Storytelling in the professional field is referred to as narrative language. If a speech-language professional is speaking to you about your child’s narrative language skills, they are referring to your child’s ability to tell you a story. This “story” can be about something that happened to them during the day, a “story” about a movie they watched or book they read, a made up “story”, and more.
In this post, I will explain what narrative language is, what skills are required, why it is important, types of narratives and their development across the lifespan, activity examples to improve narrative skills and the transition from oral to written narratives.
A narrative is basically like a monologue or a story. We use narratives in conversation. For example, when you ask someone what they did over their weekend they are re-telling their weekend events to you (what they did, where they went, who they saw, how it was). A narrative can also involve re-telling a story you read or a movie you saw (plot, characters, main events). Children also use narrative skills in play when they use play scripts, describe what is happening as they play or integrate dialogue between toys (e.g. when playing with dolls).
There are four basic components to all narratives – plot, character, conflict and theme. They also follow a similar sequence – beginning, middle and ending. For instance, when re-telling a story that was read, a child should start with the events in the correct order from beginning to ending and not start telling the story by jumping between the ending, beginning and then middle.
Good oral narrative skills will help improve your child’s expressive and receptive language skills and social communication skills. Oral narratives comprise the foundation for crucial academic skills such as reading comprehension, writing stories, writing book reports/summaries, formulating oral presentations, and more.
Narratives help children use higher level language skills. When re-telling an event that happened to them, they have to use the appropriate vocabulary and combine words into long grammatically correct sentences. Also they have to first understand the story that was read to them. Children have to demonstrate understanding of the new vocabulary/concepts, emotions (e.g. frustrated), the context, the plot of the story, problem (what is a conflict?), solution (what is a solution?). Then they have to use their understanding of the story to re-tell you the story verbally using age-appropriate semantic (words) and syntactic (grammar) skills. Story-telling also requires good sequencing skills and the ability to tell events in the order that they occurred. Can you start your story with the ending? I don’t think so.
Narrative language also requires a good foundation of social communication skills. Children with social language skills often have co-morbid narrative language difficulties. When telling a story or talking about a previous event, you need to be clear, concise, specific, use only relevant information, take into consideration your listener’s perspective and knowledge (do they understand you? can they follow your story or have you lost them? did you forget an important piece of information?). Therefore, children need to be able to check in with their listener, take their perspective (what they know/don’t know), and maintain the topic of their story.
Story – “There was a boy who found a giant dragon that was terrorizing villagers and burning down villages. At first, he was afraid of the dragon but he tried to be brave and went up to the dragon to speak with him. The dragon had a huge toothache and was angry with pain, he didn’t want to burn down villages but every time he screamed with pain, fire shot out of his mouth. The boy helped the dragon and took out a bone that was stuck in his mouth. The dragon was relieved and thanked the boy. Then he flew off and the villagers cheered for the brave boy.”
Child’s narrative re-tell – “There was a boy who went somewhere and then a giant dragon and the village burned down but they won.”
This child did not take into consideration the listener’s perspective. The child knows what happened because they read the story, therefore, in their mind that may be enough information, but not for someone who hasn’t read the story. You can help your child by asking questions for more information and practicing re-telling the story with all the relevant story elements in a clear manner. Let them know you did not understand what the story was about and that they need to check in with you. Did mommy/daddy look confused? Help them read your facial expression/body language.
Someone asked your child about their family vacation trip.
Child’s narrative – “I got home today. I fell down and my brother liked swimming. It was fun. I liked eating. The first day lots of driving. I wanted to climb. It was fun.“
Confused? This child lacks sequencing skills, specific semantic information (words), cohesion (flow of story, link between sentences, grammatical sentences), no perspective taking or checking in with the listener. You can help your child tell personal narratives by sequencing events in a particular order, going over the appropriate words for the actions, setting, emotions, and relevant information.
Child’s appropriate narrative – “We went to a cabin in the woods. We drove for a long time. I had fun climbing up the trees and my brother liked swimming. One day I fell down from a tree, but I was okay. We had a lot of fun. We ate a lot of yummy food like hot dogs and roasted marshmallows. I got back home today.”
Recounts are narratives prompted from the child by others. They are not spontaneously produced by children.
Accounts are narratives that are usually personal and spontaneously produced by children. There is no secondary person prompting the information from the child.
Children tell fictional (made-up) stories created by themselves, parents or that they read.
Just like other communication milestones, simpler narrative language skills emerge first in the form of scripts for routines, description of events, and lists. Afterward, children will start to use more personal narratives that are prompted and spontaneous. Once they have acquired higher level language skills they will attempt to re-tell a fictional story or create their own story.
One way to elicit narrative language and practice telling personal narratives with pre-school age children is through drawing. You can have them draw a picture of a specific event (e.g. tell me what you did at the park). Then they can tell you what happened at the park as they draw their picture by explaining what they will draw and why. You can wait for them to finish the drawing and then describe their time at the park via the drawing for reference.
You can also let the child draw anything they want. Then ask them to tell you about their picture and see what they come up with. You can help them create a story around their drawing. Even if it’s just scribbles and lines, you can be imaginative. For example, “Oh that looks like a dragon, he is breathing fire, is he a friendly dragon?“
When I read a book, I also like to ask the child to draw a picture regarding the book. It could be a specific story event that we just read about or their favorite part. Then they can use their drawing as a reference to re-tell the story to me or a parent.
Having your child write in a journal is a fantastic way to increase language, reading/writing, sequencing, narrative language, reasoning and problem solving skills.
For young children who are learning to write. Have them write in a journal everyday about something that happened. You can tell them to pick one thing that they want to write about their day. Have them draw a picture and then verbally express what they’d want to write. Then help them write one or two sentences. You can also write it for them. This can be done with children as of 5 years old.
Older children can simply write or also draw pictures. Give them specific things to write about everyday. They can even come up with stories. For example, you could tell them to write about summer vacation, what they would do if a genie granted them three wishes or about their dream last night.
Read the same story over and over with younger children until they are able to tell it back to you, this will boost their narrative language skills and confidence in telling stories.
I run narrative language groups and we read the same story each week and it usually takes us about 1-2 months per book. I always start the story from the beginning each time. At first, I tell the story and check for comprehension of concepts as I go through. Then I start to slowly fade away my language model while keeping the pictures and have them fill in the blanks with target concepts/words.
For example, I’d say “there was a _ and a _, they lived in a _, they were best _, then one day the _ did _, that made the _ feel_.” The children fill in the information for characters, setting, relevant actions/events, problems, solutions and character reactions. I gradually fade away verbal models and have them re-tell the story solely using the story pictures. Lastly, I have them practice re-telling the story without pictures.
Try this at home and you’ll see your child’s story telling skills vastly improve. Just make sure to take your time going through the book, read 2-3 new pages at a time (each day) and review previous pages. This will keep your child engaged and wanting to know what will happen next!
Reading a lot of books and telling stories to your child will help improve their narrative language skills. The more stories they hear the more they will realize the common aspects found across all stories and discriminate the relevant information such as setting, characters, the problem, plan of action, outcome/resolution, and character reactions.
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