Narrative Development in Children and Adolescents

Written By: Elissa Murnick M.S. CCC-SLP Certified Speech Language Pathologist, Director Murnick Speech & Language Associates

Children with Expressive and Receptive Language Disorders often have difficulty with creation or retell of verbal narratives. Their narratives are often disorganized, lack cohesion and miss critical Story Grammar Marker Elements. The Story Grammar Marker is a tool to help us tell, retell, and write stories developed by Mindwing Concepts, Inc. (Maryellen Rooney Moreau)

For more information on the Story Grammar Marker Program, visit  narrative development in children on my website.

A Narrative Language Analysis is often completed by a Speech Language Pathologist as part of a comprehensive Speech and Language Evaluation. A child will be asked to listen to a picture story book her and retell it in their own words. A SLP will then record, transcribe the sample and analyze for its macrostructure (which Story Grammar components were included),microstructure (syntactic sentence level analysis and usage of cohesive ties to link thoughts together) and whether or not the child’s narrative skills are developmentally appropriate. The Narrative Development Checklist can be utilized to determine which narrative developmental stage a child is in and yield information about the child’s ability to use narrative structure to comprehend, remember and recall important parts of narrative text. . A narrative sample can also provide a valid language sample so a child’s grammar (i.e.personal and possessive pronoun usage, adjective usage, clear character referent, conjunctions, regular and irregular past tense), syntax (word order), vocabulary (semantics), sentence length and complexity (simple, compound or complex) can be analyzed.  An analysis will also show if there were any communication breakdowns such as stalls, abandoned phrases or repairs. A standardized measure that is often given to assess narrative language skills is the Test of Narrative Language (TNL) A SLP can also informally assess a child’s articulation, voice and fluency (stuttering) during this sample. Use of graphic organizers such as a Story Grammar Marker episode map often help a child with narrative language impairment to retell a story or create their own story.  A Speech Language Pathologist can help a child with narrative skills.  

To view the Stages of Narrative Development and a listing of Story Grammar Marker Elements, visit narrative development in children  on my website.

In order to analyze a child’s ability to create and retell verbal narratives, a verbal retell of a story is often used when conducting a comprehensive speech and language evaluation. It can also serve as a language sample of the child to demonstrate a child’s ability to speak in complex sentences, use appropriate sentence length, use appropriate grammar (semantics), sentence structure and word order (syntax). A language sample can also enable the SLP to informally assess a child’s overall articulation in conversation and to determine if any voice or fluency (stuttering) difficulties are present.

PARENT TIPS FOR IMPROVING NARRATIVE DEVELOPMENT

·Parents should read to their child every night. Prior to reading the story, encourage the child to take a “picture walk” and flip through the pages of the story to get an idea of the story’s content. Practice asking prediction questions such as “What do you think will happen?”

·Practice asking your child to identify the main character, setting and problem of the story. If a child has difficulty, you can always provide two possible choices for the child to select from.

·Ask your child to tell you the beginning, middle and end of a story that was read to him or her.

·Ask your child comprehension questions throughout the story such as “What happened”, “Who did it”, “Where did they go”, “Why are they doing that?”

·Ask your child inferential questions such as “Why do you think they are sick”?

To view more parent tips and a suggested book list to help a child with Narrative Language Development, visit  narrative development in children on my website.

Elissa Murnick is a licensed, certified Speech Language Pathologist and the owner of Murnick Speech & Language Associates in Fairfield, CT. She has worked for almost 15 years with children of all ages with a wide range of speech and language disorders in a public and private school setting as well as private practice. For more information about scheduling an evaluation visit Murnick Speech & Language Associates on the web at www.murnickspeechandlanguage.com.