Three Measures of Narrative Discourse Ability for Korean School-Aged Children in a Story-Retelling Task

Kwon, Eugene; Pae, So Yeong

ORIGINAL ARTICLE

Commun Sci Disord. 2006;11(2): 72-89.

Eugene Kwon^` , and So Yeong Pae^`

권유진(Eugene Kwon)| 배소영(So Yeong Pae)

ABSTRACT

Little is known about the narrative ability of school-aged children in Korea. This study addresses the narrative ability of 30 Korean, school-aged children in first to third grades. The children’s story-retelling productions were analyzed by three measures: story composition, syntactic expression and use of cohesive devices. Each measure has several variables. The measure of story composition consists of two variables: the percentage of story grammar recall and the complete episode composition scale. The number of main clauses and subordinate clauses, the number of subordinate clauses in a C-unit and the number of complex syntactic C-units are contained in the measure of syntactic expression. The measure of cohesive devices includes variables of the number of adequate cohesive devices and the percentage of inadequate cohesive devices. In all variables of the three measures, narrative ability developed with increasing grade from 1st to 3rd. The three measures were strongly, positively and significantly correlated with the following variables: the percentage of story grammar recall, complete episode composition scale, the number of subordinate clauses in a C-unit and the number of adequate cohesive devices. This result implies that story composition, syntactic expression and use of cohesive devices are all very important for language assessment and intervention in Korean-speaking children.