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Story Language

THE FLORIDA STATE UNIVERSITY

COLLEGE OF COMMUNICATION AND INFORMATION

STORY LANGUAGE: MACROSTRUCTURE DEVELOPMENT IN PRESCHOOL CHILDREN

By

KELLY SMITH

A Thesis submitted to the

School of Communication Science and Disorders

in partial fulfillment of the requirements for graduation with

Honors in the Major

Degree Awarded:

Spring, 2017

The members of the Defense Committee approve the thesis of Kelly Smith defended on April 7, 2017.

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Dr. Carla Wood, PhD.

Thesis Director

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Albert Damelio, M.Ed.

Outside Committee Member

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Dr. Erin Ingvalson, PhD.

Committee Member

Abstract

This project involved investigateding how macrostructure story language use varies among 3-to-5- year-old preschool children when told to retell the story “Billy Bear & the Balloon”. The goal was to see what macrostructure elements children this age use in their story retellings, and furthermore, at what frequency they use them. This was done by having the participants each watch the short movie “Billy Bear & the Balloon”, then retell the story while the clinician collected their language sample using a simple recording device. The language samples were then transcribed and coded for each macrostructure element being investigated. Upon examination of their coded language samples, it became clear that there is a potential relationship between both story language use and age, and story language use and gender. This research highlights the importance of awareness of story language use norms, particularly as dependent on both age and gender, as deviation from the norm could indicate a potential language impairment that needs to be addressed in clinical therapy.

Keywords: story language, macrostructure, preschool, story retelling, gender, early childhood, language development

STORY LANGUAGE: MACROSTRUCTURE DEVELOPMENT IN PRESCHOOL CHILDREN

Introduction

Narratives, as defined by Boudreau and Chapman (2000), are written and/or oral accounts of a series of events, presented through that of fictional stories, scripts, or personal events. All children possess the ability to tell both fictional (Gerrig, Berman & Slobin, 1995) and personal event narratives (Bliss & McCabe, 2008) to an audience. When children can tell stories with control over macrostructural elements of language (the narrative structure of a story), they demonstrate important language growth and development milestones. The use of spoken narration is an important language development milestone for children, because it further shows a child’s ability to comprehend, analyze, organize, and produce language appropriately for their his or her age (Champion, Seymour, & Camarata, 1995).

As past research has shown, both personal and fictional narratives comprise a large part of the spontaneous discourse produced by typical-developing children (Westerveld, Gillon, & Boyd, 2012). Narrative storytelling in general is a complex use of language, because it requires a certain level of narrative competence from the speaker, along with the ability to mentally organize the account or recount of the past experience before producing the narrative itself, all while using appropriate macrostructure elements (Bliss & McCabe, 2012). While telling a story, speakers are also tasked with the ability to stay on track with the organizational framework of a narrative, and to also be mindful of the reaction of their audience in terms of whether their attention is being kept or not (Hughes, 2001).

What is the Macrostructure of Story Language?

Macrostructure story language can be defined as the language used to move the listener through the events of the story from the beginning, when the characters and the setting of the story are first introduced, through the plot of the story to the end where the resolution occurs (Hughes, McGillivray & Schmidek, 2009). Components of story language macrostructure include: the characters (C), the setting (S), episodes—initiating event (IE), plot (PL), attempt (A), consequence (K), reaction (R)—and an ending (E). Macrostructure use develops with age, becoming more and more complex over time. For example, at around 4-6 years of age, children should be using IE, A, and C episodes, along with being able to provide a setting and an ending to their story (Hoffman, 2009). With age, children learn to add and develop more episodes into their stories to make them more complex and in depth (McCabe & Rollins, 1994).

