Module 7: Narrative & Expository Language
Language Sampling
Considerations:
What information do you want to analyze?
Is the sample representative?
Will the child tell an adult a story?
Are at least 3 language samples obtained?
SLP-child (in school system, can equate to teacher-child/academic setting)
child-child
parent-child
Language elicitation:
Spontaneous conversation via play
Structured language elicitation task (Anderson, 1996).
Narratives
info we want to analyze:
MLU (avg. number of words produced in every utterance)
syntax (sentence structures)
lexical diversity
pragmatics (turn-taking, topic maintenance)
morphology (Brown’s morphemes)
narrative skills (story elements, temporal cohesion, reference cohesion, macro and micro structures)
gives insight into every level of language
Conversation vs. Narration
Both are used to obtain or share information and maintain and build relationships.
Conversation is an exchange of shared thoughts between people
two people involved in building and creating discourse
dialogue, back and forth (need to use what the other person is saying to respond meaningfully)
Narration is a monologue in which an experience, event, or condition is described by one person to another
only one person trying to convey something
Attributes of Conversations & Narration That Change Over Time
Conversation
Stay on topic longer
Dialogues extended and more collaborative
Greater conversing with peers
Increases veracity of comments
Topic shifts smoothly
Adjusts content and style according to listener
Supports partner more
as the speaker (clinician), analyze what you said as well — what could I have said to help them respond better?
Narration
Stories are longer, better organized, and detailed
More episodes
More complete episodes
More embedding of smaller episodes in larger ones
Better cohesion
Adds more about characters’ emotions/plans
More effort to entertain and engage listener
Developmental Trajectory of Conversations
Conversations begin as toddlers when 2-year-olds begin expressing 2-word utterances.
Expectations:
Spontaneously initiate conversations with others and respond to the initiations of others (using “hi” or speaking when name is called).
Take turns in the conversation (e.g., How are you? ‘Fine’)
Spontaneously introduce a topic by commenting or requesting.
Maintain topics by acknowledging (That’s pretty. Thank you), answering, commenting, and requesting.
As the child moves into Phases 3-5 in FCU, conversations evolve to match the complexity of the structures acquired.
Initiates conversations with a variety of different persons.
Takes multiple turns maintaining a topic initiated by self and others.
Requests clarification at the appropriate time in the conversation.
May start adding narratives to a dialogue (moments to explain what happened/is happening)
Use scripts to explain the set of actions (predictable).
Uses simple directives with various locative terms.
Used adjectives to describe objects more distinctively.
Uses pronouns and articles when signaling new information or referring to different event times.
Early school-aged children can speak to more than one person at a time, with a shift away from parents to peers.
Initiates conversations with idiomatic expressions (“Guess what?”; “How’s it going?”).
Can engage in multiple turns with teachers and peers.
Uses politeness more actively when requesting objects, actions, and clarifications.
Adds narratives routinely to refer to personal anecdotes or fictitious events.
Can explain themselves (intent behind words and actions, answering “why?”).
Can give spatial directions.
Can give more details and is more descriptive, using part-whole references (‘the pink dress with the big bow’).
By 2nd grade and beyond, the quality of conversation changes primarily due to vocabulary and an increase in the number of personal and shared experiences with conversational partners (peers).
Initiates conversations appropriate for the age and status of the intended partner.
Introduces topics that are of high interest to the conversational partner instead of themselves.
Can produce complete narratives not constrained by time/space.
Explanations for activities that are not centered only on the school setting can be incorporated more easily.
Spatial directives are more expansive and cover larger distances.
Uses various descriptors along more than one dimension.
How Do You Define A Conversation?
Topic Maintenance: Occurs when at least one relevant utterance is produced by a speaker following the introduction/reintroduction of a topic by another speaker.
how well does the child do in maintaining a topic that comes up in conversation?
Coherence: Limiting the number of unrelated utterances or abrupt topic switches.
Use focused turns, factually-related utterances, perspective-related utterances, smooth topic transitions.
Related to topic maintenance (when they do switch, it makes sense; utterances related)
Conversational Partner Status: Topics and style of conversation vary by who you are conversing with.
Is the child paying attention to the topics and style of conversation and adjusting their responses accordingly, demonstrating an understanding of the conversational partner's status?
Are they paying attention to who they are talking to or are they just using one type of style with every person?
