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This study examined the validity of data collected from a novel online story retell task. The task was specifically designed for use by junior school teachers with the support of speech–language therapists or literacy specialists. The assessment task was developed to monitor children's oral language progress in their first year at school as part of the Better Start Literacy Approach for early literacy teaching. Teachers administered the task to 303 5-year-olds in New Zealand at school entry and after 20 weeks and 12 months of schooling. The children listened to a story with pictures via iPad presentation and were then prompted to retell the story. The children's spontaneous language used in their story retell was captured and uploaded digitally via iPad audio recording and analyzed using semi-automated speech recognition and computer software. Their responses to factual and inferential story comprehension questions were also analyzed. The data suggested that the task has good criterion validity. Significant correlations between story retell measures and a standardized measure of children's oral language were found. The Better Start Literacy Approach story retell task, which took approximately 6 min for teachers to administer, accurately identified children with low oral language ability 81% of the time. Growth curve analysis revealed that the task was useful for monitoring oral language development, including for English as second language learners. Boys showed a slower story comprehension growth trajectory than girls. The Better Start Literacy Approach story retell task shows promise in providing valid data to support teacher judgement of children's oral language development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Oral narrative assessments are important for diagnosis of language disorders in school-age children so scoring needs to be reliable and consistent. This study explored the impact of training on the variability of story grammar scores in children's oral narrative assessments scored by multiple raters. Fifty-one speech pathologists and 19 final-year speech pathology students attended training workshops on oral narrative assessment scoring and analysis. Participants scored two oral narratives prompted by two different story stimuli and produced by two children of differing ages. Demographic information, story grammar scores and a confidence survey were collected pre- and post-training. The total story grammar score changed significantly for one of the two oral narratives. A significant effect was observed for rater years of experience and the change in total story grammar scores post training, with undergraduate students showing the greatest change. Two story grammar elements, character and attempt, changed significantly for both stories, with an overall trend of increased element scores post-training. Confidence ratings also increased post-training. Findings indicated that training via an interactive workshop can reduce rater variability when using researcher-developed narrative scoring systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The study examines the effects of a short period of explicit instruction on the narrative comprehension of French-speaking kindergarteners, as measured by story retell and comprehension questions. A group of kindergarteners that received explicit instruction (n = 15) was compared to a control group that was exposed to the same storybooks and afterwards shared related experiences (n = 15). In the explicit instruction group, comprehension was facilitated through instruction on story grammar, cause-effect relationships, and the internal states of characters. Instructional strategies included explanation, modelling of the identification of story components, guided practice, feedback, and the use of visuals to map story elements, depict causes and effects, and represent internal states. A t posttest, children in the explicit instruction group had significantly higher scores on the retell task, as expected, but not on the comprehension questions, a finding we discuss in light of task demands. Although further investigation is needed, the retell results are consistent with findings by others, demonstrating the benefits of instruction on children's narrative skills. The study is the first we are aware of to assess instruction of brief duration and for French-speaking children, and one of the very few to examine explicit instruction with kindergarteners, regardless of language. Narrative instruction of the kind reported here might be of particular interest to speech-language therapists given the benefits that accrue to children as well as the opportunities that such instruction provides for 'push in' service delivery and collaboration with classroom educators. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]