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Empathy plays an important role in social interactions and tends to be shaped by cultural codes. It is likely that in response to identical situations, empathetic reactions will reveal specific cultural patterns, differing across both cognitive and affective dimensions. This study recruited Chinese and Spanish participants (N=20) and situated them in scenarios to induce empathy (family conflicts). The oral narratives were analyzed to identify cultural patterns in empathy. The results show similarities and cultural differences between Chinese and Spanish participants, both in the adoption of perspectives in the conflict story and in the strategies chosen to manage an alternative story. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Oral literature is the heritage and identity of the Malay nation that must be proud because it symbolises the wisdom of the previous society. Not many young generations want to defend this heritage until it is eventually lost to time. As with oral literature, Awang Batil deserves to be defended; it is not just entertainment, but the elements of wisdom contained in his performance need to be interpreted. Accordingly, this study aims to identify and discuss the elements of wisdom and intelligence in Awang Batil's performance. The main method of this study is field research through recording techniques, interviews, and direct notes. Awang Batil's performance's wisdom and intelligence are examined based on two perspectives: linguistic intelligence and musical intelligence. Linguistic intelligence discusses civilized pronunciation, language ability, and memory ability, while musical intelligence is seen from two aspects, namely musical instruments and poetry. Analysis proves that Awang Batil's performance highlights the wisdom and intelligence of a comforter through the Multiple Intelligences Theory. It is evident that Awang Batil is not just a 'village entertainer', but this oral narrative has successfully captivated the global community by holding many performances abroad. It is hoped that studies about Awang Batil will be increased so that it can be a reference for the new generation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This research paper is based on the Analysis of Identity Construction of Oral Narratives of Torban Oboo, Genealogy and their identity related to territory. The research methodology used is a qualitative research methodology. The method is built on social knowledge, historical and social interpretation. The research framework is used to narrate and interpret in a descriptive manner. To conduct this research, the researcher collected data from the primary source of evidence. Accordingly, the data source of this research was the Tulama Oromo Torban Oboo community living in Boosat district and surrounding area and the informants were selected from the source sites through purposive and snowball technique. The selection was based on the knowledge of Torban Obo:s identity. Furthermore, the approach used is the malleability of historical and genealogical questions. Accordingly, the collected oral narratives are analyzed in a qualitative manner. According to the evidence from the collected oral narratives, the local natives and children of Torban Obo passed on their where they are from as a strategy for the next generation. This genealogical back ground is found to be confirmed in both male and female directions. It appears to have its own system and ceremony to make the method of transmitting this genealogy more practical. In addition, the community also has many ways of understanding its environment in terms of land and boundary or territory issues. Land and land territories are important to this community associated with their identity and governed by the laws of the Gada system. This suggests that boundaries or territories connect all levels of social thinking, social actions and processes beyond what is natural. It also shows us that land territories and land are related to the development of a society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article discusses aspects of anticlericalism as portrayed in Irish oral tradition. The Roman Catholic clergy are seen to have power not only within the performance of their official duties but were also understood to have control over supernatural beings and to possess curative capacities in matters of prophecy and damnation. The article places the clergy in their social context describing, among other factors, how they were separated from ordinary people. Criticism of the clergy was expressed in popular verse, proverb and tale and by these means, the community assisted in forming the perception of clergy. Poets were independent of the clergy as they felt they could criticise them in the vernacular verse of the people. Dissatisfaction expressed in verse commented on their fine living while, at the same time, realising the need for their service. Mocking is frequently a means of expressing discontent and in oral tradition, a particular trait associated with the clergy is that of miserliness. The author cites examples of tales and proverbs depicting priests' greed and avarice. Such sayings and verses might be seen to indicate people were independent of the clergy, especially at a time when Irish was the general vernacular in Ireland. These sayings, verses and tales are part of a 