Measures of Language Development in Fictional Narratives of Latino Children.

Document Type

Article

Journal/Book Title/Conference

Language, Speech, and Hearing Services in Schools

Volume

34

Issue

4

Publication Date

2003

First Page

332

Last Page

342

Abstract

Purpose: This preliminary study was designed to determine whethercommonly used measures of language productivity, sentence organization,and story structure were sensitive to developmental differencesin narratives produced by Latino preschool children from a low-socioeconomicstatus (SES) community.

Method: Twenty-four children, dividedequally into younger and older groups, produced oral narrativesthat corresponded with the wordless picture book, Frog, WhereAre You? (Mayer, 1969). Their narratives were analyzed for productivity(total number of words, total number of different words), sentenceorganization (number of utterances, mean length of C unit inwords, and percentage of grammatically acceptable utterances),and story structure (complete and incomplete narrative episodes).

Results:The length of children's narratives did not differ significantlyby age. However, older Latino children produced stories thatcontained longer sentences, a higher proportion of grammaticallyacceptable sentences, and more complete episodes than did youngerchildren.

Clinical Implications: These results suggest thatmeasures of language productivity (such as total number of wordsand number of different words) that reflect developmental differencesin monolingual mainstream preschoolers may not be sensitiveindicators of narrative language development in young Latinochildren from low-SES environments. However, measures of syntacticaccuracy and episodic structure are likely to be valid indicatorsof developmental changes in these children's narrative abilities.

Link to Full Text

Share

COinS