Oral Narrative - Speech & Language Development Australia

SCHOOL SUPPORT SERVICES Participant Handouts

Oral Narrative

• Develop an understanding of the sequence of oral narrative development.

• Highlight the language components involved in producing an oral narrative.

• Discuss the difficulties students with Developmental Language Disorder (DLD) experience when producing an oral narrative.

• Provide practical strategies to help support oral narrative skills in the classroom.

• An oral narrative is defined as the telling or retelling of real- life/personal experiences or fictional events.

• Early interactions between children and adults allow for story telling skills to begin at an early age.

• In these early stages children will tell stories by recounting personal experiences.

• Increased exposure to storytelling in the home environment can positively influence a child’s narrative skills.

• Parents who took the time to listen and extend upon their children’s stories resulted in better story telling skills.

• Consistently switching topics and over correcting often saw children withdraw from wanting to share stories with their parents.


• A child’s narrative development from the ages of 2-6 years can be represented by five key developmental stages.

• Stage 1: Heaps Stage (develops approx. 2 years of age).

• Collection of unrelated ideas

• Repetitive sentence structures with few linking words

• Present progressive tense (i.e., -ing)

• Stage 2: Sequence Stage (develops approx. 2-3yrs)

• A sequence that contains a character or setting.

• Contain more specific pronouns for characters.

• Conjunctions only used to join events in order.

• Stage 3: Primitive Stage (develops approx. 3-4yrs)

• Follow a logical time and order.

• Children begin to demonstrate an understanding of “time” and “cause-effect”.

• More detail added to describe character’s emotions/feelings.


• Stage 4: Unfocused Chain (develops approx. 4-5yrs)

o No central character. o Events follow a logical sequence or

with a cause-effect relationship. o The conjunctions “but” and

“because” may be used.

• Stage 4: Focused Chain (develops approx. 5yrs)

o Contain a central character and follow a logical sequence of events.

o Sequences take the form of “adventures”.

o Often stories will end with a problem therefore the listener is asked to interpret the ending.

• Stage 5: True Narrative (develops approx. 6 years).

• A well-formed story which includes a logical plot based on a central theme.

• The sequence of events builds to a problem before finally providing a resolution.

• Dialogue is often included for characters.

• Oral narrative ability can be broken down into two main modalities- comprehension and production.

• Children will need to have a good understanding of a narrative’s structure before they can then produce a spoken narrative.


• An oral narrative can be broken into macrostructure & microstructure

• Macrostructure is the overall organisation and coherence of a spoken narrative

• Macrostructure can be broken down into episodic structure and story grammar.

• Story grammar refers to specific sequenced components of the narrative.

• To complete a true fictional narrative a child must provide a story with a specific sequence.

• The story setting- This should include information relating to the time, characters and place.

• Initiating event- Multiple events can take place. Events should lead to a problem.

• Internal response- Responses made by characters in relation to the problem.

• Plan- A plan to resolve the problem.

• Attempt- Events which lead to a solution.

• Consequence- The outcome of the solution.


• Reaction- The resolution.

• Ending- The final conclusion to the story.

• An episode is the inclusion of components from the initiating event to the reaction.

• A complete episode contains at least four components;

o Initiating event, o At least two of the following-

internal response, plan, attempt o Consequence.

• An incomplete episode occurs if one of the following is missing from the story;

o Initiating event o Attempt o Plan o Consequence

• A more complex narrative will contain multiple episodes.

• Children begin to produce narratives with multiple episodes at 7-8yrs.

• Children add to the complexity of their stories by expanding on episodes and making interactive episodes. This emerges at 11 years of age.


• The way in which episodes are linked together is also considered an important part of the narrative macrostructure.

• To allow for a flow between episodes children will need to have a good ability to use connectors.

• Specifically those that represent; time & cause.

• The microstructure of a story helps provide structure to sentences used throughout the story. This includes;

o Vocabulary (Semantics)- words used to describe characters, events and places.

o Syntax – producing sentences of increased length with appropriate word order and structure.

o Morphology – producing sentences with appropriate grammar.

• A story- teller will need to choose more complex vocabulary to describe images and display emotions.

• When emotive and descriptive vocabulary is used it allows the listener to receive the full experience without having been present for the event.

• Stories can be made more complex when further focus is placed on noun and verb phrases.


• Verbs are an important part of storytelling as they lend themselves to being “upgraded”.

• Verbs can be classified according to tiers; o Tier 1- High Frequency o Tier 2- Abstract Words o Tier 3- Specialised low frequency

words

• Different types of verbs can influence the length of a sentence.

• Transitive Verbs: These verbs allow for the length of sentence to be extended and need to be associated with an object.

• Mental or cognitive verbs are transitive verbs. Cognitive verbs are an internal level of thought for example: planned, thought and loved.

• Intransitive Verbs: These verbs do not allow the length of a sentence to be extended as they do not need to take an object.

• Adverbs can also be used in stories to increase the length of verb phrases.

• When attempting to generate adverbs it is beneficial to ask questions that relate to the verb phrase.

• For example, “The man marched to the bus stop”.

o How? Quietly. o When? Later that day o Where? Smith street o Why? Because… o Frequency? Everyday


• Adjectives describe somebody or something.

• Co-ordinate adjectives can be re-arranged in a series.

• Co-ordinate adjectives are used to represent;

o Quality: great o Quantity: many o Size: big/large o Age: ancient o Shape: broad o Colour: pink o Origin: Australian o Material: smooth

• Research shows that children with developmental language disorder will more often;

o Depart from a true narrative o Include information that is scripted

or follows a listed format o Include unrelated information in

the middle of their story

• They may have difficulties at both a macrostructure & microstructure level

Macrostructure:

• Difficulties with organisation

• Omit elements of a story episode

• Omit detail in the major setting or minor setting

• Rely on picture supports to tell stories

Microstructure:

• Difficulty using cohesive words

• Fewer conjunctions

• Difficulty using pronouns


• Children must develop oral narratives skills before transferring these to literacy tasks.