'vehicle for social protest'. The essay suggests that the aetiological tales offering reasons for the avarice of priests helped to reconcile general popular empathy with the clergy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Éilis Ní Dhuibhne worked with the Urban Folklore Project – which is now part of the National Folklore Collection at UCD – from 1979 to 1980. She was appointed one of six supervisors in this ambitious project, working on a full-time basis and documenting Dublin lore. She made audio recordings, took photographs, wrote notes, made video recordings, devised and circulated questionnaires and also kept a diary. She collected in farflung places such as Ringsend, Mulhuddart and Ballymun and she interviewed countless people from school children to near-centenarians. This article lists the audio recordings made by Éilís for the project. A manuscript volume in the National Folklore Collection gives a listing in numerical order of the audio tapes made by the collectors for the Urban Folklore Project. This listing includes the names of the collector and the informant and also indicates which tapes have been transcribed and bound in volumes within the National Folklore Collection. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Everything that we see on this earth is an imitation, be it a human being, animal, or plant; each of them is a memory of something/someone who already existed. Memory studies is a multidisciplinary field of knowledge that engages in understanding the ability to use memory as a tool in remembering/forgetting the past. Memory studies as a branch of knowledge began its presence by forging concepts of cultural memory to demand special focus from scholars of anthropology, education, literature, history, philosophy, psychology, and sociology, among others. Discussing the way memory studies began growing, Roediger and Wertsch write that, “Over the past few decades, collective memory has become a topic of renewed interest in the humanities and social sciences and is now a key part of emerging interdisciplinary activity in ‘‘memory studies’’ (Roediger & Wertsch, 2008). French sociologist Maurice Halbwachs (1925, 1941) contributed immensely to this field of knowledge and his significant work “Social Frameworks of Memory” in 1925 holds great importance. For a long time until Maurice Halbwachs published his notable work "On Collective Memory" (1925), in which he analysed that ownership of memory need not be an individual but the individuals as a collective unit, be it family, society or community and the memory is operated thus by a community. He distinguished between autobiographical memory – memory of those events we ourselves experience; historical memory – memory that reaches us only through historical records; history – as the remembered past which is no longer important to our lives; and collective memory – the active past that forms our identities. Also, Halbwachs characterised shared memories as effective markers of social differentiation. “Collective memory is not history, though it is sometimes made from similar material. It is a collective phenomenon but only manifests itself in the actions and statements of individuals […] it often privileges the interests of the contemporary” (Kansteiner 2002)). Cultural memory conserves the heritage that involves an act of remembering.

The lexical parameters of oral stories of two generations of Russian-German bilinguals and the function of lexical means in the narrative strategy implementation are describes. Through addressing the oral narrative this study is included in the range of modern works considering the features of text generation by bilinguals. The relevance of the study lies both in the material and in the chosen methods of analysis. The aim of the study is to identify the degree of the narrative strategy formation at the lexical level among representatives of two generations of Russian-German bilinguals in comparison with monolingual Russian native speakers. The research material is a corpus of experimentally collected oral stories (47 texts) of German-Russian bilinguals. M. Mayer’s book “Frog, where are you?” was used as a stimulus for subjects. The test subjects were representatives of 22 families: children - 26 people aged 8 to 19 years, parents - 21 people aged 30 to 55 years. To compare the characteristics of the corpora, the similar corpus of oral stories of monolinguals (42 stories) was involved. Quantitative and statistical analysis, corpus analysis, thematic and semantic analysis of vocabulary, elements of structural analysis of narrative were used. The novelty of the study is the corpus analysis identification of lexical parameters of narrative strategies used by two generations of bilinguals. The analysis showed that the degree of lexical skills development in the implementation of narrative strategies in bilinguals is lower than in monolinguals in both age groups, despite the statistical similarity of the texts of both corpora. This concerns, first of all, the completeness and uniformity of the lexical expression of the mandatory components of the narrative stimulated by the material, and the relations between them in the text. At the same time, the general trend of narrative creation was in line with expectations. The identified parameters can be further methodically interpreted in order to prepare educational materials for bilinguals.

