Narrative Retelling Research Articles

Young children's narrative retell in response to static and animated stories.

BackgroundThe format of narrative prompts used within language assessment has remained relatively constant; however, the use of animated video prompts deserves exploration given the increase in access to technology.AimsTo investigate the effect of story presentation format (static picture book versus animated video) on preschool children's narrative retells. It was hypothesized that children would produce more advanced narrative language elements in response to an animated video than a book.Methods & ProceduresA total of 73 children between the ages of 3 and 5 years completed two narrative retells. One of these retells was in response to a 3‐min animated video presented on a computer; the other retell was in response to static pictures presented in a book format. Children's stories were then transcribed and coded for linguistic and narrative elements.Outcomes & ResultsPaired sample t‐tests revealed that children produced significantly longer stories, greater syntactic complexity and lexical variety, and more action verbs when retelling an animated story compared with a book. Furthermore, a post‐hoc analysis revealed that examiners provided significantly fewer prompts when eliciting the retell with animation.Conclusions & ImplicationsTypically developing children demonstrated higher quantity and quality of language within a story retell in response to an animated video than after viewing images from the video presented in a static picture book. Although the extent to which these findings may be similar for children with language disorder has yet to be determined, researchers or clinicians should consider the effect of elicitation procedures on children's retells.

Testing the effects of a pilot listening comprehension and vocabulary intervention for individuals with autism

Many school-age children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) experience difficulties with reading comprehension, yet few studies have examined intervention practices to support their early reading comprehension development. The current study used a small randomly assigned treatment control design (N = 12) to investigate the preliminary effects of a listening comprehension intervention on narrative retell, vocabulary, and listening comprehension skills for students with ASD. Children who received the intervention grew significantly on proximal measures of these skills. Significant group differences were noted at post-test on narrative retell ability. Although preliminary, these findings suggest that storybook-based interventions that target the oral language and social-cognitive underpinnings of comprehension development may be successful for school-age children with ASD.

Growth in narrative retelling and inference abilities and relations with reading comprehension in children and adolescents with autism spectrum disorder.

Extant research indicates that children and adolescents with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) without an intellectual disability (ID) often experience difficulty comprehending written texts that is unexpected in comparison with their cognitive abilities. This study investigated the development of two key skills, narrative and inference abilities, that support higher level text comprehension and their relation to lexical-semantic knowledge, ASD symptomatology, and age. Three questions were addressed: 1.) What was the nature of narrative and inference skill development over time? 2.) What was the relation between narrative or inference development and lexical-semantic knowledge, ASD symptomatology, and age? 3.) Did initial narrative and inferencing skills, and the development of these skills, predict reading comprehension outcomes? Methods: Data from 81 children and adolescents with ASD without ID (FIQ ≥ 75) between the ages of 8-16-years-old at timepoint 1 were collected at 15-month intervals across three timepoints. ASD symptomatology was assessed with the ADOS-2. Standardized narrative retelling, inference, reading comprehension, lexical-semantic knowledge and cognitive assessments were administered. Latent growth curve models were conducted to examine narrative and inference skill development, and conditional growth models were fit to examine the relation between growth trajectories and covariates (lexical-semantic knowledge, ASD symptomatology, age) as well as with the reading comprehension distal outcome. Narrative retelling skills followed a linear trajectory of growth and were a relative strength in this sample, while inference skills were well below average and declined over time relative to age-normed standard scores. Lexical-semantic knowledge explained significant heterogeneity in initial narrative and inference skills, whereas ASD symptomatology was only related to initial narrative retelling abilities and age was only related to initial inference abilities. Timepoint 3 reading comprehension skill (in the below average range) was significantly explained by initial narrative retelling and inference abilities. The results of this study indicate that narrative retelling and inference skills are important for successful reading comprehension for individuals with ASD without ID and that lexical-semantic knowledge underpins these skills. Furthermore, the observation that ASD symptom severity was associated with narrative retelling skills is consistent with the hypothesis that problems in narrative reading skills are associated with the autism phenotype. Finally, inference skill was a particular challenge for individuals in this sample, although age was positively associated with better performance on the assessment.Implications: These findings suggest that narrative and inference skills, in addition to lexical-semantic knowledge, are important to target beginning in elementary grades to improve reading comprehension outcomes for children and adolescents with ASD without ID.

Early Efficacy of Multitiered Dual-Language Instruction: Promoting Preschoolers’ Spanish and English Oral Language

The purpose of this cluster randomized group study was to investigate the effect of multitiered, dual-language instruction on children’s oral language skills, including vocabulary, narrative retell, receptive and expressive language, and listening comprehension. The participants were 3- to 5-year-old children (n = 81) who were learning English and whose home language was Spanish. Across the school year, classroom teachers in the treatment group delivered large-group lessons in English to the whole class twice per week. For a Tier 2 intervention, the teachers delivered small-group lessons 4 days a week, alternating the language of intervention daily (first Spanish, then English). Group posttest differences were statistically significant, with moderate to large effect sizes favoring the treatment group on all the English proximal measures and on three of the four Spanish proximal measures. Treatment group advantages were observed on Spanish and English norm-referenced standardized measures of language (except vocabulary) and a distal measure of language comprehension.

Healing Despondency with Biblical Narrative in John Chrysostom’s Letters to Olympias

This article demonstrates how Chrysostom’s retelling of certain biblical narratives works to heal the powerful emotion of despondency (ἀθυμία) in the Letters to Olympias. Chrysostom brings together a number of biblical narratives to form a narrative deep structure which is reflective of God’s characteristic way of intervening in the suffering of the saints: namely, God allows the saint’s suffering to reach fever pitch before immediately and radically reversing the fortunes of the saint, so demonstrating his own wisdom and power. Through repeated recitation of the scriptural narratives that form this deep structure (those of Joseph, Job, the Three Confessors, and Lazarus and the Rich Man, especially)—and through Chrysostom’s re-narrations of the same—this narrative structure and associated judgments are appropriated into Olympias’s life, such that her despondency is healed. The distinctive contribution of this article is the relationship elucidated between scriptural narrative and Chrysostom’s psychagogical project.

Lykophron’s Alexandra, Rome, and the Hellenistic World by Simon Hornblower

Reviewed by: Lykophron’s Alexandra, Rome, and the Hellenistic World by Simon Hornblower Kenneth R. Jones Simon Hornblower. Lykophron’s Alexandra, Rome, and the Hellenistic World. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018. Pp. xxiii, 254. $70.00. ISBN 978-0-19-872368-4. Hornblower describes his book as an unapologetic work of history and it comes as a welcome complement to the same author’s monumental commentary on the Alexandra (Oxford 2015), which addressed both historical and literary topics in the poem. Though it stands solidly on its own, the reader is often directed to more detailed arguments presented originally in the commentary. The book is divided into two sections. The first part establishes the boundaries of the poem’s geopolitical world through an analysis of all the places (cities, rivers, and mountains) mentioned, often obliquely, by the poet. The poet’s horizon encompasses the Hellenistic kingdoms of the eastern Mediterranean, though the eastern portions of the Seleucid realm are largely ignored in the poem; the cities and federations of Greece; Magna Graecia and Sicily; Rhodes; and Campania, Latium, and Rome. In general, the poet is much more interested in the western Mediterranean and especially Italy. Much of the account of Italy and the west comes through the poet’s retelling of the various nostoi narratives, for which the Alexandra is an important piece of evidence. The second part deals with two thematic chapters: the first, on the poem’s relation to a number of oracular and apocalyptic texts (Sibylline Oracle 3, Phlegon of Tralles’ Mirabilia, the biblical book of Daniel, and the “Oracle of the Potter”); the second, on a variety of religious topics (the Locrian maidens, cult epithets, and myths of foundation and identity). Hornblower advocates a composition date in the early second century bc in the wake of the Roman victories over Philip V and Antiochus III. In establishing this date, he moves far beyond the so-called “Roman Passages” (lines 1226–82 and 1446–50) that have usually served as the bases for such historical arguments. In the commentary, Hornblower argued at length that the poem showed familiarity with a host of Hellenistic poets of the third century—he does not recapitulate these arguments in the present book. The detailed investigation of places named in the poem shows the poet’s knowledge of developments in these places through the third century. Hornblower also argues that the Hannibalic War in Italy, especially in the south, left a deep impression on the poem. Though the evidence of the poem on these topics is rarely straightforward and the case is necessarily circumstantial, it is compelling. The poet also shows a strong interest in the Roman colonization of South Italy in the aftermath of Hannibal’s defeat. Based on the poet’s knowledge of South Italy and his concerns with developments there, Hornblower identifies the poet as a Greek from that region; more precisely, he suggests Italian Locris as the poet’s hometown. The poem’s treatment of Egypt is largely antiquarian and shows little interest in Ptolemaic rule. The main thesis of the book is that the Alexandra is an intensely political poem, preoccupied with Roman imperial successes and expansion. Like Polybius, the poet views Roman ascendancy in a favorable light. Indeed, the poem is a celebration of Roman power, though the poet is no sycophant. Prefiguring the approach of the writers of the Second Sophistic, the poet takes great pride in his Greek heritage. Greek myths serve as a lens to understand Rome’s incorporation into the Hellenistic world and the development of Roman hegemony over that world. The poet, however, is also aware of Roman myth. Hornblower argues that the Alexandra displays the earliest Greek recognition of the dual foundation of Rome by Aeneas and by Romulus and Remus. [End Page 500] This is an important book. Historians have largely limited their engagement with the poem to the passages dealing with Rome’s ascendancy over land and sea—the present reviewer is himself guilty of this approach. Hornblower has expanded the field of historical enquiry to encompass the entire poem. While readers might reject this or that argument in a book densely packed with detailed and specialized investigations...

Representations of natural environments, recurring characters and ways of living with the land in children’s retellings of First Nations oral narratives

We report on an analysis of the ways that children in five elementary school classrooms engaged with oral narrative patterns that they experienced through their participation in a First Nations cultural education program. Our analysis focuses on the use of a pattern of “measured descriptive elaboration”, that we argue functions to create vivid and memorable representations of local natural environments and of recurring characters in the stories. This form of narrative patterning is described and situated in relation to research from Indigenous scholars and allied researchers who have discussed the role of relational epistemologies in how we understand our experience of the natural world. A verse analysis of oral stories told by a cultural educator and of the students’ retellings of these stories suggests that children echoed many of these patterns of measured descriptive elaboration in their story retellings. A close analysis of two retellings displays how these patterns were being used by children to share memorable lessons with a listener, and how these patterns could support personalized experiences of natural environments. We conclude with a discussion of ways this research could applied in developing educational spaces that provide children with experiences of multiple and diverse narrative resources.

ЭМОЦИОНАЛЬНО НЕЙТРАЛЬНЫЕ ИНТЕРНЕТ-ТЕКСТЫ: В ПОИСКАХ СПЕЦИФИКИ

The article aims to discuss the problem of verbal features distinguishing emotionally neutral texts from emotional ones. Such features are necessary for elaborating a computer classifier designed to assign Internet texts in Russian to different emotional classes of texts including the neutral class. The complex analysis of the notion of neutrality in stylistics, axiology, emotiology and sentiment analysis allowed the author to formulate the preliminary hypothesis that emotionally neutral texts are marked by (1) the absence of obscene words and evaluative adjectives; (2) the non-expression of the modal frame of the utterance, which influences the functioning of xenomarkers (markers of narrative retelling), of deictic words and frequent predicates; (3) the lack of emotional vocabulary. The sources of the data for the study were three subcorpora: a subcorpus of texts from Wikipedia (136,184 tokens)—“neutral texts a priori”; a subcorpus of texts from the Russian social network VKontakte assessed by 2,000 informants as neutral ones—“neutral texts a posteriori” (14,000 tokens), and, finally, 15,000 emotionally loaded fragments of 60 to 80 words (1,092,327 tokens) from VKontakte assessed by the informants as texts manifesting different emotions: from anger to joy. The choice of the two neutral subcorpora was due to the author’s intention to examine the category of neutrality taking under consideration the genre of Internet texts. To learn the features of neutral Internet texts, the author used the methodology of corpus linguistics largely supported by a number of tools offered by the Sketch Engine corpus manager platform. The results partially confirmed the hypothesis and provided new details. Thus, the analysis revealed that the genre of the Internet text plays a crucial role in how the neutrality category manifests in it: for instance, Wikipedia texts have no obscene words, VKontakte texts assessed as neutral have a number of such lexemes. A similar discrepancy between neutral texts of different genres is observed on the grammatical level: for Vkontakte texts the collocation of the Russian verb byt’ [be] and the pronouns of the third person on, ona, oni [he, she, they] is statistically significant, for Wikipedia texts it is not. There are still some features proper to the two subcorpora considered as neutral: the absence of so-called “xenomarkers” and emotional vocabulary (words naming emotions, their manifestations, and typical situations in which people usually feel them); the low frequency, in comparison with emotional texts, of verbs and deictic words indicating time or place. The author has made a conclusion that, in the internet communicative space, the category of neutrality is construed differently than in others spheres of communication. Internet texts are generally so saturated with emotions that, even if in another context a text would be interpreted as an emotional one, in the social network users assess it as a fragment with no emotion. Another significant result is that the author has found a correlation between the type of narrator—narrator-experiencer, narratorobserver and narrator-non observer—and the type of text in terms of the category of neutrality. In further research, this will facilitate the predictability of text class—emotional or neutral.

The role of consistency in use of morphosyntactic forms in child-directed speech in the acquisition of Irish, a minority language undergoing rapid language change.

Irish is a rapidly changing minority language spoken as the main community language in some areas of the officially Irish-speaking Gaeltacht regions in Ireland. We analyse narratives from 17 parent-child dyads, living in one such area. All children, aged 3-6;4, had high exposure to the local variety of Irish. The input quality was measured by specifying consistency and accuracy of use of morphosyntactic forms in parental narratives directed to their children. The same morphosyntactic forms were analysed in narrative retell by the children. The children produced with high accuracy those forms that the parents used consistently and accurately. For the forms where parents' usage was inconsistent, large variation in the children's usage was observed. The findings suggest that consistency and accuracy in the use of morphosyntactic forms in the parental language is an important factor in language acquisition; however, its influence might be confounded by other factors.

The Effect of Narrative Language Intervention on the Language Skills of Children With Hearing Loss

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.

Psychosocial Outcomes of Severe Traumatic Brain Injury in Relation to Discourse Recovery: A Longitudinal Study up to 1 Year Post-Injury.

Purpose The interrelationship between psychosocial outcomes and discourse after severe traumatic brain injury remains largely unknown. This study examines outcomes relating to work, relationships, and independence within the context of discourse recovery across the 1st year post-injury. Method An inception cohort comprising 57 participants with severe traumatic brain injury was assessed at 3, 6, 9, and 12 months post-injury. Outcomes were measured with the Sydney Psychosocial Reintegration Scale-2 (Tate et al., 2012; Tate, Simpson, Loo, & Lane-Brown, 2011), and discourse was evaluated with Main Concept Analysis of a narrative retell. Correlation and linear regression analyses were utilized. Results Significant correlations were found between psychosocial outcomes reported by relatives and discourse performance across the 1st year. The 6-month discourse scores significantly predicted the 12-month psychosocial outcomes reported by relatives. Initial discourse severity and recovery pattern also informed outcomes. Conclusions Discourse disorders have a strong relationship with everyday outcomes relating to work, relationships, and independence as reported by relatives. Six months post-injury is a beneficial time for assessment, education, and service planning. Age, years of education, and aphasia may mediate recovery and outcomes. A clinical decision tree is offered to support goal setting. Supplemental Material https://doi.org/10.23641/asha.9755444.

Learning from Disasters: How Do We Share the Knowledge and Experience?

Introduction:Understanding the difficulties of sharing knowledge generated from disaster situations is essential to allow for a better process of disseminating the “lessons learned” from the ongoing natural and man-made situations which result in healthcare crises.Aim:To explore nurses ways of gaining knowledge from previous experiences, with a particular focus on earthquakes and natural disasters in the New Zealand (NZ) setting.Methods:Initial analysis of a series of individual, semi-structured interviews with a small group (n=10) of emergency department registered nurses from a range of geographical areas in NZ.Results:While familiar with the major earthquake events that have recently affected different areas of NZ (most notably Canterbury, Kaikoura, and Wellington), few could recall detailed information or lessons generated from these events. When asked about the most effective means of learning about and from disasters, the direct experience was identified as the most effective, followed by narrative retelling and vicarious experience.Discussion:Recognition of the value of “story-telling” in sharing information, and of the importance of offering experiences in a way that allows colleagues to experience or place themselves in the situation in a “virtual” sense is necessary for learning to occur. This involves an emotional as well as an intellectual connection to occur. There is a risk for knowledge to be lost, and lessons to be constantly “re-learned,” as each succeeding generation needs direct involvement to retain the information and insight generated. We need to tailor the medium by which this information is shared, for maximum effect.

Follow-Up on the Story Goodness Index for Characterizing Discourse Deficits Following Traumatic Brain Injury.

Purpose The Story Goodness Index (SGI) is a hybrid analysis of narrative discourse combining 2 macrostructural measures: story grammar and story completeness. Initially proposed by Lê and colleagues ( Lê, Coelho, Mozeiko, & Grafman, 2011 ), the SGI is intended to characterize the discourse performance of individuals with cognitive-communication disorders. In this study, the SGI was utilized to examine the discourse of 2 groups, one with closed head injuries and another with non-brain injured (NBI) peers. The intent of this study was to ascertain whether the SGI could differentiate the discourse performance of the 2 groups, as was previously reported for individuals with penetrating traumatic brain injury and an NBI comparison group ( Lê, Coelho, Mozeiko, Krueger, & Grafman, 2012 ). Because of the retrospective nature of this study, the wordless visual narrative used to elicit discourse was different from the narrative used by Lê and colleagues (2012) . Method A retrospective analysis of discourse was performed on 55 individuals with a history of closed head injury and 47 NBI socioeconomically matched peers. During the initial assessment, participants were engaged in a narrative retell task. Each participant was shown a wordless picture story and then asked to retell the story to the examiner. Story narratives were reanalyzed for story grammar (organization) and completeness (critical content). Results A significant group difference was noted for the story grammar measure, but not for story completeness. Although the SGI plots depicted the heterogeneity in discourse performance of the 2 groups, a chi-square test of independence revealed no significant association between group membership and SGI quadrant. Conclusions Findings from this study were inconsistent with those of Lê and colleagues. The studies did not use identical SGI protocols; specifically, different picture stimuli were used to elicit the story retells. Therefore, this study cannot be considered a replication. The story used by Lê and colleagues was judged to be more complex, requiring more inference for story interpretation. Future studies should interpret findings within the context of the story stimuli presented.

Spoken fictional narrative and literacy skills of children with Down syndrome

BackgroundChildren with Down syndrome (DS) exhibit below average nonverbal intelligence and impaired language skills; however, their spoken narrative production is a relative strength. AimsWe examined expressive language skills produced during fictional narrative retells and analyzed the unique contribution of expressive language skills to word-level reading and reading comprehension of children with DS. Methods and proceduresThe microstructure and macrostructure of fifteen, 8- to 18-year-old children with DS’s narrative retells were analyzed. Receptive vocabulary, word-level reading, and reading comprehension also were measured. ResultsNarrative microstructure analyses revealed restricted syntactic and semantic diversity. Further analyses of sentence complexity revealed that children with DS predominately produced prepositional phrases and produced more verbs than nouns. Narrative macrostructure analysis revealed participants use of episodic components; however, their stories did not include mental state references. Narrative microstructure contributed unique variance to word-level reading, whereas narrative macrostructure contributed unique variance to word-level reading and reading comprehension. Additionally, strong correlations were found between narrative skills and literacy skills. Conclusions and implicationsFindings from this study support the use of narrative microstructure and macrostructure analyses as a valuable clinical tool to guide assessment and intervention planning for school-aged children with DS.

What does retelling ‘tell’ about children’s reading proficiency?

Book retelling has been frequently used as an indicator of children’s reading proficiency. However, how children’s performance varies across retelling narrative and expository texts and whether that has different implications for reading proficiency remains understudied. The present study examined 85 high-poverty second- and third-graders’ retelling of narrative and expository books. A parallel coding scheme was developed to evaluate children’s performance on retelling fluency, content, and language complexity. Children’s retelling performance was compared across text types and analyzed in relation to reading proficiency. Findings revealed similarities and differences in retelling across text types, with narrative retelling containing a higher proportion of content-matched T-units, whereas expository retelling contained a higher proportion of inference generation and more complex syntactic structures. Moreover, indicators of reading proficiency were found to vary across text types. Findings highlight the distinct cognitive and linguistic demands posed by reading narrative and expository texts and provide implications for effective instruction and assessment.

Acquisition of formulaic sequences in a study abroad context

Abstract Research (e.g., Wood, 2010a) suggests that study abroad (SA) and the use of formulaic language (FL), or sequences of words that tend to go together, aid L2 oral fluency. Nonetheless, there is conflicting evidence regarding whether quantity of L2 use abroad is a predictor of language outcomes. This article examines the acquisition of FL by US L2 learners of Spanish (n = 11) who studied abroad in Spain. The study measures the temporal fluency variables and the formula/run ratio of narrative retell tasks pre- and post-SA by L2 learners and native Spanish speakers. The findings indicate that regardless of program type and length, learners produce more FL post-SA, but they are still far from target-like usage. Moreover, participants’ mean length of run is directly related to the formula/run ratio. Lastly, an analysis of language use shows no direct relationship between L2 use abroad and oral fluency outcomes.

A profile of the language and cognitive skills contributing to oral inferential comprehension in young children with developmental language disorder.

Children with developmental language disorder (DLD) demonstrate poor oral inferential comprehension. Research investigating the skills that underpin oral inferential comprehension in young children with DLD is necessary in order to better understand and improve inferential comprehension in this population. To profile the language and cognitive skills that contribute to oral inferential comprehension in young children with DLD. Seventy-six children aged 5-6 years with a diagnosis of DLD were assessed on a wide range of language and cognitive measures. Oral inferential comprehension of narrative was the primary outcome measure. Narrative macrostructure and microstructure, literal comprehension, vocabulary, phonological loop, and theory of mind were significant predictors of inferential comprehension in bivariate analyses. However, multivariate regression analysis indicated that only narrative retell macrostructure and theory of mind contributed a significant amount of unique variance to inferential comprehension. This study profiled the skills contributing to oral inferential comprehension in young children with DLD, to support the clinical and theoretical understanding of the ability in this population. The findings have implications for future intervention studies.

School-Year Grammatical Development in Narrative Retells: Spanish-English Dual Language Learners

Oral narrative retells are rich sources of information for language development. Investigators collected English-language oral narrative retells during the fall and spring from 65 Spanish-English-speaking dual language learners (DLL) in kindergarten and first grade. Investigators examined transcripts of oral narratives for (a) inclusion and accuracy of microstructural elements using the Narrative Assessment Protocol (NAP; Pence, Justice, & Gosse, 2007), (b) percentage of grammatical utterances, and (c) types of verb errors. Prepositional phrases, elaborated noun phrases, irregular past tense verbs, and copula verbs were the most prevalent grammatical forms. Omission errors were the most prevalent verb error type. DLLs’ narrative retells revealed significantly increased number of total NAP codes and diversity of NAP codes. Grammaticality of utterances increased from approximately 77% to 87% from fall to spring. All verb errors types decreased over the academic year. Direct feature coding approaches are useful for tracking developmental progress in DLLs’ retells.

Getting comfortable with being uncomfortable: a narrative account of becoming an academic developer

ABSTRACTThis article uses a narrative retelling of my journey to academic development to offer a new insight into induction initiatives: alongside a critical commitment to student learning, new academic developers need to build an informed and scholarly ‘idea of the university’. As universities renew focus on teaching and learning, student retention, and success, there is a corollary increase in new academic developers. Newcomers need a full picture of the field; induction that focuses on the narrow institutional context and aspects of best practice is unlikely to fully prepare new academic developers for tensions they may encounter.

The Development of Bilingual Narrative Retelling Among Spanish-English Dual Language Learners Over Two Years.

This exploratory study investigates the development of oral narrative retell proficiency among Spanish-English emergent bilingual children longitudinally from kindergarten to second grade in Spanish and English as they learned literacy in the 2 languages concurrently. Oral narrative retell assessments were conducted with children who spoke Spanish at home and were enrolled in a dual language immersion program (N = 12) in the spring of kindergarten and second grade. Retells were transcribed and coded for vocabulary and grammar at the microlevel (Miller, Andriacchi, & Nockerts, 2015, 2016) and story structure at the macrolevel (Heilmann, Miller, Nockerts, & Dunaway, 2010). In microstructure paired-sample t tests, children showed significant improvements in vocabulary in both languages (Spanish total number of words η2 = .43, Spanish number of different words η2 = .44, English total number of words η2 = .61, English number of different words η2 = .62) but not grammar by second grade. At the macrostructure level, children showed significantly higher performance in English only (English narrative scoring scheme η2 = .47). The finding that children significantly improved in vocabulary in both languages but in overall story structure only in English suggests that discourse skills were being facilitated in English whereas Spanish discourse development may have stagnated even within a dual language immersion program. Results contribute to what is currently known about bilingual oral narrative development among young Spanish speakers enrolled in such programs and can inform assessment and instructional decisions.