To ascertain the effect of teacher intervention on young children`s narrations, seventy four and five-year-old children participated in two task conditions. One task was to individually create a narration using given props. The second task was similar...
To ascertain the effect of teacher intervention on young children`s narrations, seventy four and five-year-old children participated in two task conditions. One task was to individually create a narration using given props. The second task was similar to the first, but included teacher`s intervention. Half the children participated in the first task, while the other half participated in the second task. The 140 created narrations from both groups were transcribed and analyzed. The aims of this study are as follows: first, co identify the relations between the task condition and the narrative structure; second, to identify the relations between the expression of the inner state and the narrative structure; third, to identify the relations between the expression of psychological causality and narrative structure` fourth, to compare the number of episodes according to the narrative structure and the task condition; and lastly, to analyze the patterns of the teacher`s verbal scaffolding strategies in the second task condition. The major findings of this study are as follows: there was considerable effect in narrative structure but no significant relationship between the task condition and the narrative structure. However, the usage of expressions of the internal state related significantly to the narrative structure. The usage of expressions of psychological causality also related significantly to narrative structure. The number of episodes in the children`s stories differed according to the narrative structure but not to the task condition. Teachers used diverse verbal scaffolding strategies when the children were creating a story. In particular, challenging, expanding, modifying strategies and clarifying or restating strategies were used with relative frequency. These results demonstrate that the inner state and psychological causality can play important roles in the development of narrative structure. In addition, they show that four and five-year old children have the ability to look into a story from an objective standpoint, while simultaneously relating it to their own experience.