- 103 - these language combinations is an Indian folktale from 200 B.C. called The Four Friends,
retold by Elizabeth Sharma and published by Tiger Books 1985. In the school library there were also books in English which projected a positive attitude towards children from
other cultures, e.g. Sikh Wedding by Beverley Birch, and Gifts and Almonds, an account of the Moslem festival of Eid, by Joan Solomon, both published by Hamish Hamilton in the
1980s. These books are attractively produced and illustrated by excellent colour photographs.
3.9 Summary
In this chapter we have been considering many interrelated aspects of the art of storytelling. We started by looking at some of the influences of homecommunity
storytelling traditions on children’s sense of story; we then looked briefly at experimental studies of narrative ability in children and contrasted them with studies describing
children’s performances of storytelling. The influence of books, their layout, use of graphic forms, pictorial elements, and many other factors also contribute to the development of
stories and these have been discussed in the chapter. We went from the general to the specific when we discussed, at some length, the sources and communicative uses of
prefabricated language chunks, and ended by looking at some of the differences between oral and literate style in narrative. In the final subsections we looked at the cultural
background of the Panjabi-speaking subjects in relation to the acquisition of narrative skills and storytelling in school and how they learn to tell stories in English.
In the next chapter, we leave the background issues which have provided the framework for our study and describe in detail the aims of our own research—how the project was set
up, how the data were collected, and how they have been analysed and why. We also seek to explain the modifications to the Labov Model which have been made to enable us to
more adequately characterize this data and make a few general comments on our findings. These include a discussion of how well evaluative syntax correlates with other indicators of
language proficiency and the particular devices which seem to be preferred by young speakers. In chapter 5 this L2 data is then compared with similar data from some of the L1
interlocutors.
- 104 - CHAPTER 4: EVALUATION IN L2 NARRATIVE PRODUCTIONS
4.1 Narrative Skills and Evaluation
Bamberg, in his opening remarks to the Preface of his 1987 monograph The Acquisition of Narratives, states that, “broadly speaking, the ability to narrate a story is considered a skill—
some people can do it better than others”, and in the previous chapter we headed our final subsection “Storytelling in School and L2 Acquisition of English Storytelling Skills.”
Children using their mother tongue begin telling stories of personal experience as early as 20 months Scollon 1976; Nelson and Gruendel 1981; Miller and Sperry 1988, and their
storytelling skills develop in a variety of significant ways during their preschool and primary school years Peterson and McCabe 1983; Kemper 1984. In recent years researchers have
become increasingly aware of the link between narrative skills and literacy, some viewing narrative abilities as providing an important foundation for literacy skills, especially the
comprehension of written texts Olson and Torrance 1981; Snow 1983; Cameron, Hunt and Linton 1988. Some have claimed that narrative ability is also an excellent predictor of
later academic performance in both language-impaired Feagans and Applebaum 1986 and non-impaired children Cameron et al. 1988.
Hemphill, Picardi and Tager-Flusberg 1991 note that: “Storytelling involves the complex interplay of a variety of domains of development including linguistic, cognitive, social and
pragmatic abilities” 1991:264. In this chapter, we are concerned to some extent with all these domains, as they overlap and interrelate at all levels, but our primary focus is the
relationship between narrative discourse and the linguistic structures used to create it, i.e. the discourse manifestations of narrative, rather than the story content see figure 2.5, p. 22. To
quote Bamberg again: …for adult narrators the two domains are intrinsically interwoven, i.e. neither can the
use of linguistic contrasts be explained without explorations of the discourse functions they serve in narrative, nor can the constitution of the narratives be explained without a
detailed analysis of the linguistic particulars. Bamberg 1987:v
- 105 - This would suggest, perhaps, the following over-simplistic equation:
“Syntax in use” involves specific linguistic knowledge such as the manipulation of definite and indefinite reference and anaphora, the control of tense shifts and the mastery of the
complex sentence structures that mark temporal and causal relations, and the use of evaluative syntax. Figure 4.1 displays this relationship between linguistic and pragmatic
knowledge.
Figure 4.1 Studies in the growth of productive narrative abilities used a number of methods to elicit
diverse genres of narrative: 1. asking children to generate personal narratives without supportive props Peterson
and McCabe 1983; Roth and Spekman 1986; 2. describing events depicted in a wordless movie Michaels and Collins 1984; Sleight
and Prinz 1985; 3. telling a story from a wordless Picture Book Stenning and Mitchell 1985; Bamberg
1987; 4. retelling a story told by a researcher Merritt and Liles 1989.