Adolescents rely strongly on peer conversations to solve problems, vent frustrations, joke, and encourage each other (Rawlins, 1992; Turkstra, 2001).
Means of Conversation: Texting has become a more prominent method for adolescents to converse with peers.
Informal but open style of interaction
Used for socialization, relationship building, information sharing, and emotional support
How does it affect the way the child talks?
Argument Strategies:
Request for clarification – using a question to cast doubt on a prior statement
Problematic interpretation – highlighting logic flaws in an argument
Counterarguments – provide a new fact that stands in logical opposition to a previous argument
Developed during adolescence but used to greater effect in adulthood.
Greater depth of knowledge in a subject gained through experience (e.g., an event leading to acquired knowledge) facilitates argument development.
Assessment of Conversational Skills
Manner of Expression: Conversations are dialogic, so the listener can perceive the quality of expression as well as content. The student can rate themselves along the same features.
Features to Evaluate (Qualitative): Present/absent; or Likert Scale range of quality
Vocal: Speaking rate, articulation, fluency, vocal confidence, volume, vocal variety (monotony)
Body language: Posture (formality), inclination (leaning), shakes/nervous twitches, unmotivated movements (e.g., foot tapping, hair twirling), facial expression (blank to exaggerated)
Gestural communication: Nodding to show engagement, using gestures that emphasize the conversational ideas (vs superlative movements), smiling/laughing, use of eye contact.
Verbal exchanges: Asking questions, speaking about the conversational partner, speaking about self, encouragements to speak, quality of opinions (passive/aggressive range), interruptions, air time (amount of time talking vs partner).
Language Sample Analysis:
Tends to provide information as to the variety of different syntactic, morphological, and lexical terms the student produces in spoken or written language.
Microanalysis of Narrative — Grammatical Complexity and Lexical Diversity
Treatment of Conversational Skills
What do we tend to work on?
Encourage students to speak about what they are knowledgeable about
What do we think they know? Have them talk about it. Having to talk about something unfamiliar puts them at a disadvantage.
Encourage students to include relevant and novel information in discourse exchanges
Use vocal, body language, & gestures appropriately according to listener(s) and the context of conversation.
Highlight listener’s frame of mind so topics may be of interest to them
Practice receiving feedback (‘reading’ vocal cues, body language, and gestures appropriately to modify conversational exchanges)
Produce questions, narratives, explanations, instructions, and descriptions that more completely and elaborately convey their growing knowledge base.
May need to give scripts as building blocks.
Max the Mouse Activity
dynamic assessment (test, teach, re-test)
let child say story again [re-test], but ask them to include more details, make the story longer, pay attention to the objects and what Max did, etc.; can model to show what you want the child to do (highlight how the child can make the story more interesting) [teach]
if something is wrong → want to see if it’s because of a lack of experience or not (tests cognitive modifiability/metalinguistics to see if they can think about language after we give them instructions)
measuring how quickly and easily it takes for them to get to the project
Narratives
Consider culture & the person’s perspective on the purpose and context of storytelling (Gutierrez-Clellen & Quinn, 1993).
Limited experience with storybooks will affect a storyteller’s ability to engage in book-sharing tasks.
Certain probes or story-starters may not work because of children’s lack of experience with that type of elicitation task.
Consider the person’s age.
Child needs to be convinced to yell you and good story; consider culture and experiences.
Consider the types of narratives, ages of storyteller & elicitation approaches (e.g., book-recall: generates descriptive information; movie-recall: elicits story actions vs plot).
Spontaneous Narratives (not easy to obtain — clinician tells story within conversation, child considers adding own narrative into discourse)
Elicited Personal Narratives
Consider child’s past experiences & story prompts.
Allows for the analysis of constituent parts so that the overall coherence of the narrative can be assessed.
Elicited Script Narratives
Consider child’s past experiences. Does not provide (episodic) story grammar information.
Provides information on the description of a logical sequence of routine events (built on routine; i.e., getting ready for school, preparing food). No complication action/high point.
Elicited Fictional Narratives
Story generation vs Story retelling (leaning more on cognitive skills). Which will provide greater diagnostic information. (based on scripts and personal narratives)
Consider what information you want to analyze.
Macrostructure analysis: Examines narratives' general properties such as a story’s organization in terms of causal and temporal relationships, e.g., story grammar.
Microstructure analysis: Examines narratives for cohesion, appropriateness of grammatical units, and lexical diversity, e.g., grammatical units analysis (T-Units). Found to distinguish TL vs. LD children.
