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Narrative Development of School Children pp 33–51Cite as

Narrative Development of Children

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Abstract

Narrative is the first type of extended discourse in which children engage along their developmental course (Westby 1984). Children first listen to narratives and stories told by adults in their infant and preschool years, but soon their role shifts from receiving to actively participating and producing as they grow older. At school, narrative is also a primary genre inside and outside the classroom, which is used between children with teachers and peers, and between children and written texts or graphic representation, such as drawings, diagrams, and photos. As they progress further in their journey of schooling, narrative also functions as a genre for evaluating children’s abilities to re-tell, summarize, paraphrase, or present the knowledge that they have learned. This chapter first discusses children’s narrative development in general and some important factors that influence the narrative development of children across different social and linguistic backgrounds. Finally, this chapter reviews specific studies on the narrative development about children of various native languages in five Asian regions: Hong Kong, Taiwan, Japan, Singapore, and Malaysia.

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  1. Department of Foreign Languages and Literature, National Cheng Kung University, 1, University Road, Tainan, 700, Taiwan

    Shin-Mei Kao

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  1. Shin-Mei Kao
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Kao, SM. (2015). Narrative Development of Children. In: Narrative Development of School Children. SpringerBriefs in Education. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-287-191-6_3

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