Re-Conceptualizing Expository Language as Narration

2016 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 109-117
Author(s):  
Douglas B. Petersen ◽  
Jeffrey W. Petersen

There is the very real possibility that narrative-based language intervention may not only improve narrative-specific outcomes such as narrative retelling and personal story generation, but also expository language, which has traditionally been perceived as a dissimilar, distal outcome. In this paper we discuss the relationship between narrative language and expository language, propose that apprehending the elements that are essential to good narration is not only helpful for the production and comprehension of expository language, but is in a sense, even required. We also discuss how narrative intervention, when properly shaped, can logically lead to growth in expository language.

Author(s):  
Stephanie M. Raymond ◽  
Trina D. Spencer

Purpose Narrative intervention has not been extensively investigated with children with hearing loss, but it has been shown to improve a broad range of language skills of children with a variety of disabilities and language needs. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to investigate the effect of narrative language intervention on the narrative retelling skills and vocabulary use of children with hearing loss. Method A multiple baseline design (for retelling) and a repeated acquisition design (for vocabulary) were used to fulfill the purpose of the study. Participants included two children ages 5 and 9 years diagnosed with bilateral sensorineural hearing loss, fitted to an amplification device. Each child received one 70-min session of individual narrative language intervention per week for at least 6 weeks that focused on teaching less common vocabulary words in addition to story grammar and complex sentences. Results Both participants demonstrated weekly increases in narrative retell scores and repeated pretest to posttest gains in the use of targeted vocabulary. Evidenced through visual analysis, both participants showed some growth in retell once intervention was introduced, with at least a modest upward trend each week. Moreover, vocabulary use scores, collected directly after intervention, showed both participants improved vocabulary use in familiar and untrained contexts. Conclusions Results suggest narrative language intervention improved the narrative retell ability and vocabulary use of children with hearing loss. Narrative intervention is a promising approach for promoting the language skills of children with hearing loss, but this finding requires replication.


1998 ◽  
Vol 29 (4) ◽  
pp. 197-206 ◽  
Author(s):  
Teresa A. Ukrainetz

Narrative is an important target of language intervention. However, oral narratives are difficult to remember, review, and revise because of their length and complexity. Writing is an option, but is often frustrating for both student and clinician. This article introduces a notational system called pictography that can be useful for temporarily preserving story content. Children represent the characters, settings, and sequences of actions with simple, chronologically or episodically organized stick-figure drawings. As a quick and easy representational strategy, pictography is applicable to both individual language intervention and inclusive classroom settings. This article describes benefits observed in narrative intervention, including facilitation of a time sequence, increased length and quality, and a greater focus on narrative content rather than on the mechanics of writing.


2014 ◽  
Vol 45 (1) ◽  
pp. 67-86 ◽  
Author(s):  
Douglas B. Petersen ◽  
Catherine L. Brown ◽  
Teresa A. Ukrainetz ◽  
Christine Wise ◽  
Trina D. Spencer ◽  
...  

Purpose The purpose of this study was to investigate the effect of an individualized, systematic language intervention on the personal narratives of children with autism. Method A single-subject, multiple-baseline design across participants and behaviors was used to examine the effect of the intervention on language features of personal narratives. Three 6- to 8-year-old boys with autism participated in 12 individual intervention sessions that targeted 2–3 story grammar elements (e.g., problem, plan) and 3–4 linguistic complexity elements (e.g., causal subordination, adverbs) selected from each participant's baseline performance. Intervention involved repeated retellings of customized model narratives and the generation of personal narratives with a systematic reduction of visual and verbal scaffolding. Independent personal narratives generated at the end of each baseline, intervention, and maintenance session were analyzed for presence and sophistication of targeted features. Results Graphical and statistical results showed immediate improvement in targeted language features as a function of intervention. There was mixed evidence of maintenance 2 and 7 weeks after intervention. Conclusion Children with autism can benefit from an individualized, systematic intervention targeting specific narrative language features. Greater intensity of intervention may be needed to gain enduring effects for some language features.


2017 ◽  
Vol 60 (7) ◽  
pp. 2031-2046 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anthony Pak-Hin Kong ◽  
Sam-Po Law ◽  
Gigi Wan-Chi Chak

Purpose Coverbal gesture use, which is affected by the presence and degree of aphasia, can be culturally specific. The purpose of this study was to compare gesture use among Cantonese-speaking individuals: 23 neurologically healthy speakers, 23 speakers with fluent aphasia, and 21 speakers with nonfluent aphasia. Method Multimedia data of discourse samples from these speakers were extracted from the Cantonese AphasiaBank. Gestures were independently annotated on their forms and functions to determine how gesturing rate and distribution of gestures differed across speaker groups. A multiple regression was conducted to determine the most predictive variable(s) for gesture-to-word ratio. Results Although speakers with nonfluent aphasia gestured most frequently, the rate of gesture use in counterparts with fluent aphasia did not differ significantly from controls. Different patterns of gesture functions in the 3 speaker groups revealed that gesture plays a minor role in lexical retrieval whereas its role in enhancing communication dominates among the speakers with aphasia. The percentages of complete sentences and dysfluency strongly predicted the gesturing rate in aphasia. Conclusions The current results supported the sketch model of language–gesture association. The relationship between gesture production and linguistic abilities and clinical implications for gesture-based language intervention for speakers with aphasia are also discussed.