Narrative Language Influencing Factors

Past research states that there are a variety of different factors that can influence a child’s narrative language. Two factors that are particularly relevant to this research project are that of age and gender. In a past study held by of Hudson and Shapiro (1991), it was found that, as children develop and age, they start to include a greater number of macrostructural elements in their narratives, making their stories increasingly complex. This study also found that children in preschool through third grade knew to provide their listeners with necessary character and setting information, so as to immediately orient their listeners to the story at hand. Similarly, other studies have shown developmental differences in narratives by age. Pre-school-aged children tend to combine events in their narrations more than younger children, but may narrate out of sequence or without acknowledging characters’ goals (McCabe & Rollins, 1994).

Gender can also have an influence on a child’s narrative language development. This particular developmental factor has been researched extensively with the overall conclusion being that female children have an accelerated ability in terms of language acquisition and development. Studies have found that infant girls, on average, produce their first pointing gestures (a precursor to spoken language) earlier than boys (Butterworth & Morissette, 1996). Furthermore, girls not only produce their first words (Maccoby, 1966) and first sentences (Ramer, 1976) at a younger age than boys, but they also have larger vocabularies (Huttenlocher, Haight, Bryk, Seltzer, & Lyons, 1991) and use a greater amount of different sentence structure types than boys of the same age (Ramer, 1976).

In a research study performed on five boys and five girls aged 4-5 years old, researchers found 30% more of the gene FOX2P, one of the primary genes responsible for the production of speech, in the female children than the male children (Bowers, Perez-Pouchoulen, Edwards, & McCarthy, 2013). However, this study has not been without criticism, as other professionals have claimed that a study of such a small sample size cannot be relied upon to generalize the answer to gender differences in language. At this point in time, there is no single, clear indicator as to why boys and girls differ in language development. It could be due to genetic differences like that of FOX2P, hormone balance differences, socialization, or even a combination of many different factors.

The Importance of Macrostructure Use, Both Developmentally and Academically

Developmentally speaking, use of proper macrostructural elements in story language helps to distinguish children with language impairments from their typically developing peers (Allen, Ukrainetz, Carswell, 2012). If a child is not using the proper amount of macrostructural elements while telling or retelling a story, when most of his or her peers are, it could be indicative of a variety of developmental issues. For example, it could mean that the child is not comprehending the original story, and so has trouble retelling the story to a listener. Poor storytelling skills are also signs of a social pragmatic language impairment. According to the 2013 Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (5th Edition), one of the diagnostic criteria for a social pragmatic communication disorder is that of difficulty in storytelling (American Psychiatric Association). Narrative language, particularly narrative retelling, helps to bridge oral and written language, and is important in overall reading and writing skill development for young children (Snow, Burns, & Griffin, 1998). If a child has poor discourse and narrative language skills, he or she is at high risk for learning and literacy difficulties later on in development if left without treatment or additional help (McCabe & Rollins, 1994).

In terms of academics, narration has practical significance for school-age children, due to Common Core State Standards. These standards test children’s academic and mental development in school on a yearly basis, requiring all children to meet benchmark milestones depending on their age and grade. Florida is one of the states to have adopted this policy, meaning all of the children observed during this research project are held to the same state-mandated developmental standards. Narration is often included in these state benchmarks. For example, by second grade, Common Core State Standards requires children to be able to tell or retell a story with facts and relevant details using proper, coherent sentences (National

Governors Association Center for Best Practices & Council of Chief State School Officers, 2010). Furthermore, it has been found in past research that narrative telling is one of the best predictors of future academic success, due to the fact that storytelling requires a number of higher-level language and cognitive skills (Bishop & Edmundson, 1987).

Why Do We Use Language Samples?