Narrative Elicitation for Macroanalysis
Personal Narratives: Appropriate for preschoolers & grade school children with LI.
People of all ages relate personal experiences; individuals are likely to share their experiences when the examiner shares their experiences first (McCabe & Rollins, 1994).
Obtain 3 different narratives in order to tap the best narrative performance (McCabe & Bliss, 2003).
Appropriate for:
High Point Analysis (McCabe & Rollins, 1994). Storyteller shares the sequence of events and the value of the events.
Narrative Assessment Profile (NAP) (McCabe & Bliss 2003).
Possibly Applebee’s Six Levels.
Script (procedural) Narratives: Appropriate for young school-age children who may be delayed & have difficulty producing personal narratives.
Easier than personal narratives (structured story).
Focus on actions & ordering events rather than descriptions, settings, feelings, and evaluations.
Check to determine familiar routine events in relation to culture and world experiences (e.g., restaurants).
Children are asked to relate what typically occurs during… (b-day parties, grocery shopping, etc.), e.g., Tell me all the things that happen when you… (not personal).
For older children, Pretend I just arrived from another country. Tell me what usually happens during a fire drill.
Appropriate for Macrostructure Analysis, e.g., Script Analysis and NAP.
Script narratives: check with parents for familiar routines.
Relate what typically happens when events occur, not one particular instance of the event, e.g., yesterday when I…
For 5 to 7 yr olds, can use a set of objects to elicit script.
As with personal narratives, the examiner may find it helpful to tell a script (morning routine) to elicit one to show how much detail.
Child tells story using “YOU take…” & present tense.
Use scaffolding as a dynamic assessment to see how much prompting a child needs.
Fictional narratives:
The narrator must draw on knowledge of world events or from another fictional story.
Develop a plot based upon a problem to be solved.
Requires knowledge of social roles, motives, intentions & interactions (general social knowledge).
Researchers investigating story grammar structure produced by typically developing & language-delayed children found no significant differences between groups.
Consider why: most stories in the research elicited narrative by story retelling rather than story generation. Therefore, a story structure was already provided to the individual which may have been used by both groups, decreasing the difficulty of the task
Retell story: retell story; videotape, wordless picture book.
Pros: in shared context – can result in embellishment or summarization). Stories are more complete in unshared contexts. High inter-scorer reliability. The task is easier than spontaneous fictional stories, thus the length of retold stories may be longer.
Cons: not demanding or sensitive task. Deficits in fluency, word recall & event sequencing may not show up
Spontaneous Fiction retelling: Tell movie or book plot.
Pro: less structure than prompted retelling & is more spontaneous. More structured than personal narrative; there’s an existing structure in the sample.
Con: May be too difficult for some children.
Spontaneous Fiction:
Prompt: Mary got lost in the mall, what happened to her?
Make up story w/o initial stem. May use a picture or picture sequence to help provide example/context. (need to be familiar with story scripts)
Length of sample for 3rd grade & higher, stories should consist of 8 units or more & 75 words. If the story is less than 75 words, need additional sample.
Fictional narratives: school-age children & adolescents. More difficult than Personal narratives.
Narratives generated through story-retelling tasks may not differentiate NL from LD children (repeat story previously told, viewed on video, or previously told with wordless picture book.
Knowledge of story structure won’t be tapped.
Problems in fluency, word recall & event sequencing may not show up.
Narratives elicited through story generation tend to differentiate NL from LD children.
Observe features: setting, characters, temporal event sequencing, problem resolution, end.
Appropriate for Episodic analysis, i.e., Story Grammar (Structure) Analysis (Glenn & Stein, 1980; Stein, 1988) and Story Structure Levels (Peterson & McCabe, 1983; Lahey, 1988), NAP (McCabe & Bliss, 2003).
Sampling Methods Based on Difficulty (McCabe & Bliss 2003)
Conversation (easiest)
Scripts
Personal narratives
Fictional Stories (most complex b/c of fantasy elements)
Prompted story retelling: shared & unshared context, GFTA & CELF have subtests
Repeat story told (easiest) 🡪 Videotape viewing 🡪 Wordless picture book
Spontaneous fiction
Prompt –hierarchy from easiest to hardest; Generate story based upon picture; sequence of pictures; previously viewed move or read book; using props that you remove; using no pictures
Microstructure Analysis of Narratives
Developmental studies in English and Spanish with school-age children show greater syntactic complexity across age with respect to conversational, personal narratives, and retelling narratives.
