Vol 28 No 1 (2009): .
Language
Story Re-tell Abilities in Preschoolers Development in Kannada speaking English Language Learners
Keywords
- Oral narratives,
- MLU,
- NDW,
- TTR,
- SALT software
How to Cite
Sarika Khurana, & Prema K.S. (1). Story Re-tell Abilities in Preschoolers Development in Kannada speaking English Language Learners. Journal of All India Institute of Speech and Hearing, 28(1), 103-114. Retrieved from http://203.129.241.91/jaiish/index.php/aiish/article/view/385
Abstract
Story retelling has been used to evaluate the oral narratives of preschool children. Assessment of oral language abilities in preschoolers is essential for identifying children at risk for reading difficulties in later grades. The purpose of the present study is to evaluate the development of story re-tell abilities in preschool children with native language Kannada studying in schools with English as the medium of instruction, in Mysore city. The subjects consisted of 30 participants in the age range of three to six years, enrolled in Pre-kindergarten, Lower Kindergarten and Upper Kindergarten. The children were narrated a story in English using a wordless picture book and asked to retell the story. Their narratives were audio recorded, transcribed, segmented into C-units and analyzed using the SALT software. The narrative measures employed to evaluate the expressive language were Number of English Words (NEW), Number of Kannada Words (NKW), Number of Proper Nouns (NPN), Mean Length of Utterance (MLU), Number of Different Words (NDW) and Type Token Ratio (TTR). Comprehension abilities were assessed using a Question-Answer Task (QAT). The results indicate that both expression and comprehension abilities show an upward developmental trend in preschoolers. Their narratives were dominated by Kannada utterances in Pre-Kindergarten but in Lower Kindergarten and Upper Kindergarten, their narratives showeddominance of English utterances. Measures such as MLU, NDW and TTR were not sensitive to the developmental changes in preschool narratives whereas measures such as NEW, NKW and NPN showed significant difference between groups. The results of the present study indicate that measures such as MLU, NDW and TTR should be usedwith caution while evaluating language samples with less than 50 bilingual utterances.
References
Benson, M.S. (1997). Psychological causation and goalbased episodes: Low income children’s emerging narrative skills. Early Childhood Research Quarterly, 12, 439-457.
Burns, M.S, Griffin, P., & Snow, C.E. (Eds.). (1999). Starting out right: A guide to promoting children's reading success. Washington, DC: National Academy Press.
Butler, K.G. (2000). From the editor. Topics in Language Disorders, 21, iv-v.
Cooper, P.J., Collins, R., & Saxby, M. (1992). The power of story. Melbourne: McMillan.
Craig, H., Washington, J., & Thompson-Porter, C. (1998). Average C-unit lengths in the discourse of African American children from low-income, urban homes. Journal of Speech, Language and Hearing Reasearch, 41, 433-444.
Crais, E.R., & Lorch N., (1994). Oral narratives in school-age children. Topics in Language Disorders, 14, 13-28.
Curenton, S.M. & Justice, L. (2004). African American and Caucasian preschoolers’ use of decontextualized language: Use of literate language features in oral narratives. Language, Speech, and Hearing Services in Schools, 35, 240-253.
Curenton, S.M. & LucasT.D. (2007). Assessing Young Children’s Oral Narrative Skills. The Story Pyramid Framework. In Khara L. Pence (Ed.), Assessment in Emergent Literacy. San Diego:Plural Publishing.
Dollaghan, C.A., Campbell, F.C., & Tomlin, R.T. (1990). Video Narration as a Language Sampling Context. Journal of Speech and Hearing Disorders, 55, 582-590.
Eisenberg, S., Fersko, T., & Lundgren, T. (2001). The use of MLU in identifying language impairment in preschool children: A review. American Journal of Speech Language Pathology, 10, 323-342.
Gazella, J., & Stockman, I (2003). Children’s story retelling under different modality and task conditions: Implications for standardizing language sampling procedures. American Journal of Speech-Language Pathology, 12, 61-72.
Glazer, S.M., & Burke, E.M. (1994). An Integrated Approach to Early Literacy. Boston: Allyn & Bacon.
Goffman, L., & Leonard, J. (2000). Growth of language skills in preschool children with specific language impairment: Implications for assessment and intervention. American Journal of Speech Language Pathology, 9, 151-161.