In this research project, and in past research done by professionals in the field, language samples have been used to better evaluate a client’s—no matter their his age—speech abilities. This type of evaluation usually occurs in informal research assessment environments, in which the therapist or researcher records what the client says or how he behaves (Hodgson, 2011). The researcher will often record and transcribe these language samples during activities like interviews or play based-assessments, in which the client is meant to act as natural as possible. Language samples can provide a great deal of very detailed information on a client’s language abilities. For example, it can show the researcher specific language areas, like syntax, morphology, phonology, semantics, and pragmatics, that the client is or is not using. These samples can be coded to better see, and count, how many cases of each area of language the client uses in their his natural speech (Hodgson, 2011). In the case of this experiment, the language samples will be collected, coded, and then counted to get a better visual representation of what types of, and how many, macrostructures pre-k students are using in their narrative speech. This will give us an idea of how well-developed the students’ narrative languages are for their age.

Purpose of Study

The purpose of this study was to examine and describe the use of macrostructure language components in narrative story retelling by 3-to-5- year-old preschool children within the southeast region of the United States. The primary goal of the study was to determine what different types of macrostructural components 3-to-5- year-old children use, and to what degree of frequency. It is hypothesized that macrostructure use variety and frequency will increase with age.

Aims of this Research Project

This research project aims to examine and describe the macrostructural elements used in story retelling by preschool children in a number of schools throughout the southeast region of the United States. Specific questions included:

1.  What, and how many different, macrostructures are the preschool children using in their story retellings?

2.  If macrostructure use varies between among the examined children, what could be the potential reason(s) or factor(s)? Specifically, do narrative skills differ by gender and/or age?

Methods

The purpose of this study was to examine and describe the use of macrostructure language components in narrative story retelling by preschool children within the southeast region of the United States. Furthermore, the participant group containing children aged 3-to-5 5-years-old were compared to one another as a whole, by gender, and by age. The participants of this study were randomly sampled at a variety of preschools throughout the southeast region of the country.

Participants

Thirty-seven children participated in this study, ranging in age from 3- years to- 5- years- old. Some of the subjects participants may have had language impairments and/or underdeveloped language skills. These factors were not controlled for during the study due to their high occurrence in their overall population (Quick Statistics, 2016). These conditions are likely to influence expressive language outcomes and present more generalizable productions of speech (General Information, 2017). The participants came from a variety of early learning environments in their communities. Each of the participants were was found through a larger grant funded project. Language samples were taken from children of all genders, races, ethnicities, and socioeconomic statuses.

Assessment Instrument and Administration Videos

The participants of this research project were shown a short movie chosen to elicit a narrative from the child. For this study, the short movie “Billy Bear & the Balloon” was shown to each participating child. “Billy Bear & the Balloon” tells the story of Billy who, while walking through the park with his friend Penguin, gets distracted by a hot air balloon, crashing into a trashcan as a result. In doing so, Billy accidentally drops his ice cream cone on his friend, upsetting him and causing him to lose his balloon. In order to rectify the situation, Billy tries repeatedly to use balloons he bought in order to fly his makeshift hot air balloon made with a trashcan into the sky in order to catch the lost balloon. Billy is unsuccessful, until he finally uses a very big balloon to achieve lift off. This short movie was two minutes and thirty-five seconds long.

Language Sampling

Language samples from each of the participants were taken using a digital recording device. Participants were asked to watch the movie in its entirety, and then retell the story they had just watched to the examiner. It is was this retelling that is was recorded for further macrostructure usage analysis. Along with the language sample, the child’s birthday and gender were also recorded. In order to maintain confidentiality, the child was also assigned a unique ID number for their personal file.

After all samples are were collected from the participants, each sample is was transcribed by the researcher. In order for the sample to be an accurate portrayal of the child’s language use, the sample is was transcribed as the child tells told the story, including grammar mistakes and improper pronunciation of words. Worth noting is that, if a student unnecessarily repeated a portion of the story that did not actually occur multiple times in the movie, the student was not given credit for those repetitions in the language transcription.

Coding

The coding process of this research project involved inputting the transcribed samples into the SALT (Systematic Analysis of Language Transcripts) program for coding of the macrostructure elements used in the participants’ utterances. This program utilized a previously created code to label the transcriptions for further analysis by the researcher. The codes used for this project comprised of: