Structure of personal narratives in Thai children aged 4 to 6 years old

Abstract

Background: Understanding children’s narratives is crucial as it represents language capacity in a naturalistic context and also relates to children’s academic success. However, studies showed that narratives vary not only with age but also in content and structure across cultures. Objectives: To study and compare components and patterns of personal narratives in Thai children aged 4-6 years old. Also, to find narrative structure differences between genders. Materials and methods: Stories of past experiences were elicited from 86 participants aged 4-6 years old. The longest narratives from each participant were analyzed in terms of both narrative components and patterns by using high-point analysis. Comparisons were then drawn for the proportions and differences in narrative structure between age groups and between genders. Results: For narrative components, Thai children told complicating action most frequently. With age, the use of resolution increased significantly from 4-6 years old. For narrative patterns, chronological patterns were found commonly at age 4. Moreover, the incidence of classic patterns rose significantly between the ages of 4 and 6 and reached the highest proportion in usage at ages 5 and 6. No gender difference was found in the narrative structure. Conclusion: Thai children’s narrative structure was presented in this study. The abilities to range events in sequence and resolve the high-point of narratives were found more commonly with their increasing age.