The Study On The Narrative Development Of Young Chinese Children With Specific Language Impairment Aged 4-6

Researchers abroad have begun their studies on Children with Specific Language Impairment (hereinafter referred to as SLI children) since one and a half centuries ago. Studies on narrative language of SLI children have a history of two to three decades, with rich research findings. However, domestic studies on SLI children have just started. Studies on narrative of SLI children have received no attention till now.The present study aims to investigate the development of narrative language in SLI children aged from 4 to 6, from four dimensions--narrative structure, narrative evaluation, narrative temporality and atypical narrative. To this end, a number of data have been collected, including narrative corpus from 60 normal children ranging in age from 4-6 (20 children for each age group), a 20-month longitudinal narrative corpus from 3 Chinese children with SLI, a 20-month longitudinal narrative corpus from three normal children whose ages match physically with those three SLI children, together with interview recordings of their key family members. Given its predictive and descriptive goals, a combination of quantitative and qualitative methods has been employed in the present study.It is found in present study that:First, both SLI and normal children's ability on narrative structure are in rapid growth from the age of 4 to 6. But SLI children's ability on narrative structure is lower than that of their normal peers. The growth model study also shows that the development rate of SLI children's narrative structure lags behind their normal peers and there is no sign to catch up. Specifically, their lower competence lies in shorter narratives, incomplete narrative components and more atypical use of codas during narration. As with their normal peers, SLI children's narrative structure mainly includes descriptions on past events, durative descriptions of person, objects and places, together with some evaluation talk which is less rich and detailed than normal peers. The less frequent mention of past events and durative description with actions result from SLI children's difficulty in verb usage. This finding is consistent with earlier findings. What is new about this study is that Chinese children with SLI aged 4-6 have lower performance than their normal peers in evaluation talk, indirect speech, etc. However, this needs to be proved by researches of more samples and more cross-cultural researches.Second, in comparison with narrative structure ability, study on narrative evaluation reveals far lower narrative evaluation ability in Chinese SLI children aged 4-6 than their normal peers. Specifically, vocabulary and types that SLI children of different age groups adopt to express narrative evaluation haven't reached half of the normal children's. The total amount of evaluative words and types of evaluative devices of 6-year-old SLI children haven't reached the level of 4-year-old normal children. Additionally, the growth model study shows in comparison with their age-matched peers, SLI children reveal highly lower development rate in narrative evaluation and no sign of catching up normal children is seen. SLI children seldom refer to inner emotions and feelings in their narrative. They mainly use evaluative adjectives, negative, and vocabulary of degrees to express their ideas and views. Apart from these three types, normal children apply evaluative adverbials, evaluative verbs, etc. to express views and often refer to inner emotions and feelings in their narrative.Third, Chinese SLI children's ability on narrative temporality is also in rapid growth from the age of 4 to 6. The growth model study shows some of the selected SLI children show higher development rate than paired normal children and a trend of catching normal peers in the total amount of temporal words and some given narrative temporality devices. But the overall ability of narrative temporality in Chinese SLI children is lower than that of their normal peers. Less diversity of vocabulary and types to express temporality is witnessed. The total amount of temporal words that SLI children apply at different ages haven't reached one third of normal children's. The variety of temporal devices of 6-year-old SLI children corresponds with 4-year-old normal children. SLI children mainly employ sequencers, temporal conjunctions and simple conjunctions to convey narrative order. They haven't made use of cause-and-effect linking words until they're six years old while normal children apply them at four years old. Earlier studies indicate SLI children have difficulty in appropriate use of Inking words. The present study shows Chinese SLI children have no problem in that aspect. The differences are only found in the total number of temporal words and types of temporal devices between SLI children and age-matched normal peers.Fourth, study on atypical narrative shows that atypical narrative are both existent in SLI and normal children's narrative. But the proportion of atypical narrative of Chinese SLI children is three times that of normal peers and higher in every age group. Atypical narrative of SLI children is mainly shown as off-topic talk, inexplicit and disfluent narrative, while in normal children only as disfluency. The total amount of atypical narrative increases with age, but no significance in age is seen. SLI children's off-topic talk decreases with age, while inexplicit and disfluent narrative increase.It can be concluded from the present study that narrative structure, narrative evaluation and narrative temporality bear significant positive relation. Among these three factors, narrative structure and narrative temporality relate more closely to one another. Regression analysis also shows that the number of complete and explicit sentences and the total number of words remain the major factors that affect the quality of narrative structure in SLI children. The number of different words contributes to the quality of narrative evaluation. The number of complete and explicit sentences and maze words are key factors that affect SLI children's temporality.Finally, the implication of these results is discussed.