Gutierrez-Clellen, V.F. (2002). Narratives in two languages: Assessing Performance of Bilingual Children. Linguistics and Education, 13 (2), 175- 197.
Hewitt, L.E., Hammer, C. S., Yont, K.M., & Tomblin, B.(2004). Language Sampling for kindergarten children with and without SLI: mean length of utterance, IPSYN, and NDW. Journal of Communication Disorders, 38, 197-213.
Hirsh-Pasek, K., Kochanoff, A., Newcombe, N., & deVilliers, J. (2005). Using scientific knowledge to inform preschoolers: Making the case for “empirical validity.” SRCD Social Policy Report, 14(1), 3-19.
Hughes, D., McGillivray, L., & Schmidek, M. (1997). Guide to narrative languge: Procedures for assessment. Eau Claire, WI: Thinking Publications.
Hux, K., Morris-Friehe, M., & Sanger, D. (1993). Language Sampling practices: A survey of nine states. Language Speech and Hearing Services in Schools, 24 (1), 84-91.
Kadaravek, J.N., & Sulzby, E. (2000). Narrative production by children with and without specific language impairment: Oral narratives and emergent readings. Journal of Speech Language and Hearing Research, 43, 34-49.
Khurana, S., & Rao, Prema.K.S. (2008). Emergent Literacy Experiences at Home- A Sample Survey in Mysore City. Language in India, 8. Retrieved on October 4, 2008 from www.languageinindia.com.
Khurana, S., & Rao, Prema.K.S. (in press). Emergent Literacy Experiences in Classrooms- A Sample Survey in Mysore City.
Klee, T. (1992). Measuring children’s conversational language. In S. Warren & J.Reichle (Eds.), Causes and effects in communication and language intervention (pp. 315-330). Baltimore: MD: Paul H. Brookes Publishing.
Labov, W. (1972). Socio-linguistic patterns. Oxford, Blackwell.
Leadholm, B.J., & Miller, J.F. (1992). Language Sample Analysis: The Wisconsin guide. Madison, WI: Wisconsin Department of Public Education.
Liles, B. (1993). Narrative discourse in children with language disorders and children with normal language. A critical review. Journal of Speech and Hearing Research, 36, 868-882.
Loban, W. (1976). Language development kindergarten through age twelve. Urbana, II: National Council of Teachers of English.
Loeb, D.F., Kinsler, K., & Bookbinder, L. (2000). Current language sampling practices in preschools. Poster presentation at the Annual Convention of the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association, Washington, DC.
Lonigan, C. J. (2006). Development, assessment, and promotion of pre-literacy skills. Early Education and Development, 17, 91-114.
Lund, N.J & Dunchan, J.F. (1993). Assessing children’s language in naturalistic contexts. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall.
Mallan, K. (1991). Children as storytellers. Newtown, Sydney: PETA.
Mc Cabe, A. (1997b). Developmental and cross-cultural aspects of children’s narration. In M. Bamberg (ed.) Narrative Development 9pp. 137-174). London: Erlbaum.
McWhinney, B. (1995). The CHILDES project: Tools for analyzing talk (2nd ed.). Hillsdale,, NJ:Lawrence Erlbaum.
Miller, J.F., (1991).Research on Child Language Disorders: A decade of progress. Austin, TX. Pro-Ed.
Miller, J.F. (1987). A grammatical characterization oflanguage disorder. Proceedings of the First International Symposium of Specific Speech andLanguage Disorders in Children, London, England.
Miller, J.F., & Chapman, R.S. (1981). The relation between age and mean length of utterance in morphemes. Journal of Speech and Hearing Research, 24, 154-161.
Miller, J.F., & Chapman, R.S. (1993). Systematic Analysis of Language Transcripts. Madison, WI: Waisman Center.
Miller, J.F., Heilmann, J., Nockerts,A., Iglesias, A., Fabiano, L., & Francis, D.J. (2006). Oral Language and Reading in Bilingual Children. Learning Disability Research and Practice, 21(1),30-43.
O’Neill, D.K., Pearce, M.J., & Pick, J.L. (2004). Preschool children’s narratives and performance on Peabody Individualized Achievement Test-Revised: Evidence of a relation between earlynarrative and later mathematical ability. First Language, 42 (2), 149-183.
