Development Of Narrative Skills And Intervention Effects For Chinese Children With Different Language Abilities Across Grades

As an important aspect of language skills,the narrative skill is of great significance for school performance and social skills of children.Thus,an increasing number of researchers have addressed the issue of the development of children’s narrative skills,which has become an important area of research.Analysis of extant literature on this topic indicates the current studies on children’s narrative skills are limited mainly in three aspects.First,in terms of participants in the research area,most of the studies focus on children speaking Indo-European languages.Less is devoted to Chinese-speaking children.The existent studies on Chinese-speaking children tend to characterize the developmental patterns of oral narrative skills of preschoolers and lower graders,ignoring the developmental patterns of school-age children;Moreover,few studies address oral narrative skills of children with specific language impairment(SLI).The occurrence rate of SLI among different countries is about 7%.They deserve attention from educators.Only a full understanding of the narrative features of SLI can we provide possible aid to these children.Second,in terms of research questions,most of the present studies highlight narrative skills at the macro-level(how a story is organized),ignoring the micro-level(language-internal features).Thirdly,in terms of research content,the effect of an intervention on narrative skills is underexplored.Studies on the intervention effect for normal and SLI children would not only have an insight into the possibility and validity of intervention,but also have a better understanding of the nature of narrative development.Accordingly,the present study collected data from Grades 3-6 primary schoolers.Three experiments were conducted,aiming to investigate narrative features among children across grades and with different language abilities(normal vs.SLI children)(Study 1),and the intervention validity on oral narrative skills(Study 2)and written narrative skills(Study 3)Study 1 mainly characterized the oral narrative skills of children in different grades and children with different language abilities.To compare the narrative features in-between grades,the samples(Grade 3:n = 50,Grade 4:n=38,Grade 5:n=50,Grade 6:n=50)were selected from the 802 participants.They were measured on narrative skills at the micro-and macro-aspect.A multivariate analysis of variance is conducted to analyze the oral narrative skills of different grades from the macro and micro levels.The results showed that children in Grade 5 and 6 made significant gains,producing more story grammar elements and complete plots at the macro-level,and more mental state words at the micro-level.To capture the features of oral narrative skills among children with different language abilities,children with SLI(n=29)and TD(typically developing)children(n=29)are selected.A multivariate analysis of variance on the oral narrative skills of the two groups from the macro and micro levels found children with SLI lagged behind TD children in story grammar and plot level at the macro level,and clause density,the total number of utterances,the total number of words,the number of different words,temporal conjunctions,and mental state words at the micro-level.Given the deficits of children with SLI in Study 1,Study 2 conducted an intervention on normal and SLI children,aiming to investigate the effectiveness of teaching intervention on children’s oral narrative skills.This study designed a narrative teaching intervention plan based on the construction-integration model of text comprehension(C-I model;Kintsch,2013).To measure the oral narrative skills,a peer-reviewed method was adopted in the intervention.To compare the effect of teaching intervention on the oral narrative skills of TD children,TD children in the experimental group(n=37)and TD in the control group(n=37)were compared,with TD children in the experimental group participating in six interventions.The intervention effect was investigated by comparing pre-and post-measures in peer assessement of oral narrative skills between the two groups with a mixed model analysis of variance.The results showed that TD children in the experimental group made a significant improvement in story grammar at the macro-level,and TD children in the control group do not.To compare the effect of teaching intervention on the oral narrative skills of children with different language abilities,children with SLI(n=22)and TD children(n=22)were compared.Both groups of children participated in six interventions.A mixed model analysis of variance showed that TD children in the experimental group made a significant improvement in story grammar at the macro-level and causal connectives at the micro-level.Besides,no significant effect of intervention frequency on these two groups was observed.Study 3 aimed to generalize the effect of teaching intervention to the written modality of narrative skills.To investigate the effects of the intervention on the written narrative skills of TD children,two groups were matched based on the subjects in Study 2:TD children in the experimental group(n=26)and TD children in the control group(n=26).The intervention effect was investigated by comparing pre-and post-measures in written narrative between the two groups with a mixed model analysis of variance.The results showed that TD children in the experimental group made a significant improvement in clause density at the micro-level than that of TD children in the control group,and no significant differences were observed in other narrative measures.To compare the effect of teaching intervention on the written narrative skills of children with different language abilities,children with SLI(n=16)and TD(n=19)children were compared.A mixed model analysis of variance showed that children with SLI and TD children in experimental groups showed greater gains in story grammar and plot level at the macro-level and mean length of T-unit,clause density,the total number of T-units,the total number of words,the number of different words,mental state words and functional words at the micro-level.However,no significant difference in teaching intervention on written narrative was observed between these two groups.Through the analysis and intervention on the narrative skills of Chinese children in Grades 3-6,this study reveals the development characteristics of narrative ability in the higher grades in primary school.The present findings provide rich information for a better understanding of the higher-level language and cognitive ability of Chinese children,and also shed light on the assessment of the narrative language skills of Chinese children with SLI.In addition,this study is among the first attempts which integrate a narrative teaching intervention program into the research on features of narrative skills.The present study also extends previous studies on the micro-and macro-levels of narrative skills in both the oral and written modality.The teaching intervention strategies are useful sources for narrative development for Chinese children in middle and higher grades in primary school,practically and theoretically.