Narrative Abilities in SLI Children Challenges to Language Acquisition: Bilingualism and Language Impairment Dr. Sharon Armon-Lotem Bar Ilan University

The Acquisition of Narrative Abilities Recommended Reading: Berman, R. A Form and function in the development of narrative abilities. In D. I. Slobin, J. Gerhardt, A. Kyratziz, and J. Guo (eds.), Social interaction, social context, and language: Essays in honor of Susan Arvin-Tripp. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.

Three types of knowledge Linguistic knowledge Textual knowledge Narrative knowledge

Linguistic knowledge How to use the language within the sentence:  Morphology  Syntax  Semantics

Textual knowledge How to build the discourse?  Semantic relations between the different sentences (contrast, entailment, induction)  The relations of these sentences to the discourse topic.  Cohesion between the different sentences by referencing, ellipsis, conjunctures, repetitions, etc.

Narrative knowledge What makes the narrative a unique genre:  Description of an event  Temporality – sequencing events  Causality – one event caused the other  Narrative structure – Initiating event,, attempt to solve the problem, result – coda (the minimal story)

The Minimal Story The use of the minimal story by age (in percentage)

The Raven and the Fox

Four versions of the story ר: פעם אחת היה עורב שרצה לאכול את הדגים שעל שולחן אוכל קטן שהיה באמצע היער. ואז, אחרי שהוא סיים לאכול הוא עף אל העץ. ואז בא השועל ורצה לטרוף את העורב עם העצם של הדג. העורב רצה לפרוס כנפיים ופתאום נפל לו העצם. השועל חטף את העצם של העורב ואז העורב חטף לו אותה בחזרה ועף. י: עורב מצא דג על שולחן. הוא לקח אותו עם מקורו ועמד על העץ. הוא אכל את הדג עד שנשאר רק השלד. הגיע שועל והיה רעב ורצה לאכול את הציפור. ואז נפל לציפור שלד הדג והשועל לקח אותו על מנת שהעורב ינסה לקחת את השלד חזרה והוא יתפוס את העורב. העורב לקח את השלד מהשועל והשועל רדף אחרי העורב. ג: בחצר עמד שולחן ועליו דג. פתע פתאום, צלל לו עורב מן השמים ולקח את הדג והתיישב עמו על ענף. בא שועל רעב מאוד וניסה לקפוץ ולתפוס את העורב. פתאום נפל מפי העורב הדג. השועל תפס אותו וברח. מיד רדף אחריו העורב והצליח לתפוס את הדג ולברוח עימו. א: יום אחד טס לו עורב אחד בשמים וראה למטה שולחן ועליו מונח דג. צלל העורב אל הדג תפס אותו בפיו ועף איתו אל העץ. באותו זמן, עבר שועל למרגלות העץ. השועל היה רעב מאוד והחליט להשיג את הדג שבפי העורב. "עורב עורב" קרא השועל "ספר לי היכן מצאת דג כזה טעים". העורב שרצה לענות פתח את פיו והדג צנח לו הישר אל השועל שלמטה. השועל לא המתין רבות, טפס את הדג בפיו והחל לרוץ איתו. העורב המרוגז שהבין שהשועל שיטה בו צלל אל השועל הבורח ודקר אותו בחוזקה במקורו. השועל שהופתע מעוצמת הדקירה שמט את הדג והעורב תפס את הדג במקורו והתעופף לו לשמים.

Adults

3 years old

5 years old

9 years old

Van Der Lely H Narrative discourse in Grammatical specific language impaired children: a modular language deficit? Subjects  12 Grammatical specific language impaired (SLI) children (aged 10;2 to 13;11).  36 language ability controls (aged 6;4 to 9;8). Task - Frog story

Aim The study investigates the use of referential expressions (e.g. pronouns) in a narrative discourse. Previous investigations indicate that Grammatical SLI children have a deficit with dependent structural relationships (RDDR). Grammatical SLI children's RDDR appears to be a modular language deficit. To test this claim, linguistic representations of dependent structural relationships which are not part of the modular language system are investigated: The SLI children's pattern of referential expressions was compared with TLDs

Findings An episode was defined as a sequence of actions or events concerning the same character, where the character remains in focus position.

Conclusions Grammatical SLI children have relatively mature linguistic development in the use of referential expressions to produce a cohesive, structured narrative discourse. The view of the organization of the mind in which a modular language system can be differentially impaired from aspects of language which rely on the central system can most easily account for the data. The data support the hypothesized modular nature of Grammatical SLI children's underlying linguistic deficit

Guttierez-Clellen, V.F Narratives in Two Languages: Assessing Performance of Bilingual Children. Linguistics and Education, 13, 2, SUSIE 27/12

Narrative Abilities in Children with SLI Wagner, C. R., Sahlén, B. and U. Nettelbladt What’s the story? Narration and comprehension in Swedish preschool children with language impairment. Child Language Teaching and Therapy, 15(2), pp

Research Questions (p. 117) 1) “Is it possible to investigate narratives and document narrative problems in Swedish 5 year olds with language impairment?” 2) “Is there a relationship between narrative comprehension, productivity (amount of words) and narrative organization in this group of children?”

Method Subjects  28 children (4;11-5;9) with expressive problems Materials  Story retelling (a fable)  Story generation (with pictures)

Analysis (p.120) Narrative level analysis: heaps, sequences, primitive narrative, unfocused chains, focused chains or narrative. (Appelbee, 1978). Story grammar units: setting, initiating event, response state, response plan, attempt, consequence and resolution/reaction. (Stein and Glenn, 1979). Extended analysis of content (‘relevance’). Comprehension of content questions Total number of words

Results

(24%) (74%) (27%) (81%)

LI-NL (from Nilsson & Vikerson 1998) comparison Story GrammarTN of words LINLLINL Retelling Generation

Relationship between story grammar production, comprehension and total number of words (p.124) Retelling: a correlation between story grammar scores and the scores on total number of content questions (r = 0.60, p < 0.001) Generating (frog stories):  no correlation between story grammar scores and scores on content questions (p > 0.05).  a correlation between story grammar scores and number of words (p < 0.001)

Conclusion (p ) narrative skills are not age appropriate good content comprehension is a prerequisite for good retelling tapping implicit information were more difficult than tapping explicit information Number of words does not reflect the quality of the narration Narration is extremely effortful and demands support from the examiner

Fiestas, C.E. & Peña, E.D Narrative Discourse in Bilingual Children: Language and Task Effects. Language, Speech, and Hearing Services in Schools, 35, 155–168. HALA 3/1 Graybeal, C Memory for stories in language impaired children. Applied Psycholinguistics 2, SARIT 3/1 Miranda, A., McCabe, A., and Bliss, L. (1998) Jumping Around and Leaving Things Out: A Profile of the Narrative Abilities of Children with Specific Language Impairment. Applied Psycholinguistics 19, 4, /1 INBAL