Assessing an Eliciting Narrative Tool Used for Studying the Development of Persian-speaking Children’s Narrative Discourse Skills

Abstract

Introduction: Developing children’s skills in producing oral narratives can reflect their linguistic and cognitive abilities. However, to evaluate these abilities appropriately, it is necessary to find and apply an efficient narrative assessment tool. This study primarily aimed to assess the reliability and validity of a picture story, as a narrative eliciting tool, based on Persian-speaking children’s narratives. This assessment is going to be done at the microstructure and macrostructure levels. Furthermore, to evaluate the power of the assessment tool, we explored the effect of age and gender variables on using different narrative elements at the microstructure and macrostructure levels. Materials and Methods: We used a picture story, “Frog, where are you?” to elicit oral narratives in 48 subjects, including 7-, 9-, and 11-year-old boys and girls. The reliability and validity of the tool were respectively assessed by test-retest and factor analysis. Results: The findings indicated a significantly high correlation between the evaluated features based on test-retest. Besides, factor analysis revealed four categories: sentence structures, references, conjunctions, measures of story length. They were valid indicators for assessing Persian-speaking children’s narratives. The results also showed a statistically significant difference among different age groups, but an insignificant effect of gender on using discursive features in the tales.Conclusion: The picture story “Frog, where are you?” can be used as a reliable and valid narrative eliciting tool for Persian data at the microstructure and macrostructure levels. Also, the age factor, but not the gender one, affects the stories recited by Persian children.