Analysis of Narrative Production Abilities in Lower School-Age Children

Shin, Soo Jean; Park, Eun Sook; Lee, Ki Hak; Pae, Soyeong

ORIGINAL ARTICLE

Commun Sci Disord. 2007;12(1): 16-31.

Soo Jean Shin^` , Eun Sook Park^` , Ki Hak Lee^` , and Soyeong Pae^`

신수진(Soo Jean Shin)| 박은숙(Eun Sook Park)| 이기학(Ki Hak Lee)| 배소영(Soyeong Pae)

ABSTRACT

This study examined the development of narrative production abilities with increasing grade in school age children.
Methods
Sixty elementary school children(grades 1 to 3) produced a narrative picture storybook, “Frog, Where are you?” without words. The content and syntax of the produced narratives were analyzed. For the analysis of content, story grammar was used. And for the analysis of syntax, the Mean Length of C-units by morphemes(MLC-m) and grammatical error score were used. It was determined whether differences in story grammar, MLC-m, and grammatical error score could be explained by differences in grade. Results &
Conclusion
Total score of story grammar was higher in groups. Thus, narrative production ability as judged by total score of story grammar increased in groups. MLC-m increased significantly from grades 1 to 3 whereas the MLC-m was significantly longer with increasing grade. Total score of grammatical error decreased with increasing age. Thus, we found two patterns: 1) narrative production ability as judged by total score of grammatical error increased with increasing age, and; 2) misuse of a postposition or ending and omission of main contents decreased with increasing grade. Overall, narrative syntactic development was based on two patterns.