Children demonstrating academic difficulties, (e.g., literacy) frequently have difficulty using explicit & precise language in complex sentences (Gregg, 1991, as cited in Gutierrez-Clellen, 1998).
Differences between TD & LD school-age children:
LD children use syntactically simpler forms more frequently than complex forms.
LD children demonstrate more frequent grammatical errors when using complex sentences as measured by MLTU.
Analysis Procedures: Cohesion
“Interpretation of some elements in a narrative is dependent upon that of another” (Halliday & Hasan, 1976, cited in Hughes, McGillivray, Schmidek, 1997)
evaluate the context of storytelling because it can result in omissions or changes to grammar and lexicon.
Narratives have numerous cohesive markers which can be analyzed to determine how a story is organized between and across sentences.
LD children demonstrate greater errors in cohesion & greater incomplete cohesive ties than TL.
Referential Cohesion:
words that are interpreted by another source of information
For intersentential cohesion, the source must be outside the CU.
Personal reference – I, you, us, he, him, she, her, they, them, their, our, mine, its
Demonstrative reference – the, this, that, these, those, here, now, then (includes articles and demonstrative pronouns)
Comparative reference – another, same, different, else, more, so much, second, otherwise
Conjunctive Cohesion:
words that specify relations between CUs and connect CUs semantically, not grammatically (includes conjunctive adverbs)
Additive reference – and, also, nor, or, furthermore, besides, incidentally, that is, likewise, for instance
Adversative reference – but, however, yet, though, only, except, in fact, actually, instead, anyhow, despite
Causal reference – so, because, as a result of, consequently
Temporal reference – then, next, after that, finally, soon, up to now, from now on.
Continuative reference – well, surely, now, of course, still, anyway
Lexical Cohesion:
words that are associated through vocabulary selection
Repetition: “One day she saw a scary ghost. The ghost flew through the sky at her face.”
Synonymy: “The baby lion saw a mouse. The cub did not know what it was.”
Antonymy: “There were two mice. There was a fat one with thick fur. The other one was skinny and had patches of bare skin.”
Part-whole relationships: “His cup broke and fell to the floor. The handle was still in his hand.”
Superordinate/subordinate:” She wanted a motorcycle. But her dad said she could not have no vehicle until she got a job.”
Substitution and Ellipsis:
words that replace noun phrases, verb phrases, or clauses.
Nominal substitution: replacement of a noun phrase with a pronoun. Differs from personal reference because the two units do not need to refer to the same person or thing.
e.g., “Kevin really like the puppy. He decided to get one.
Verbal substitution / ellipsis: replacement of a verb phrase with an auxiliary form
E.g., “Does Snoopy think he’s the Red Baron? I guess he does.”
Clausal substitution / ellipsis: replacement of a clause with a pronoun.
E.g., Lisa’s dad did not let her have a motorcycle. She didn’t like that one bit.”
Analysis Procedures: Grammatical Units
Analysis that may be helpful to identify LD
Mean Length of T/C-units in words (MLTU/MLCU) mean # of words per subordinate clause; calculated by dividing # of words by the T/C unit.
e.g., 68 total words/6 T-units= MLTU.
Subordination Index: mean # of subordinate clauses per T(C)-unit; Total # of clauses divided by total T-units.
e.g., 11 total clauses/6 T-units = .
Number of grammatical errors per T-units (NETU) (Restrepo, 1998).
Percent of complete cohesive ties
Analysis Procedures: Lexical Diversity
Examine narrative for lexical diversity.
Refer to frequent words used by children
Kindergarten children with less than 9 infrequent words were considered as not having a diverse vocabulary during storytelling.
Narrative Elicitation for Microanalysis
Narrative elicitation should allow for the story to be told to a naïve listener who does not share knowledge of context or stimuli.
Shared storytelling (books, pictures prompts) should be avoided. Consider:
Cultural differences re: shared knowledge.
Listener influence on cohesion with viewing the same picture books, movies: reduces the use of referents produced prior to the use of pronouns & definite articles.
What about Bilingual Children?
Consider Grammatical Complexity Analysis
Gutierrez-Clellen (1998) - Study of Spanish-speaking 28 average achieving (AA) & 29 low achieving (LA) children Grades K, 1st, 3rd, and 5th.