This article examines the oral recollections of Leonida Stanislavivna Panchyk, born in 1939 in Makariv district, Kyiv region, where she has lived all her life. The oral recollections were recorded from February 26 to March 5, 2022, during the beginning of the active phase of the Russian-Ukrainian war. The uniqueness and special value of the presented records lies in the fact that they demonstrate the living life of the Ukrainian narrative tradition. The recorded narrative is a direct reaction to the war. The analysed material and the study of the living situation gave grounds to distinguish the following three groups of reasons that caused the emergence of a memory: characters, events, place. The associative logical sequence of plots in memories is described. All the stories are a child's memories and primarily describe events that are important to the child. Panchyk's memories are sustained in one ideological, thematic and genre direction, they are not diluted by other themes or genres. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Diversitas Journal is the property of Diversitas Journal and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Introduction: The Better Start Literacy Approach is an example of a multi-tiered system of support (MTSS) to facilitate children's early literacy success. It is set within a strengths-based and culturally responsive framework for literacy teaching and is being implemented in over 800 English medium schools across New Zealand. This report focuses on how children identified at school entry as English Language Learners (ELL) responded to the Better Start Literacy Approach during their first year at school. Method: Using a matched control design, the growth in phoneme awareness, phoneme-grapheme knowledge, and oral narrative skills for 1,853 ELL was compared to a cohort of 1,853 non-ELL. The cohorts were matched for ethnicity (mostly Asian, 46% and Pacific, 26%), age (M = 65 months), gender (53% male), and socioeconomic deprivation index (82% in areas of mid to high deprivation). Results: Data analyses indicated similar positive growth rates for ELL and non-ELL from baseline to the first monitoring assessment following 10 weeks of Tier 1 (universal/class level) teaching. Despite demonstrating lower phoneme awareness skills at baseline, following 10 weeks of teaching, the ELL cohort performed similarly to non-ELL in non-word reading and spelling tasks. Predictors of growth analyses indicated that ELL from areas of low socioeconomic deprivation, who used a greater number of different words in their English story retells at the baseline assessment, and females made the most growth in their phonic and phoneme awareness development. Following the 10-week monitoring assessment, 11% of the ELL and 13% of the non-ELL cohorts received supplementary Tier 2 (targeted small group) teaching. At the next monitoring assessment (20 weeks post baseline assessment) the ELL cohort showed accelerated growth in listening comprehension, phoneme-grapheme matching and phoneme blending skills, catching up to their non-ELL peers. Discussion: Despite limitations of the dataset available, it provides one of the few insights into the response of ELL to Tier 1 and Tier 2 teaching in their first year at school. The data suggest that the Better Start Literacy Approach, which includes high-quality professional learning and development for teachers, literacy specialists, and speech-language therapists, is an effective approach toward developing foundational literacy skills for ELL. The important role speech-language therapists have in collaborating with class teachers to support children's early literacy success within a MTSS framework is discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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]

Disruptions in theory of mind faculties and the ability to relate to an intersubjective reality are widely thought to be crucial to schizophrenic symptomology. This paper applies a cognitive linguistic framework to analyze spontaneous perspective-taking in two corpora of stories told by people with a schizophrenia diagnosis. We elicited natural narrative language use through life story interviews and a guided storytelling task and analyzed the linguistic construal of viewpoint in these stories. For this analysis, we developed a reliable and widely applicable viewpoint model that allows for the categorization and quantification of speakers' linguistic presentation and navigation of spatiotemporal domains. We found that our participants skillfully presented, navigated and embedded different narrative viewpoints through a variety of linguistic viewpoint devices. They presented complex viewpoints of other people in both the here-and-now of the interaction and the there-and-then of a narrative, and made use of transition markers to demarcate spatiotemporal discourse domains. We found no differences in viewpoint variables when comparing their guided stories to a control group. If problems with intersubjectivity are indeed an essential part of schizophrenia, an explanation of how this group can take on and navigate complex linguistic viewpoints in natural narrative interaction is called for. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Tender Shoots is a randomized controlled trial (RCT) for parents aimed at improving preschool children's oral language skills relevant for later reading. Parents of 72 preschool children (M = 50 months) were randomly assigned to either a Rich Reading and Reminiscing (RRR) condition, a Strengthening Sound Sensitivity (SSS) condition, or an Activity-Based Control (ABC) condition. RRR and SSS conditions involved dyads conversing about the same 12 books over 6 weeks, with RRR focused on the meaning of the story in relation to children's own experiences, and SSS focused on soundplay. Children's oral narrative skills were assessed with a story listening comprehension and retelling task before and one-year post-intervention. At the 1-year follow-up, children in RRR retold stories with greater accuracy (g = 0.61) and quality (g = 0.68) than did children in the control condition. Tender Shoots RRR is a promising tool for parents to help their children's narrative production (retelling) skills. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Muiraquitã: Revista de Letras e Humanidades is the property of Muiraquita and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Pós: Revista do Programa de POS-Graduacao Em Artes - EBA/UFMG is the property of Pos - Programa de Pos-graduacao em Artes (PPG-Artes) and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This study investigates the developmental pattern and relationships between oral narrative textual skills, spelling, and written narrative textual skills in monolingual and bilingual language-minority (BLM) children, L1-Chinese and L2-Italian. The aims were to investigate in monolingual and BLM children: (1) the developmental patterns of oral and writing skills across primary school years; (2) the pattern of relationships (direct and mediated) between oral narrative textual competence, spelling skills, and written narrative textual competence with age and socio-economic status (SES) taken under control. In total, 141 primary school children from grades 2 to 5 in Central Italy (44% BLM, 56% monolinguals) aged between 7 and 11 years (M-age = 8.59, SD = 1.13; 41% girls, 59% boys) obtained scores for oral and written narrative textual competence, spelling accuracy in dictation, and written texts. Oneway ANOVA and ANOVA with robust method (Welch test) analyses and Bonferroni's correction showed that BLM children had poorer spelling skills in dictation and written narrative textual competence (i.e., text structure) than their monolingual peers. After preliminary correlation analysis, the results of hierarchical regression showed that the relationship between oral and written narrative textual competence is completely mediated by spelling accuracy in BLM children. These results suggest that adequate performance in written narrative textual competence depends on adequate spelling accuracy in writing stories. The Sobel test verified the power of this mediation. In monolinguals, the strongest predictor of written narrative textual competence is oral narrative textual competence. This relation is stronger in older children whose spelling skills are automatized. The identified pattern of relationships shows a complex network of oral and written processes. The scarce spelling skills characterizing BLM children may explain why spelling skills determine a low written narrative textual level. Scarce spelling skills absorb cognitive resources, hindering high-level cognitive processes that regulate narrative production. In monolinguals, the medium of writing does not impact narrative textual competence. Children's oral narrative textual competence easily transfers into their written narrative productions. These findings have implications for the assessment and instruction of literacy skills in young BLM children and their monolingual peers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Much research has documented that second language (L2) development of tense and aspect markers is influenced by a range of factors that include cross-linguistic influences, phonological nature of forms, inherent semantics of predicates, and discourse structure. Nonetheless, relatively little research has examined the role of discourse organization in the development of tense and aspect marking. To expand our understanding of L2 tense and aspect, this study examined child L2 development of English tense and aspect in oral narratives in relation to the foregrounding and backgrounding of narrative discourse. Thirty-eight learners' oral narratives were elicited, using Frog, Where Are You? (Mayer, 1969) three points in time: kindergarten, Grade 1, and Grade 2. The foreground in oral narratives was associated with more frequent use of the simple past than the background across the grade levels. While the occurrence of the simple past did not necessarily mark the foreground, the simple past emerged as the dominant form in the foreground in Grade 1. In the background, on the other hand, it took longer for the past forms to catch up with the non-past forms. The simple past became dominant in the background in Grade 2. