A social interactionist account of developing decontextualized narrative skill.

Abstract

The ability to produce decontextualized language is a crucial skill underlying literacy acquisition. This study investigated the role of parental interaction styles on children's developing skill at providing contextual orientation in one type of decontextualized discourse, personal experience narratives. A researcher elicited narratives monthly for 18 months from 10 children age 26-43 months. At intervals, mothers were asked to tape record talk about past events with their children. The children's increasing skill at independently providing context about when and where was correlated with mothers' frequencies of using specific types of prompts in their narrative elicitations. Cross-lagged correlations showed that parents who frequently prompted for context orientation had children who most frequently provided subsequent orientation to when and where in their stand-alone narratives when they were over 3 years of age. Results were interpreted in terms of Vygotskian theory. Discourse skills have been identified as central components of successful school achievement by a number of investigators (Feagans, 1982; Feagans & Farran, 1981; Scollon & Scollon, 1981; Snow, 1983; Snow & Dickinson, 1990; Watson & Shapiro, 1988). Narratives in particular have been highlighted, because they require multiple sentences to be organized both thematically and sequentially. The ability to structure narratives in ways expected by teachers has been seen as important for a smooth transition to literacy (Heath, 1982, 1983; Michaels, 1981; Snow, 1983; Snow & Dickinson, 1990). The kind of narrative characteristically valued at school is one that is decontextualized sufficiently to make sense to listeners who did not share the original narrated experience with the child (Bruner, 1986; Cazden, 1985; Snow, 1983). Unfortunately, many children enter school with poor narrative skills (Feagans, 1982), and such children may not only have more difficulty with literacy but are also more likely to be labeled as learning disabled (Roth, 1986). An important question is why there is such large individual variation in children's ability to produce well-structured and decontextualized narratives.