2011 ◽  
Vol 33 (4) ◽  
pp. 298-309 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ann P. Kaiser ◽  
Megan Y. Roberts

Learning to communicate using speech and language is a primary developmental task for young children. Delays in the acquisition of language are one of the earliest indicators of developmental deficits that may affect academic and social outcomes for individuals across the life span. In the period since the passage of PL 99-457, significant progress in research related to language intervention has been made in five areas: (a) the social, symbolic, and prelinguistic foundations to spoken language; (b) parent-implemented language interventions; (c) the language foundations for literacy; (d) the relationship between language and social behavior; and (e) the use of augmented and alternative modes of communication. Although there are indications of important advances in the knowledge base of early identification as well as comprehensive and continuous intervention, preparing professionals to provide effective interventions in natural environments continues to be a challenge for the field.


1989 ◽  
Vol 54 (3) ◽  
pp. 383-394 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nancy J. Scherer ◽  
Lesley B. Olswang

A structured discourse strategy, employing child echoic imitations and adult expansion, was used to teach 5 autistic children two-term semantic relations. The 5 male preschoolers in late Stage I of linguistic development were exposed systematically to two-term semantic relations in a structured dialogue with a clinician. A combined multiple baseline and AB(A) design was used to examine the relationship between the clinician expansions and the children's subsequent spontaneous imitations and spontaneous productions. The results showed that an increase in modeling and expansion was related to an increase in the children's initial spontaneous imitations of two-term relations. Further, following the increase in spontaneous imitations, spontaneous productions of the two-term relations increased and were maintained, whereas spontaneous imitations subsequently decreased.


1992 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 77-91 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul J. Yoder ◽  
Betty Davies

ABSTRACTThe unintelligible speech of many developmentally delayed children poses problems for language intervention and language assessment efforts. Eighteen developmentally delayed children in Brown's (1973) stage I and their parents participated in two studies of the relationship between verbal routines and the intelligibility of developmentally delayed children's speech. The first study demonstrated that more intelligible child speech was found in routines than in nonroutines. To determine if routine utterances were articulated more accurately than nonroutine utterances, the second study extracted a representative sample of routine and nonroutine utterances from their visual and discourse contexts and asked two naive observers to transcribe them. To investigate the possible effect of contextual information, the naive observers transcribed the extracted utterances under context-information-present and context-information- absent conditions. The results indicated that extracted utterances were more intelligible under context-information-present conditions. The results were interpreted as indicating that child speech was more intelligible in routines than nonroutines because routines provide adults with more context information for interpreting ambiguous child utterances.


2020 ◽  
Vol 51 (4) ◽  
pp. 1097-1111
Author(s):  
Douglas B. Petersen ◽  
Trina D. Spencer ◽  
Alisa Konishi ◽  
Tiffany P. Sellars ◽  
Matthew E. Foster ◽  
...  

Purpose The purpose of this pilot study was to determine whether parallel measures of narrative-based listening comprehension and reading comprehension reflected the same construct and yielded comparable scores from a diverse sample of second- and third-grade students. One hundred ten students participated in this study. Method Three listening and three reading comprehension narrative retells and subsequent responses to story questions and vocabulary questions were collected using the Narrative Language Measures Listening and Reading subtests of the CUBED assessment. Results Results indicated a strong correlation between the listening comprehension and reading comprehension measures. Confirmatory factor analysis indicated that the listening and reading comprehension measures loaded onto one factor. Mean scores were not significantly different between the listening and reading comprehension measures, and the equipercentile analyses indicated that the two measures yielded scores that aligned with similar percentile rankings for a diverse sample of students, suggesting symmetry and equity. Conclusion Oral narrative language retells and responses to story and vocabulary questions could potentially serve as proxy measures for reading comprehension for young students.


Author(s):  
Carlos Velasco ◽  
Marianna Obrist

Most of our everyday life experiences are multisensory in nature, i.e. they consist of what we see, hear, feel, taste, smell, and much more. Almost any experience, such as eating a meal or going to the cinema, involves a magnificent sensory world. In recent years, many of these experiences have been increasingly transformed through technological advancements such as multisensory devices and intelligent systems. This book takes the reader on a journey that begins with the fundamentals of multisensory experiences, moves through the relationship between the senses and technology, and finishes by considering what the future of those experiences may look like, and our responsibility in it. The book seeks to empower the reader to shape his or her own and other people’s experiences by considering the multisensory worlds in which we live. This book is a powerful and personal story about the authors’ passion for, and viewpoint on, multisensory experiences.


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