5 Years-Old narrative skills in a “pretend reading story” situation

Abstract

This study aimed to explore the development of narrative skills of low and middle socio-economic Level (SEL) 5-years-old children. At the beginning of the school year, the children were asked to select a story book and “read” it. Low SEL children did not respond to the task, so its performance was analyzed after an intensive instruction program that included a daily situation of story reading. The analysis of the narratives that children produced allows us to identified differences between groups. Middle SEL children narrated the story or “pretended to read” using linguistic resources characteristic of fictional stories. On their part, the stories of low SEL children, even after the program, presented an oral stile and their topics were related to scripts and personal experiences.