Narrative skills in preschool and first grade children

Abstract

The aim of the study was to investigate the developmental path of narrative skills of preschool and primary school children. Two hundred thirty seven Greek-speaking children from various regions of Greece participated in the study. They were separated in three age groups: 4-5, 5-6 and 6-7 years old. Retelling and narrative production skills were evaluated. Correlations between the two narrative skills were investigated. Four illustrated stories were used (two stories for retelling and two stories for narrative production).Children’s narratives were collected and transcribed from the recordings. Then, narratives were coded and assessed according to certain criteria: microstructure/ cohesion (conjunction and lexical cohesion) and macrostructure/ coherence (story grammar and temporal sequencing of actions and events). The findings revealed that narratives of older children tended to be better according to the story structure criteria in comparison to narratives produced by younger children. In addition, the qualitative analysis of children’s narratives demonstrated the different narrative levels (labeling, listing, connecting, sequencing and narrating) proposed by Stadler and Ward (2005). Children of all age groups performed better in retelling test compared to narrative production test. The results also revealed differences in performance in relation to gender (girls performed better than boys). Finally, a statistically significant correlation between children’s performance in retelling and narrative production skills was found. The results are discussed in terms of theoretical models of narrative abilities. Implications for research, theory and educational purposes are also discussed.

Oral Language and Story Retelling During Preschool and Primary School Years: Developmental Patterns and Interrelationships

“…The results indicated that older children outperformed younger ones on all macrostructure measures. Similar developmental findings were reported by Kanellou, Korvesi, Ralli and Mouzaki (2016) in their study with 4-7 years old Greek children. Last, according to Wehmeier (2021), the narrative comprehension results pointed to significant age effect among three age groups (4;6-4;11, 5;0-5;5, 5;6-5;11) in children's retellings of stories.…”

The Dimensionality of Oral Language Ability: Evidence From Young Greek Children

“…It was designed to cover a wide range of language skills (semantic knowledge, phonological awareness and processing, morphological awareness, oral discourse and pragmatics) in children aged 4-7 years. Test items within each task assessing the various language domains were arranged in ascending order of difficulty adhering to floor and ceiling rules that were determined during extensive pilot testing (Kanellou, Korvesi, Ralli, Mouzaki, Antoniou, Diamanti & Papaioannou, 2016;Ralli, Kazali, Kanellou, Mouzaki, Antoniou, Diamanti & Papaioannou, submitted). Task presentation and item order within each task were the same for all participants who were initially trained through two practice items that were followed by proper feedback and repeated up to three times if needed.…”