ERIC Number: EJ778523
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2007-Nov
Pages: 8
Abstractor: Author
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-0269-9206
EISSN: N/A
Available Date: N/A
Informativeness of the Spoken Narratives of Younger and Older Adolescents with Specific Language Impairment and Their Counterparts with Normal Language
Reed, Vicki A.; Patchell, Frederick C.; Coggins, Truman E.; Hand, Linda S.
Clinical Linguistics & Phonetics, v21 n11-12 p953-960 Nov 2007
A large body of literature describing the narrative skills of young children with and without language impairments exists. However, there has been only limited study of the informativeness of narratives of adolescents with normally developing language (NL) and those of adolescents with specific language impairment (SLI), even though narratives play an important role in adolescents' complex social and academic lives and there is emerging evidence that narrative abilities in young children portend their later language proficiency. This study examined the informativeness of oral narratives produced by four groups of adolescents: younger adolescents with NL (mean age = 13 years:2 months), older adolescents with NL (15:10), younger adolescents with SLI (13:2) and older adolescents with SLI (15:9). The results indicated that the narratives produced by the SLI adolescents consisted of fewer informative and more irrelevant/inaccurate responses than the narratives of their peers with NL. The SLI adolescents also tended to give more vague responses in their narratives than their NL counterparts, as well tending not to provide any responses to the pictures representing the story. Taken together, these results painted a picture of SLI adolescents producing less satisfying, complete, and cohesive narratives, findings consistent with those of the research on children with SLI. Language status more than age appeared to be the factor that affected the likelihood of the adolescents providing or not providing informative responses. These results suggested that the performance of adolescents with SLI may not catch up to the level of performance of their NL counterparts during adolescence. (Contains 3 tables and 2 notes.) [This project was supported by the Catholic Education Offices of the Diocese of Parramatta and the Archdiocese of Sydney.]
Descriptors: Language Impairments, Adolescents, Comparative Analysis, Language Proficiency, Personal Narratives, Oral Language
Taylor & Francis, Ltd. 325 Chestnut Street Suite 800, Philadelphia, PA 19106. Tel: 800-354-1420; Fax: 215-625-2940; Web site: http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals/default.html
Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Research
Education Level: N/A
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: N/A
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A
Author Affiliations: N/A

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