Owens, R.E. (1999). Language Disorders: A functional approach to assessment and intervention (3rd ed.). Boston, MA: Allyn & Bacon.
Owens, R.E., & Leonard, L. (2001). Lexical diversity in speech of normally developing and specific language impaired children. Poster Presentation at the Symposium for Research in Child Language Disorders, Madison, WI.
Patnaik, K., & Mohanty, A.K. (1984). Relationship between metalinguistic and cognitive development of bilingual and uniligual tribal children. Psycho-Lingua, Vol. 14, No. 1, pp 63-70.
Pearce, W.M., (2003). Does the choice of stimulus affect the complexity of children’s oral narratives? Advances in Speech and Language Pathology, 5,95-103.
Phillips, L. (1999). The role of storytelling in early literacy development. Retrieved October 2008 from http://www.australianstorytelling.org.au/txt/childhd.php
Richards, B., & Malvern, D.D. (1997). Quantifying lexical diversity in the study of language development. Reading, UK: University of Reading, New Bulmershe Papers.
Schelletter, C., & Parke, T. (2008). Using Story Re-tell in Bilingual Assessment.Academic Exchange Quarterly, 8(3). Retrieved March 2009 from http://www.rapidintellect.com/AEQwe/5jan2768j5.htm.
Shapiro, L.R., & Hudson, J.A. (1991). Tell me a make believe story. Coherence and cohesion in young children’s picture elicited narratives. Developmental Psychology, 27, 960-974.
Sreedevi, S., & Shymala, K.C. (2005). Narrative skills in monolinguals and bilingual children: An exploratory study. Student Research at AIISH,Mysore: Articles based on dissertation one at AIISH, Part-B, Vol. 3, 2004-2005.
Shrubshall, P. (1997). Narrative, Argument and Literacy: A Comparative Study of the Narrative Discourse Development of Monolingual and Bilingual 5-10-Year-Old Learners. Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development, 1, vol.18 (5), 402-421.
Singhi, P., Kumar, M., Malhi, P., & Kumar, R. (2007). Utility of the WHO 10 questions screen for disability detection: The north Indian Experience. Journal of Tropical Paediatrics, 53(6), 383-387.
Snow, C., Burns, S. & Griffin, P. (1998). Preventing reading difficulties in young children. Washington DC: National Academy Press.
Storch, S., & Whitehurst, G. (2002). Oral language and code related precursors to reading: Evidence from a longitudinal structural model. Developmental Psychology, 38, 934-947.
Strong, C.J, & Shaver, J.P. (1991). Stability of cohesion in spoken narratives of language- impaired and normally developing school-age children. Journalof Speech and Hearing Research, 34, 95-111.
Teale, W.H., & Sulzby, E. (1986). Emergent literacy as a perspective for examining how young children become writers and readers. In W.H. Teale & E. Sulzby (Eds.) Emergent literacy: Writing and reading (pp 7-27). Norword, NJ: Ablex.
Watkins, R., Kelly, D., Harbers, H., Hollis, W. (1995). Measuring children’s lexical diversity: Differentiating typical and impaired language learners. Journal of speech and Hearing Research, 38, 1349-1355.
Whitehurst, G.J., & Lonigan, C.J. (1998). Child development and emergent literacy. Child Development, 69, 848-872.
Burns, M.S, Griffin, P., & Snow, C.E. (Eds.). (1999). Starting out right: A guide to promoting children's reading success. Washington, DC: National Academy Press.
Butler, K.G. (2000). From the editor. Topics in Language Disorders, 21, iv-v.
Cooper, P.J., Collins, R., & Saxby, M. (1992). The power of story. Melbourne: McMillan.
Craig, H., Washington, J., & Thompson-Porter, C. (1998). Average C-unit lengths in the discourse of African American children from low-income, urban homes. Journal of Speech, Language and Hearing Reasearch, 41, 433-444.
Crais, E.R., & Lorch N., (1994). Oral narratives in school-age children. Topics in Language Disorders, 14, 13-28.
Curenton, S.M. & Justice, L. (2004). African American and Caucasian preschoolers’ use of decontextualized language: Use of literate language features in oral narratives. Language, Speech, and Hearing Services in Schools, 35, 240-253.
