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Tell me a story in English or Swedish: Narrative production and comprehension in bilingual preschoolers and first graders

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 December 2015

UTE BOHNACKER
UTE BOHNACKER*
Affiliation:
Uppsala University
*
ADDRESS FOR CORRESPONDENCE Ute Bohnacker, Department of Linguistics and Philology, Uppsala University, Box 635, Uppsala SE-75126, Sweden. E-mail: ute.bohnacker@lingfil.uu.se
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Abstract

This study examines macrostructural aspects of narrative skills in 52 bilingual Swedish- and English-speaking children age 5–7. Elicited fictional story production and comprehension tasks were administered in parallel fashion in both Swedish and English (Multilingual Assessment Instrument for Narratives; Gagarina et al., 2012). Scores on the Multilingual Assessment Instrument for Narratives were compared across languages; moreover, story structure components in the narratives and answers to probe questions were qualitatively analyzed. Age effects (5-year-olds vs. 6- to 7-year-olds) for macrostructure production and narrative comprehension were evident, but no effect for language (Swedish/English). The results suggest that story structure is invariant across a bilingual child's two languages at a given age, with similar awareness of the intentions and goal-directed behavior of the story protagonists, irrespective of language.

Type
Articles
Information
Applied Psycholinguistics , Volume 37 , Issue 1: Narrative abilities in bilingual children , January 2016 , pp. 19 - 48
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2015 

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