Comparison of 14 verbally gifted 6-year olds with equal numbers of chronological-age and mental-age controls using a structural-developmental analysis found that the gifted children organized story plots in ways typical of children 2 years older, elaborated on basic plot structures more than control groups, and demonstrated advanced language…

Third graders produced narrative or descriptive passages in response to prompt words. Results supported the domain-specific view of production, in which content elaboration occurs across repeated productions when there is a connection between the earlier and the later production and that connection is based on semantic similarity. (ME)

Forty-six Spanish-speaking children ages four, six, or eight years viewed a short silent film and told what happened in the film. The stories of older children included more narrative actions, more mental state/goal causes, more three-clause causal sequences, and a lower proportion of unrelated statements than those of younger children.…

A study measured the effects that direct instruction in narrative text structure using a story map (called "macrostruction") had on the comprehension of average and above average sixth-grade readers. A 2 x 2 x 2 repeated measures design was used with time, text, and treatment as the independent variables. The number of story grammar idea…

The paper, originally given at a 1986 Ethnic and Multicultural Symposium, reviews the language demands of schools and difficulties with conventional language proficiency measures in predicting the academic achievement of language minority children. It is suggested that language assessment include the assessment of syntactic competencies as well as…

Self-initiated repairs produced by 14 normal-language and 14 language-disordered children (ages 8-12) during a story retelling task are described. No group differences were found for grammatical repairs, text meaning repairs, or cohesive repairs relating to text meaning. Differences were significant for success of cohesive repair attempts and…

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…

Presents an evaluation of the Houghton Mifflin and Scott Foresman Reading Programs which reveals that stories in both of these series satisfy the requirements of a conventional story grammar. Suggests that such stories help children comprehend and remember the stories they process and serve as excellent models of narrative. (ARH)

Two linguistic microstructures (propositions and cohesive devices) were analyzed in story recalls by 11 primary and intermediate level hearing-impaired students. When stories were very simple, students generated mostly complete propositions, however as complexity increased, semantic errors resulted in fewer complete propositions. (Author/DB)

Nine junior high school students with learning disabilities received instruction in story grammar elements and character development. Over a two-month period, students significantly increased the amount they wrote and mildly to moderately increased the quality of the stories produced and the number of internal responses and plans of characters.…

An Athabaskan narrative, told by a village storyteller to two native students (one with language-learning disability and mild hearing loss) was studied. Analysis of prosodic and structural patterns revealed a spatially rather than temporally organized narrative. The assessment method was felt to be sensitive to interfaces between cultural…

Describes a model procedure for integrating direct instruction in story structure with reader response to literature in two settings: traditional storybook read-aloud sessions and nontraditional HyperCard computer sessions. (SR)

This paper reports on a study that attempts to encourage teachers to use a visual and verbal approach to storytelling as a method of critical reflection. It demonstrates and discusses how one teacher uses the visual images to comment critically, adding a playfully ironic dimension to a verbal perspective of everyday teaching activities. Many…

A study examined whether text structures were included in the "oral" videotaped retellings of a second grader with deafness across 28 texts. Improvements in the child's ability to include specific elements of text structures were documented over nine months. A 12-month increase in reading ability and narrative ability was also documented.…

Factors that may influence the picture-elicited narrative production of 4-year-old children were examined. Subjects were 70 children of 4 years of age who told narratives about two familiar events: baking cookies and going to the beach. Of the sample, 22 children in a description condition described each of 6 line drawings for each event. Another…