Curenton, S.M. & LucasT.D. (2007). Assessing Young Children’s Oral Narrative Skills. The Story Pyramid Framework. In Khara L. Pence (Ed.), Assessment in Emergent Literacy. San Diego:Plural Publishing.
Dollaghan, C.A., Campbell, F.C., & Tomlin, R.T. (1990). Video Narration as a Language Sampling Context. Journal of Speech and Hearing Disorders, 55, 582-590.
Eisenberg, S., Fersko, T., & Lundgren, T. (2001). The use of MLU in identifying language impairment in preschool children: A review. American Journal of Speech Language Pathology, 10, 323-342.
Gazella, J., & Stockman, I (2003). Children’s story retelling under different modality and task conditions: Implications for standardizing language sampling procedures. American Journal of Speech-Language Pathology, 12, 61-72.
Glazer, S.M., & Burke, E.M. (1994). An Integrated Approach to Early Literacy. Boston: Allyn & Bacon.
Goffman, L., & Leonard, J. (2000). Growth of language skills in preschool children with specific language impairment: Implications for assessment and intervention. American Journal of Speech Language Pathology, 9, 151-161.
Gutierrez-Clellen, V.F. (2002). Narratives in two languages: Assessing Performance of Bilingual Children. Linguistics and Education, 13 (2), 175- 197.
Hewitt, L.E., Hammer, C. S., Yont, K.M., & Tomblin, B.(2004). Language Sampling for kindergarten children with and without SLI: mean length of utterance, IPSYN, and NDW. Journal of Communication Disorders, 38, 197-213.
Hirsh-Pasek, K., Kochanoff, A., Newcombe, N., & deVilliers, J. (2005). Using scientific knowledge to inform preschoolers: Making the case for “empirical validity.” SRCD Social Policy Report, 14(1), 3-19.
Hughes, D., McGillivray, L., & Schmidek, M. (1997). Guide to narrative languge: Procedures for assessment. Eau Claire, WI: Thinking Publications.
Hux, K., Morris-Friehe, M., & Sanger, D. (1993). Language Sampling practices: A survey of nine states. Language Speech and Hearing Services in Schools, 24 (1), 84-91.
Kadaravek, J.N., & Sulzby, E. (2000). Narrative production by children with and without specific language impairment: Oral narratives and emergent readings. Journal of Speech Language and Hearing Research, 43, 34-49.
Khurana, S., & Rao, Prema.K.S. (2008). Emergent Literacy Experiences at Home- A Sample Survey in Mysore City. Language in India, 8. Retrieved on October 4, 2008 from www.languageinindia.com.
Khurana, S., & Rao, Prema.K.S. (in press). Emergent Literacy Experiences in Classrooms- A Sample Survey in Mysore City.
Klee, T. (1992). Measuring children’s conversational language. In S. Warren & J.Reichle (Eds.), Causes and effects in communication and language intervention (pp. 315-330). Baltimore: MD: Paul H. Brookes Publishing.
Labov, W. (1972). Socio-linguistic patterns. Oxford, Blackwell.
Leadholm, B.J., & Miller, J.F. (1992). Language Sample Analysis: The Wisconsin guide. Madison, WI: Wisconsin Department of Public Education.
Liles, B. (1993). Narrative discourse in children with language disorders and children with normal language. A critical review. Journal of Speech and Hearing Research, 36, 868-882.
Loban, W. (1976). Language development kindergarten through age twelve. Urbana, II: National Council of Teachers of English.
Loeb, D.F., Kinsler, K., & Bookbinder, L. (2000). Current language sampling practices in preschools. Poster presentation at the Annual Convention of the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association, Washington, DC.
Lonigan, C. J. (2006). Development, assessment, and promotion of pre-literacy skills. Early Education and Development, 17, 91-114.
Lund, N.J & Dunchan, J.F. (1993). Assessing children’s language in naturalistic contexts. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall.
Mallan, K. (1991). Children as storytellers. Newtown, Sydney: PETA.
Mc Cabe, A. (1997b). Developmental and cross-cultural aspects of children’s narration. In M. Bamberg (ed.) Narrative Development 9pp. 137-174). London: Erlbaum.
McWhinney, B. (1995). The CHILDES project: Tools for analyzing talk (2nd ed.). Hillsdale,, NJ:Lawrence Erlbaum.
Miller, J.F., (1991).Research on Child Language Disorders: A decade of progress. Austin, TX. Pro-Ed.
