THE DEVELOPMENT OF SCHOOLED NARRATIVE COMPETENCE AMONG SECOND GRADERS

The ability to produce schooled narrative is closely related to students' literacy development and school success. This study examined young children's communicative competence in schooled narrative and the nature of its development. Participants were 21 second graders in a literature-based classroom. Four stories were collected from each child at equal intervals of the school year through a dictation procedure that taps their discursive knowledge of schooled narrative. These stories were analyzed for inclusion of a variety of linguistic markers that embody three essential features of schooled narrative - autonomy, conventionality, and specialized grammar. Results showed that participants demonstrated more familiarity with conventionality than with the other two features of schooled narrative. Their understanding of specialized grammar was particularly nascent. There was also considerable variation in their discursive competence in schooled narrative. Further, significant changes were observed during the school year in the children's knowledge of autonomy, but not conventionality or specialized grammar. Taken together, these findings suggest that the development of schooled narrative competence is non-uniform, feature-specific, unstable, and complex.