ERIC Number: EJ951490
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2011-Dec
Pages: 19
Abstractor: As Provided
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-1092-4388
EISSN: N/A
Available Date: N/A
Content and Form in the Narratives of Children with Specific Language Impairment
Colozzo, Paola; Gillam, Ronald B.; Wood, Megan; Schnell, Rebecca D.; Johnston, Judith R.
Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, v54 n6 p1609-1627 Dec 2011
Purpose: This project investigated the relationship of content and form in the narratives of school-age children. Method: Two samples of children with specific language impairment (SLI) and their age-matched peers (British Columbia sample, "M" age = 9;0 [years;months], "N" = 26; Texas/Kansas sample, "M" age = 7;6, "N" = 40) completed the Test of Narrative Language (TNL; Gillam & Pearson, 2004). The relative strength of content elaboration and grammatical accuracy were measured for each child using variables derived from the TNL scoring system (Study 1) and from analysis of the story texts (Study 2). Results: Both studies indicated that, compared with age peers, the children with SLI were more likely to produce stories of uneven strength--either stories with poor content that were grammatically quite accurate or stories with elaborated content that were less grammatical. Conclusions: These findings suggest that school-age children with SLI may struggle with the cumulative load of creating a story that is both elaborate and grammatical. They also show that the absence of errors is not necessarily a sign of strength. Finally, they underscore the value of comparing individual differences in multiple linguistic domains, including the elaboration of content, grammatical accuracy, and syntactic complexity.
Descriptors: Grammar, Language Impairments, Foreign Countries, Children, Comparative Analysis, Language Skills, Scoring, Story Telling, Individual Differences, Content Analysis, Communication Skills
American Speech-Language-Hearing Association (ASHA). 10801 Rockville Pike, Rockville, MD 20852. Tel: 800-638-8255; Fax: 301-571-0457; e-mail: subscribe@asha.org; Web site: http://jslhr.asha.org
Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Research
Education Level: N/A
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: N/A
Identifiers - Location: Canada; Kansas; Texas
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A
Author Affiliations: N/A

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