Learning to Tell: Aspects of Developing Communicative Competence in Young Children's Story Retellings

ABSTRACT

As teachers have shifted from basal to more literature-based reading/language arts programs, they have frequently encouraged children to produce oral retellings of books read or heard. The authors describe ways in which oral retellings, as oral compositions, can serve as holistic literacy experiences for young children in the transition from oracy to literacy in elementary classrooms. The authors examine how children employ various wordings in story retellings to naive listeners, and suggest how children's linguistic choices provide a means to understand and assess their developing communicative competence. The importance of the social context in which retellings are produced is emphasized and implications regarding the role of retellings in the classroom are discussed.