Analyzed T-units for relative clauses, nominal clauses, infinitive clauses, adverbial clauses, adverbial phrases, prepositional phrases.
Tasks: Telling a story from a wordless picture book and a short film to a naïve listener. Prompts were predetermined.
Goal of Narrative Assessment
Knowledge of Content Schema — Comprehension
Can the student recognize or understand the temporal and causal relationships that underlie the interactions of people, objects, and events in the world when they see them represented in pictures or when they read them or hear them?
Knowledge of Story Grammar Structure — Production
Can the student generate content schema knowledge and organize it in a coherent manner?
How do we assess content knowledge?
Evaluate the child’s ability to interpret action in a picture
Make judgments about physical and psychological causality
Make judgments about characters’ internal thoughts/feelings/external behaviors
Reason logically from present/future situations by using information about causality that affects character’s motivation, intent, and psychological behavior.
Types of Narrative Analyses
Applebee’s Narrative Levels
Developed on children ages 2-5, but investigated in children as old as 17 years.
Westby’s Story-Grammar
Developed on the narratives of children in Kindergarten, 3rd, and 5th grade. Best when applied to children’s fictional narratives
Westby’s Story Grammar and Applebee’s Narrative Levels assess the global organization of narratives.
McCabe’s High Point Analysis:
Examines the overall coherence of a narrative (Peterson and McCabe, 1983).
Focuses on what the narrative meant to the teller, relies more on emotional information than upon psychological or physical causality (as opposed to episodic analysis).
Narrative Assessment Profile:
Focused on personal narratives
Accounts for cultural determinants that affect the effectiveness of storytelling
Applebee’s Narrative Levels
Applebee’s levels looked at two aspects of narrative organizations: centering and chaining.
Centering: Occurs when parts of a story cluster around a nucleus or a general object, action, or theme
Chaining: The story develops a sense of time and sequence; events lead directly from one to another temporally or logically
Most 2-year-olds use centering, but by 3, half of children use centering or chaining. By age 5, ~ of children use both routinely.
Don’t abandon centering when they start chaining — older children are good at balancing the two
Vygotsky’s stages for children ages 2-5 years old provide a developmental framework from which you can extrapolate maturation of story telling skills.
Heaps (2-3 years of age) - use salient perceptual features to link things together
“Dogs wag their tails and bark. Dogs sleep all day. A dog chased a cat.”
Sequences (3 years)
“Thinking in complexes” stage: think concretely, more temporal organization but arbitrary, no causal links
Events are linked on the basis of similar attributes or events that create a simple but meaningful focus for the story. Organization is additive. Sentences may be moved around without losing the narrative thread.
“Johnny ate a hamburger. I did too. Mommy ate chicken nuggets. Daddy ate fries and coke.”
Primitive Narrative (4-4½ years)
Centering around personal experiences; the events are complementary, not necessarily repetitive
“I go outside and swing. Bobby push swing. I go high and try to stop. I fall. I start to cry. Bobby picks me up.”
Unfocused (temporal) Chains (4½-5 years)
Lead directly from one event to another; however, linking attributes (such as characters, settings, actions) shift [color change = narrative shift].
“The man got in his boat. He rowed and fished. He at his sandwich. The fishes swimmed and play. Fishes jump over the water. There’s a dog in the boat. He is thirsty. He jump in the water.
Focused (causal) Chains (4½-5 years)
Usually, a center with improved temporal links does not give you the impression that the child recognizes there was a point to the story
“This boy, he found a jellybean. And his mother said not to eat it. And he did. And a tree growed out of his head.”
True Narrative (5-7 years)
Causal relationships may be concrete or abstract; move forward toward the ending of the initial situation; may have a climax.
“A boy named Tommy got lost in the woods. He ate plants and trees. He made friends with the animals. He made a tent to live in. One day, he made a fire, and the police found him. They took Tommy home to his parents.”
Westby’s Story Grammar (1992): Preschool Review
Isolated Description: you know they can label; looking for continuity and logical identification and self-awareness of objects, curiosity, attention/focus
Action Sequence: the child can focus; able to focus on a major character and organize the story around their actions; sequences not usually present, but may have unplanned temporal sequences
Reactive Sequence: the child can recognize physical causality, begin to be aware of the importance of time in storytelling
Westby’s Story Grammar (1992): Early Elementary Review
Abbreviated Episode (1st/2nd Grade)
Understands psychological causality for primary emotions
Awareness of goal-directed behavior, begin perspective taking, script knowledge of common characters.