We have chosen to use the fourth method listed, partly because we wanted to use our own materials and it was easier to write six stories than to produce a wordless picture book, and
partly because we felt that the story content would be fresh in the subjects’ minds and therefore they would be able to give more attention to the manner of the actual telling.
Even picture book narration and describing the events of a wordless movie involve the Grammar
Linguistic
Pragmatic Discourse
Domain Type of Knowledge
Form
Function Narrative Skills
Syntax in Use =
- 106 - “reading” and interpretation of the pictures before the story can be verbalized, and so are
not necessarily easier tasks in spite of their more immediate “here” and “now” quality. We are aware, however, that the retelling of Model Stories has its limitations, in that the
children are not telling their own stories, and may not even like, or fully understand, the stories they are being asked to tell. If so, how can they possibly perform them effectively? By
“perform” we mean a “dramatized re-enactment” as described by Wolfson 1982: “When a speaker acts out a story, as if to give his audience the opportunity to experience the event
and his evaluation of it, he may be said to be giving a performance” Wolfson 1982:24. Wolfson’s performance features have much in common with Labov’s evaluative devices.
She lists direct speech, repetition, expressive sounds, sound effects, and motions and gestures among others. We would include all these in our intensifier category. Our
contention is that the better storytellers do make the stories they tell uniquely their own and evaluate them accordingly. We have sought to address the issue directly by asking the
better storytellers to pair up and tell stories of their own choice. The results were revealing: only Humira told a better story than she did in her previous
efforts. This was a dramatic version of The Three Bears, which was well-constructed and gave all the details, complete with distinct voices for each bear. It was also considerably
longer than most of her others. Shvinder’s Little Red Hen was patchy and rather self- conscious; it started well, then lost some key events in the middle, and the climax was told
only as a brief summary. So the whole performance lost its final impact. Sakander’s story of a Lion and a Mouse, based rather loosely on the traditional tale, lost its way as innovations
were added and then ended inconclusively. Fariba made up her own story about Walter Kristel, the Snowman, and his visit to Fariba herself and all her friends. It was reasonably
well done but no more memorable than any of her others. The fact that in three out of four cases there was very little difference between the telling of a Model Story and one
chosen freely by the child confirmed our conviction that story retelling was a valid method of obtaining suitable data for the investigation of evaluation in children’s narratives.
Wolfson listed a number of variable factors which seem to influence a teller’s decision to perform or not perform a narrative; four of these are relevant to the present discussion.
These are:
- 107 - 1. similarity or not of sex, age, ethnicity, occupation, status, between teller and
addressee; 2. whether the teller and audience are friends;
3. the teller’s assessment of the audience’s similarity of attitudes and background; 4. whether the speech situation itself is conducive e.g. the interview situation is not
conducive. The fourth variable is perhaps the most crucial, with the first and second also assuming
different degrees of importance with different tellers. The third variable probably only applies in rather an indirect way, as the common school background would mitigate to
some extent differences of attitude and background emanating from the home. However, evaluation involves more than mere performance; as we have seen, the performance
features we have mentioned so far are confined to the intensifier category. Evaluation primarily undertakes the task of articulating the point of the story and persuading the
audience of its tellability; much of this is achieved through the effective use of syntax. Therefore, we are claiming in this thesis that evaluation, and particularly evaluative syntax, is
a reliable indicator of narrative skills which can be used to compare data across subjects and so enable us to chart some sort of developmental pattern based on the findings.
The rest of the chapter is organized with this general aim in mind. We begin by discussing the methodological issues, including the analysis and transcription of the data, proceeding
to an in-depth study of one example from the data, and from there to a general discussion of the findings. A detailed description and consideration of all the specific evaluative
devices, both internal and external, found in the data will be undertaken in chapters 6 and 7. However, in this chapter, we do need to indicate clearly the rationale for the analysis,
how it relates to the discussion of children’s acquisition of the art of storytelling in chapter 3 and to other measures of narrative ability, such as the non-evaluative use of
subordination, the child’s independently estimated ability in L2, and the length of the narrative. In chapter 5 we relate evaluation to plot structure and the general coherence of
the narrative text, and to the production of errors. We also seek to answer the question: How do these L2 narratives compare with their L1 counterparts? We claim that there are significant
differences in most, if not all, of the measures of narrative ability listed above.
- 108 -
4.2 Methodology 4.2.1 The Subjects
