| Studies with monolingual English speakers have demonstrated the significance of children's narrative development for the acquisition of literacy skills. This research has shown that children's ability to perform school narrative tasks may significantly predict children's early literacy skills (Gutierrez-Clellen, 2002), including English reading comprehension outcomes within and across languages in Spanish-speaking ELLs (Miller et al., 2006). This study investigated the effects of a story grammar intervention that used a Story Grammar Marker RTM and repeated story retells on the oral narrative skills of third and fourth grade ELLs with SLI. A single case multiple probe across participants design was used to examine the effects of the story grammar intervention on four dependent variables: narrative proficiency in oral narratives (primary dependent variable), narrative productivity, and syntactic complexity. Findings from the study suggest that the story grammar intervention had a positive effect on the narrative proficiency of ELLs with SLI. It did not, however, show an increase for narrative complexity nor for syntactic complexity measures. Implications for future research and for practice are provided. |
