Panel Title
SLA: Panel
Studies in Narrative Competence: Bilingual Children Tell the Story in Two Languages
Paper Title
Analysis of Bilingual Children's Narratives: Referential Topic Management
Author's Name, E-mail Address and Institution
Momoe Saito Fu, momoes@hotmail.com, UC Berkeley
Abstract
The present study investigates forty English-Japanese bilingual children's narratives in light of the relationship between certain grammatical elements and what are perceived as successful narratives. To determine whether narratives are successful, both English and Japanese native speakers evaluated narratives told by bilingual children. First, the study analyzed the relationship between successful narratives and such factors as children's ages and narrative lengths. Positive associations were identified (1) between the native speakers' evaluations and the children's ages and (2) between the native English speakers' evaluation of English narratives and the native Japanese speakers' evaluation of Japanese narratives. In other words, the older children are, the better their narratives are judged to be in both languages, and those children who tended to be considered good narrators in one language tended also to be considered good narrators in the other language. The study also revealed a positive association between the length of English narratives and that of Japanese narratives; that is, those children who tended to create longer narratatives in one language tended to create longer narratives in the other language as well. However, no positive association was identified between the number of utterances and the level of the evaluations by native speakers, implying that narrating more does not necessarily improve the listener's comprehension. Second, in order to identify the elements of good narratives, the study further investigated the relationship between bilingual children's referential topic management strategies and successful narratives. Positive associations were identified between the native speakers evaluations and (1) the use of "a noun phrase (NP) + the subject marker ga" for the first mention of referents in Japanese, and (2) ellipses for the continuous mention of particular referents in both English and Japanese. The study thus implies that these strategies contribute to what is perceived as a good narrative.
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