Complete Episode (3rd/4th Grade)
Understands psychological causality for secondary emotions such as guilt, shame, jealousy, pride, embarrassment.
Awareness of planning, how to plan, justify plans, understanding of relationships between character planning, and improved predicting character’s behavior.
Westby’s Story Grammar (1992): Later Elementary and Beyond
Complex Episode: Understand obstacles to plans, detect deception, understand changing, developing characters
Multiple Episodes - Embedded Episode - Interactive Episode: applicable to adolescents/adults; understands complex time concepts, like flashbacks/forward etc.; ability to coordinate multiple schemas Ability to engage in meta-narrative discussion; narrative structure of characterization, themes and plots, ability to understand time and space, unconscious/conscious motivations.
more complex stories – stories within stories, multiple events building upon one another, more interactive between characters
Adolescents/Adults: understand complex time concepts, like flashbacks/forward etc.; ability to coordinate multiple schemas; ability to engage in meta-narrative discussion; narrative structure of characterization, themes and plots, ability to understand time and space, unconscious/conscious motivations.
Westby’s Story Grammar Components (1992)
Setting*: Reference to time and place, usually including introduction of one or more characters; sometimes this is considered to be a component outside the episode itself.
Initiating Event: An event, sometimes called “complication,” that sets the events of the story in motion, including a problem that requires a solution; it functions to make the protagonist want to achieve a goal or change of state.
Response State or Internal Response*: A statement of how a character feels in response to the initiating event; it usually contains an emotion word. This includes the goal of the protagonist, though it may not be explicitly stated. It functions to motivate the protagonist to act.
Response Plan or Internal Plan*: A statement of an idea that might fix the problem; sometimes this is considered to be part of the internal response.
Attempt: Some action(s) taken by the main character that is meant to solve the problem; there may be several attempts without a statement of consequence before the end of a story.
Consequence: The event(s) following the attempt and causally linked to it, whether successful or not; there may be several consequences of an attempt.
Resolution/Reaction: The final state or situation triggered by the initiating event; it does not cause or lead to other actions or states.
Ending*: A sentence or phrase that clearly states that the story is over.
* = these are considered optional
looking at two things: story structure level AND story grammar components
Of these elements, the preschool-age child is expected to produce narratives containing setting, initiating events, and possibly attempts or consequences.
Unelaborated, no response states/planning, ending may be abrupt; at best, they give an attempt or a consequence.
Typically-developing school-aged children are much better at including nearly all of these elements depending on their amount of exposure to fictional stories.
McCabe’s High-Point Analysis (McCabe & Rollins, 1994)
Macrostructure analysis for personal narratives, occasionally fictional
Emphasis on effectiveness of sequential organization and effectiveness at relating the significance of the experience
Terms to use in descriptive analysis, ‘cohesiveness’, ‘evaluations’
Story parts similar to story grammar components: Introducer (an overview to get listener’s attention), orientation (setting), complicating action, evaluation (gives emotional or cognitive comments about the high point), resolution, coda (ending)
Two-Event (3-4 y.o): The narrative is a combination of only two story parts (e.g., complication & evaluation; orientation & complication)
Leapfrog (4 years): The narrative jumps from one event to another within an integrated experience, leaving out major events that must be inferred by the listener; the narrator’s sequence of events does not match a logically occurring order (relative to cultural conventions).
End-at-High-Point (5 years): The narrative builds up to a high-point, but ends without resolution
Classic (6 years): The narrative builds up to a high point and resolves it
Chrono: The narrative consists of undeveloped stories that are unevaluated lists of actions or simple descriptions of successive events
Impoverished: The narrative consists of too few sentences for any high-point pattern to be recognized, or it reiterates and evaluates only two levels.
Disorientation: The narrative is too confused or disoriented for understanding.
Miscellaneous: The narrative does not fit into one of the above categories
Treatment of Narrative Skills
Narratives can be treated at the macro- (quality of narrative) or micro-level (structure of narrative).
Teach and model stories that are interesting, engaging, entertaining, and contain all the story grammar / structural elements to meet social interactions with adults and peers successfully.
Focus can be on any of the following dimensions: organization, coherence, engagement, relevance of details, convey emotions/reactions/ideas of characters (fictional) or self (personal).
Mode of expression (oral vs written) can also be targeted depending on the child’s level of literacy.