Usually children mix words and use complex syntax when they begin to learn morphemes and these factors are first harmonized in narratives. Upon entering elementary school, children recognize that a narrative is a main genre, because most class texts c...
Usually children mix words and use complex syntax when they begin to learn morphemes and these factors are first harmonized in narratives. Upon entering elementary school, children recognize that a narrative is a main genre, because most class texts consist of narratives. The narrative ability develops gradually from infancy throughout the school age and can be a useful marker to examine the language ability of school age children using the language of discourse level. In addition, it can form part of a comparable criteria for measuring the narrative competence of children with language impairment. In this study therefore, I examined the development in narrative production abilities with increasing grade of school age children.I collected data from 60 elementary school children (Grades 1 to 3) in Gangseo-gu, Seoul. The children produced a narrative picture storybook 'Frog, Where are you?', with no words. I analyzed the content and syntax of the produced narratives. I used story grammars as the analysis material for the content and used the mean length of C-units by morphemes(MLCm) and grammatical error score as the analysis material for the syntax. I then examined whether story grammars and MLCm and grammatical error score can be explained by the differences in grade groups.The results were as follows.1. Story grammar total score was higher as groups. Thus, narrative production ability by story grammar total score was increased as groups. The scores in story grammar categories, initiating event, internal response, attempt, and consequence were increased with increasing age, but setting was not influenced by grade. The score in story grammar categories with significant difference was not same, but the attempt and internal response tended to be used more than the others with increasing grade.2. MLCm was increased significantly between grades 1 and 3, whereas the MLCm was significantly lengthened with increasing grade.3. grammatical error total score was decreased with increasing age. Thus, narrative production ability by grammatical error total score increased with increasing age. I used misuse of a postposition or ending, omission of main contents, and self correction as indicators of error patterns. The self correction was not influenced by grade. Misuse of a postposition or ending, and omission of main contents were decreased with increasing grade. Therefore, I determined that the narrative syntactic development was based on two patterns.The story grammar total score was significantly increased with increasing grade for normal school age children. MLCm was increased and grammatical error total score was decreased with increasing age. This analysis confirmed the development of narrative production abilities and the accuracy of a significant predictor of narrative production ability of school age children.