Structural and dialectal characteristics of the fictional and personal narratives of school-age African American children.

ABSTRACT:

Purpose

To report preliminary comparisons of developing structural and dialectal characteristics associated with fictional and personal narratives in school-age African American children.

Method

Forty-three children, Grades 2-5, generated a fictional narrative and a personal narrative in response to a wordless-book elicitation task and a story-prompt task, respectively. Narratives produced in these 2 contexts were characterized for macrostructure, microstructure, and dialect density. Differences across narrative type and grade level were examined.

Results

Statistically significant differences between the 2 types of narratives were found for both macrostructure and microstructure but not for dialect density. There were no grade-related differences in macrostructure, mi

SUBMITTER: Mills MT 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC3988833 | biostudies-literature | 2013 Apr

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature