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The range of narrative forms conversationally produced by young children*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 February 2009

Alison Preece
Alison Preece*
Affiliation:
University of Victoria
*
Department of Communications and Social Foundations, Faculty of Education, University of Victoria, P.O. Box 1700, Victoria, British Columbia, CanadaV8W 2Y2.
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Abstract

The productive narrative competence of three young children as revealed in their spontaneously occurring conversations recorded over an 18-month period during their kindergarten and grade one years was investigated. Almost 90 hours of the children's conversations, produced as they were being driven to and from school, were audiotaped and analysed in order to determine whether children between the ages of five and seven include narrative accounts in their conversations with each other and, if so, the nature of the narrative language produced. The subjects were found routinely and regularly to produce a striking variety of narrative forms; 14 different narrative types were distinguished and defined, six of which have not previously been reported in the literature on children's narratives. Seventy per cent of the recorded narratives took anecdotal form; original fantasy narratives occurred only rarely. A significant proportion of the narratives were collaboratively created.

Type
Articles
Information
Journal of Child Language , Volume 14 , Issue 2 , June 1987 , pp. 353 - 373
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1987

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Footnotes

*

This research was supported by an award from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada and their assistance is gratefully acknowledged.

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