There are many ways to tell a story, but whether a story is good or bad depends on whether or not the listener/reader can comprehend all that the speaker/writer wants to convey in his or her story. This study examines the characteristics of stories that native speakers of given languages consider to be good. Forty English-Japanese bilingual children ages six to twelve were asked to narrate a picture storybook in both English and Japanese. Also involved in the study were 16 adult native Japanese speakers and 16 adult native English speakers who evaluated the stories produced by the bilingual children. An analysis of narratives receiving high ratings from evaluators shows that most stories considered good in English or Japanese should be lengthy stories with a large and varied vocabulary, and should be told in the past tense. In addition to those similarities in effective stories told in the two languages, we also found dissimilarities between “good” stories in English and “good” stories in Japanese. English evaluators felt that relating a series of events in chronological order is only one part of a good story. Providing evaluative comments (i.e., statements or words that tell the listener/reader what the narrator thinks about a person, place, thing, or event) is an indispensable part of telling good stories. So, in stories in English, aside from the standard expectation of a sequential series of events, providing the listener with emotional information is considered equally important. On the other hand, Japanese speakers accepted stories that emphasize a temporal sequence of action with less emphasis on nonsequential information, especially evaluative descriptions, and which effectively use passive forms and subject-referencing markers to enable a clear chronological sequence of events. Because the standards of what makes a good story may differ in the home and school languages/cultures, and because of the complex nature of such differences as shown in this study, it seems advisable that schools intervene and support the development of bilingual children’s skills in the use of the mainstream culture’s standards.
CHEUNG, SHIRLEY, PUI FONG KAN, ELLIE WINICOUR & JERRY YANG
2019. Effects of home language input on the vocabulary knowledge of sequential bilingual children. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition 22:5 ► pp. 986 ff.
Kupersmitt, Judy R. & Sharon Armon-Lotem
2019. The linguistic expression of causal relations in picture-based narratives: A comparative study of bilingual and monolingual children with TLD and DLD. First Language 39:3 ► pp. 319 ff.
Lwin, Soe Marlar
2019. Discourse Analysis. In Applied Linguistics for Teachers of Culturally and Linguistically Diverse Learners [Advances in Linguistics and Communication Studies, ], ► pp. 239 ff.
Lwin, Soe Marlar
2022. Discourse Analysis. In Research Anthology on Applied Linguistics and Language Practices, ► pp. 1573 ff.
Habermas, Tilmann
2018. Emotion and Narrative,
Willenberg, Ingrid
2017. ‘Once upon a time in Bearland’: Longitudinal development of fictional narratives in South African children. First Language 37:2 ► pp. 150 ff.
Hoang, Huong, Elena Nicoladis, Lisa Smithson & Reyhan Furman
2016. French–English bilingual children’s tense use and shift in narration. International Journal of Bilingualism 20:6 ► pp. 750 ff.
Smithson, Lisa & Elena Nicoladis
2016. Visuospatial Working Memory Capacity Predicts Physiological Arousal in a Narrative Task. Applied Psychophysiology and Biofeedback 41:2 ► pp. 203 ff.
2014. The Influence of Classroom Drama on English Learners’ Academic Language Use During English Language Arts Lessons. Bilingual Research Journal 37:3 ► pp. 263 ff.
Peña, Elizabeth D., Ronald B. Gillam & Lisa M. Bedore
2014. Dynamic Assessment of Narrative Ability in English Accurately Identifies Language Impairment in English Language Learners. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research 57:6 ► pp. 2208 ff.
Cheatham, Gregory A. & Margarita Jimenez-Silva
2011. What Makes a Good Story?: Supporting Oral Narratives of Young Children from Culturally and Linguistically Diverse Backgrounds. Childhood Education 87:4 ► pp. 261 ff.
Peña, Elizabeth D., Ronald B. Gillam, Lisa M. Bedore & Thomas M. Bohman
2011. Risk for Poor Performance on a Language Screening Measure for Bilingual Preschoolers and Kindergarteners. American Journal of Speech-Language Pathology 20:4 ► pp. 302 ff.
Schick, Adina & Gigliana Melzi
2010. The Development of Children's Oral Narratives Across Contexts. Early Education & Development 21:3 ► pp. 293 ff.
This list is based on CrossRef data as of 21 december 2024. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers.
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