Miller, J.F. (1987). A grammatical characterization oflanguage disorder. Proceedings of the First International Symposium of Specific Speech andLanguage Disorders in Children, London, England.
Miller, J.F., & Chapman, R.S. (1981). The relation between age and mean length of utterance in morphemes. Journal of Speech and Hearing Research, 24, 154-161.
Miller, J.F., & Chapman, R.S. (1993). Systematic Analysis of Language Transcripts. Madison, WI: Waisman Center.
Miller, J.F., Heilmann, J., Nockerts,A., Iglesias, A., Fabiano, L., & Francis, D.J. (2006). Oral Language and Reading in Bilingual Children. Learning Disability Research and Practice, 21(1),30-43.
O’Neill, D.K., Pearce, M.J., & Pick, J.L. (2004). Preschool children’s narratives and performance on Peabody Individualized Achievement Test-Revised: Evidence of a relation between earlynarrative and later mathematical ability. First Language, 42 (2), 149-183.
Owens, R.E. (1999). Language Disorders: A functional approach to assessment and intervention (3rd ed.). Boston, MA: Allyn & Bacon.
Owens, R.E., & Leonard, L. (2001). Lexical diversity in speech of normally developing and specific language impaired children. Poster Presentation at the Symposium for Research in Child Language Disorders, Madison, WI.
Patnaik, K., & Mohanty, A.K. (1984). Relationship between metalinguistic and cognitive development of bilingual and uniligual tribal children. Psycho-Lingua, Vol. 14, No. 1, pp 63-70.
Pearce, W.M., (2003). Does the choice of stimulus affect the complexity of children’s oral narratives? Advances in Speech and Language Pathology, 5,95-103.
Phillips, L. (1999). The role of storytelling in early literacy development. Retrieved October 2008 from http://www.australianstorytelling.org.au/txt/childhd.php
Richards, B., & Malvern, D.D. (1997). Quantifying lexical diversity in the study of language development. Reading, UK: University of Reading, New Bulmershe Papers.
Schelletter, C., & Parke, T. (2008). Using Story Re-tell in Bilingual Assessment.Academic Exchange Quarterly, 8(3). Retrieved March 2009 from http://www.rapidintellect.com/AEQwe/5jan2768j5.htm.
Shapiro, L.R., & Hudson, J.A. (1991). Tell me a make believe story. Coherence and cohesion in young children’s picture elicited narratives. Developmental Psychology, 27, 960-974.
Sreedevi, S., & Shymala, K.C. (2005). Narrative skills in monolinguals and bilingual children: An exploratory study. Student Research at AIISH,Mysore: Articles based on dissertation one at AIISH, Part-B, Vol. 3, 2004-2005.
Shrubshall, P. (1997). Narrative, Argument and Literacy: A Comparative Study of the Narrative Discourse Development of Monolingual and Bilingual 5-10-Year-Old Learners. Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development, 1, vol.18 (5), 402-421.
Singhi, P., Kumar, M., Malhi, P., & Kumar, R. (2007). Utility of the WHO 10 questions screen for disability detection: The north Indian Experience. Journal of Tropical Paediatrics, 53(6), 383-387.
Snow, C., Burns, S. & Griffin, P. (1998). Preventing reading difficulties in young children. Washington DC: National Academy Press.
Storch, S., & Whitehurst, G. (2002). Oral language and code related precursors to reading: Evidence from a longitudinal structural model. Developmental Psychology, 38, 934-947.
Strong, C.J, & Shaver, J.P. (1991). Stability of cohesion in spoken narratives of language- impaired and normally developing school-age children. Journalof Speech and Hearing Research, 34, 95-111.
Teale, W.H., & Sulzby, E. (1986). Emergent literacy as a perspective for examining how young children become writers and readers. In W.H. Teale & E. Sulzby (Eds.) Emergent literacy: Writing and reading (pp 7-27). Norword, NJ: Ablex.
Watkins, R., Kelly, D., Harbers, H., Hollis, W. (1995). Measuring children’s lexical diversity: Differentiating typical and impaired language learners. Journal of speech and Hearing Research, 38, 1349-1355.
Whitehurst, G.J., & Lonigan, C.J. (1998). Child development and emergent literacy. Child Development, 69, 848-872.