Genre and evaluation in narrative development.

Full Abstract

In this study I examine Venezuelan children's developing abilities to use evaluative language in fictional and personal narratives. The questions addressed are:
(1) How does the use of evaluative language vary in fictional and personal narratives? (2) Is there a relationship between the use of evaluative language in these two narrative genres and children's age and socio-economic status (SES)? The sample consists of 444 narratives produced by 113 Venezuelan school-age children participating in 4 narrative tasks, in which personal and fictional stories were elicited. Findings suggest that age and socio-economic status have a greater impact on the use of evaluation in fictional stories than in personal narratives. Low SES and younger children are at a greater disadvantage when performing fictional narratives than when performing personal narratives. These results strongly imply that children's narrative competence cannot be assessed in a single story-telling task, given the importance that task-related factors seem to have on narrative abilities.

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Author information

Author/s: Shiro, Martha (M);

Affiliation: Universidad Central de Venezuela, Instituto de Filología Andrés Bello, Apartado 6339, Caracas 1010/A, Venezuela. mshiro@reacciun.ve

Journal and publication information

Publication Type: Journal Article

Journal: Journal of child language (J Child Lang), published in England. (Language: eng)

Reference: 2003-Feb; vol 30 (issue 1) : pp 165-95

Dates: Created 2003/04/29; Completed 2003/05/14; Revised 2004/11/17;

PMID: 12718297, status: MEDLINE (last retrieval date: 11/6/2008)

Sourced from the National Library of Medicine. Abstract text and other information may be subject to copyright.

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