Macrostructure and microstructure in narratives of Spanish/English bilingual children with and without language impairment (LI)

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2018-06-19

Authors

Stansbury, Amber Jean

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Abstract

There is limited research on character mention and noun phrase elaboration in the narratives of Spanish-English kindergarten and first graders. The current study was designed to determine whether typically developing (TD) Spanish- English bilingual children differed from children with language impairment (LI) in their use of character mentions, noun phrase elaboration, and noun modifier agreement in their English and Spanish narrative productions at kindergarten and first grade. The current study is a longitudinal study including 16 children with LI and 16 TD peers who were matched on age, sex, nonverbal IQ and language exposure. In kindergarten and first grade, the children retold a narrative using a wordless picture book in both Spanish and English. The findings revealed that the ability groups (LI and TD) significantly differed in their use of English character mention, English and Spanish noun phrase elaboration, use of Spanish type of noun phrase elaboration (level I), and noun-modifier agreement in narrative retells. Children in both groups (TD, LI) retold more complex narratives that vii included more characters and noun phrase elaboration at first grade than kindergarten. Despite these significant findings, the two groups did not develop character mention or noun phrase elaboration in their Spanish or English narratives at different rates across the two years. In the children’s Spanish retells, the children with LI committed more noun modifier agreement errors than the TD children; however, the two ability groups (LI, TD) did not develop noun modifier agreement at different rates. Similarity between the TD and the LI groups on character mention and noun phrase elaboration development may be due to the fact that both children were only beginning to incorporate noun phrase elaboration (i.e. adjectives, ENP) in their narrative retells.

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