Different Tales: The Role of Gender in the Oral Narrative-Reading Link Among African American Children

Sharing Stories Versus Explaining Facts: Comparing African American Children's Microstructure Performance Across Fictional Narrative, Informational, and Procedural Discourse

PURPOSE

Both fictional oral narrative and expository oral discourse skills are critical language competencies that support children's academic success. Few studies, however, have examined African American children's microstructure performance across these genres. To address this gap in the literature, the study compared African American children's microstructure productivity and complexity across three discourse contexts: fictional narratives, informational discourse, and procedural discourse. The study also examined whether there were age-related differences in microstructure performance by discourse type.

METHOD

Participants were 130 typically developing African American children, aged 59-95 months old, enrolled in kindergarten through second grades in a Midwestern U.S. public school district. Wordless children's books were used to elicit fictional narratives, informational, and procedural discourse. Indicators of microstructure performance included measures of productivity (i.e., number of total words and number of different words) and complexity (i.e., mean length of communication unit and complex syntax rate). The effects of genre and age on microstructure performance were assessed using linear mixed-effects regression models.

RESULTS

Children produced longer discourse and used a greater diversity of words for their fictional stories compared to their informational or procedural discourse. Grammatical complexity was greater for fictional narratives and procedural discourse than informational discourse. Results showed greater productivity and complexity among older children compared to younger children, particularly for fictional and informational discourse.

CONCLUSIONS

African American children exhibit variation in their microstructure performance by discourse context and age. Understanding this variation is key to providing African American children with support to maximize their oral language competencies.

What Predicts Oral Narrative Competence Among African American Children? Exploring the Role of Linguistic and Cognitive Skills

PURPOSE

Oral narrative, or storytelling, skills may constitute a linguistic strength for African American children, with implications for academic and social well-being. Despite this possibility, few studies have examined individual differences in oral narrative skill among African American children. To address this gap in the literature, this study examined how children's linguistic and cognitive skills predicted their competence in structuring oral stories, both on average and for children with different levels of narrative skill.

METHOD

Fictional oral narratives were elicited from a sample of 144 typically developing African American children, aged 4-8 years, using a wordless picture book as the stimulus. The effects of children's vocabulary, complex syntax, and nonverbal cognitive skills on macrostructural performance were assessed using linear regression to test average effects and simultaneous quantile regression to test effects across different levels of narrative skill.

RESULTS

Children's competence in using complex syntax and nonverbal cognition, but not vocabulary, was predictive of narrative production, on average and as a function of narrative skill. Syntactic complexity appeared increasingly more relevant as children's narrative skill increased, whereas nonverbal cognition emerged as the most important for children at the lower to moderate ends of the narrative skill distribution.

CONCLUSIONS

Both linguistic and cognitive skills help explain individual differences in African American children's macrostructural competence. Promoting children's development of complex syntax and nonverbal reasoning may provide potential mechanisms for supporting oral narrative skill development.