• Children will be unable to write what they cannot say therefore any difficulties in oral narrative skills will impact written narration.

• Oral narratives allow children time to develop higher level language skills which influences their receptive vocabulary and reading comprehension skills.

• Oral narratives are important in allowing children to participate fully in a social context.

• Children will use personal narratives as a way to gain attention and initiate conversation with peers.

• If children have difficulties producing social narratives, they may find it challenging to engage in peer discussions, resolve social conflicts and overall establish a strong social connection with others.

• The next slides will discuss specific

strategies that can be used in the classroom to support oral narrative skills.


• Visual supports can come in the form of pictography icons, symbols, gestures or manipulatives.

• Visual supports should be designed to highlight the specific components of a narrative.

• Colour coding can help students better understand different story parts and also aid in story comprehension.

• When introducing visuals icons, it is beneficial to teach each one in isolation and within the order they would generally occur in an oral narrative.

• Story icons and visual supports can also be used to aid a child’s understanding of narratives.

• Following a listening task, symbols and corresponding colour code can be introduced to help draw student’s to the part of the story which is associated with each question type.

• For children who are struggling to learn the structure or sequence of narratives they may benefit from going back to sequencing tasks with pictures.

• Students with language disorder may benefit from picture sequences to help reduce cognitive load.


• Picture supports may also be beneficial for students struggling with idea generation.

• This may include whole picture scenes or wordless picture books.

• Pictures can be used with older students as a way to prompt initial idea or topic generation.

• Modelling is one way to help draw attention to the narrative structure

• Recasting involves saying the child’s incorrect production in the correct way

• Feedback should be immediate.

• Wh questioning is beneficial to help students recognise parts of the story that may be missing.

• Children need repetitive practice telling stories over a number of different contexts with various communication partners. (e.g., small groups and whole class story telling).

• It would also be beneficial to encourage parents to engage in similar tasks at home.

• Frequent practice in daily routines is an important step in allowing generalisation of oral narrative skills.


• Provide opportunities for both story retells and story generation tasks.

• Allow students to listen to the target story multiple times before they are asked to retell the story.

• Research has shown that multiple exposures to the target story will increase a student’s performance and allow more complex and specific details to be included.

• Focus on teaching temporal and casual conjunctions

• Highlight and discuss different conjunctions used to link events.

• Explicitly teach conjunctions during story telling tasks.

• The use of word banks and cloze sentence tasks can be used to model conjunctions.

• Embed written narrative skills into oral narrative tasks.

• Some students may benefit from increased use of written sentences to remember a story

• Children with reading difficulties may benefit from story listening tasks.

• For these children the complexity of reading may take away from the enjoyment of learning about stories.


• Placing students together in small groups or pairs can increase motivation

• Children may also be more willing to discuss personal experiences with friends in small group situations.

Marleen Westerveld Photo Bank - Personal Narratives. https://www.marleenwesterveld.com/resources/ Story retell tasks https://www.marleenwesterveld.com/storyretelltasks/ Reading Rockets Wordless Picture book list https://www.readingrockets.org/booklists/our-favorite-wordless-picture-books

https://www.marleenwesterveld.com/resources/



https://www.marleenwesterveld.com/storyretelltasks/

https://www.marleenwesterveld.com/storyretelltasks/

https://www.readingrockets.org/booklists/our-favorite-wordless-picture-books

https://www.readingrockets.org/booklists/our-favorite-wordless-picture-books


Reference List:

Bitetti, D., & Scheffner Hammer, C. (2016) The home literacy environment and the english narrative

development of Spanish-English bilingual children. Journal of Speech, Language and Hearing Research. (59,

1159-1171)

Hutson-Nechkash, Peg. (2001). Narrative Toolbox: Blueprints for Storybuilding. Eau Claire, WI: Thinking

Publications.

McCabe, A., & Rollins, P.R. (1994). Assessment of Preschool Narrative Skills. American Journal of Speech

Language Pathology (AJSLP).

Olley, L. (1989). Oral Narrative Performance of Normal and Language Impaired School Aged Children.

Australian Journal of Human Communication Disorders.

Pinto, G., Tarchi, C., & Bigozzi, L. (2015). The relationship between oral and written narratives. A three-year

longitudinal study of narrative cohesion, coherence and structure. British Journal of Educational

Psychology (85, 551-569).

Spencer, T.D., & Peterson, D.B. (2020). Narrative Intervention: Principles to Practice. Language, Speech and

Hearing Services in Schools (1-16).

Spencer, T.D., & Slocum, T.A. (2010) The effect of a narrative intervention on story retelling and personal

story generation skills of preschoolers with risk factors and narrative language delays. Journal of Earl

Intervention (32, 178-199)

Stadler, M.A., & Ward, G.C. (2005). Supporting the Narrative Development of Young Children. Early

Childhood Education Journal.

Westerveld, M. F., & Gillon, G. T. (2010). Profiling oral narrative ability in young school-aged children.

International Journal of Speech-Language Pathology, 12(3), 178-189.

Westerveld, M. F., Gillon, G.T., & Boyd, L. (2012). Evaluating the clinical utility of the Profile of Oral

Narrative Ability in 4-year-old children. International Journal of Speech-Language Pathology, 14(2), 130-

140.

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Oral Narrative - Speech & Language Development Australia