Narratives by bilingual children: a tale of strengths and growth during kindergarten

ABSTRACT

Given their significance in daily life and frequent inclusion in clinical and educational assessments, children’s narrative abilities merit investigation. The present study examines the narratives of children acquiring an additional language, adding to the more abundant studies of monolingual children. Sixty kindergartners (mean age 68 months) residing in Quebec, Canada participated. All spoke a minoritized language at home, and were being instructed in French, the majority language, at school. The children told stories in French based on pictures from the Edmonton Narrative Norms Instrument (Schneider, Dubé, and Hayward, 2005) in late fall or early winter, and again in spring. Their stories were subsequently analyzed for their macrostructural features. Despite limited exposure to French prior to kindergarten, the majority of children were able to communicate the central problem in the story, characters’ attempts to resolve the problem, and outcomes of those attempts. Furthermore, the children’s scores increased from time 1 to time 2 overall, and for four of eight story grammar elements. The higher scores were due to higher scores on elements as well as the emergence of new elements in children’s stories at time 2. The findings can help guide expectations for narrative growth among emerging bilingual children and inform instruction.

KEYWORDS:

• Childhood bilingualism
• early bilingualism
• language acquisition
• narrative development

Acknowledgments

The researchers thank the children who participated in the study and their families, and the personnel of the schools where the study took place, as well as our dedicated research assistants, in particular Vincent Bourrassa-Bédard, Marie Hémond, and Elana Amanatidis-Saadé.

Data availability statement

Participants of this study did not agree for their data to be shared publicly, so supporting data is not available.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by a grant from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada [grant number: # 430-2015-00854] to author Andrea A. N. Macleod.

Notes on contributors

Andrea A. N. MacLeod

Andrea A.N. MacLeod is a Professor in Communication Sciences and Disorders whose research aims to serve children and their families through understanding multlingual language development and language maintenance.

Diane Pesco

Diane Pesco is an Associate Professor in Education whose research focuses on the narrative and pragmatic skills of children in the preschool years. She is also a speech-language pathologist by training.