seven fictional narratives) written by 14 third grade students. The samples were rated by two qualified professionals working in writing research,…

Both evaluators and storytellers pull together the events they hear and see; they create unified, coherent entities out of the parts they gather. This guide considers two levels at which the understanding of the nature and methods of narrative writing, or storytelling, can be of use to the evaluator. The highest level is to use the notion of…

Intended for administrators and policymakers as well as teachers, this digest discusses the nature of narratology and how it relates to language arts instruction. The digest first defines narratology as the structuralist study of narrative aimed at understanding how recurrent elements, themes, and patterns yield a set of universals that determine…