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Bio-grafía. Escritos Sobre la Biología y su Enseñanza is the property of Universidad Pedaggica Nacional and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Well-known cases of wrongful convictions (e.g. Central Park Five, Steven Avery, Amanda Knox), although merely the tip of the iceberg, serve to highlight flaws inherent in justice systems worldwide (cf. Garrett 2011). Many innocent people are having their freedom taken away without reason. One such lesser-known, though very significant, case is that of Kristine Bunch, who was wrongfully convicted of arson and murdering her son, resulting in her wrongful imprisonment for 17 years. To examine how Kristine represents her miscarriage of justice discursively, I examine transitivity patterns (Halliday & Matthiessen 2014) in a semi-structured interview with her and, in doing so, aim to create awareness of some probable key language processes in wrongful convictions more generally. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study investigates the developmental pattern and relationships between oral narrative textual skills, spelling, and written narrative textual skills in monolingual and bilingual language-minority (BLM) children, L1-Chinese and L2-Italian. The aims were to investigate in monolingual and BLM children: (1) the developmental patterns of oral and writing skills across primary school years; (2) the pattern of relationships (direct and mediated) between oral narrative textual competence, spelling skills, and written narrative textual competence with age and socio-economic status (SES) taken under control. In total, 141 primary school children from grades 2 to 5 in Central Italy (44% BLM, 56% monolinguals) aged between 7 and 11 years (M-age = 8.59, SD = 1.13; 41% girls, 59% boys) obtained scores for oral and written narrative textual competence, spelling accuracy in dictation, and written texts. One-way ANOVA and ANOVA with robust method (Welch test) analyses and Bonferroni’s correction showed that BLM children had poorer spelling skills in dictation and written narrative textual competence (i.e., text structure) than their monolingual peers. After preliminary correlation analysis, the results of hierarchical regression showed that the relationship between oral and written narrative textual competence is completely mediated by spelling accuracy in BLM children. These results suggest that adequate performance in written narrative textual competence depends on adequate spelling accuracy in writing stories. The Sobel test verified the power of this mediation. In monolinguals, the strongest predictor of written narrative textual competence is oral narrative textual competence. This relation is stronger in older children whose spelling skills are automatized. The identified pattern of relationships shows a complex network of oral and written processes. The scarce spelling skills characterizing BLM children may explain why spelling skills determine a low written narrative textual level. Scarce spelling skills absorb cognitive resources, hindering high-level cognitive processes that regulate narrative production. In monolinguals, the medium of writing does not impact narrative textual competence. Children’s oral narrative textual competence easily transfers into their written narrative productions. These findings have implications for the assessment and instruction of literacy skills in young BLM children and their monolingual peers.

Current theories of human social interaction characterize interactants, both speakers and hearers, as possessing a rich cognitive and reflexive life achieved through collaboratively built action. However, prevailing transcription approaches, which tend to neglect listening activity, do not adequately incorporate such understandings of the phenomena they represent transcriptively. We review the history and scholarship of video-based studies of human sociality. We then present an example of horizontal transcription to demonstrate the utility of this approach in capturing the spatial, temporal, and visual components of human social interaction—in this case, that of young children telling stories as they are writing them.

Oral narrative abilities are an important measure of children's language competency and have predictive value for children's later academic performance. Research and development underway in New Zealand is advancing an innovative online oral narrative task. This task uses audio recordings of children's story retells, speech-to-text software and language analysis to record, transcribe, analyse and present oral narrative and listening comprehension data back to class teachers. The task has been designed for class teachers' use with the support of SLP or literacy specialists in data interpretation. Teachers are upskilled and supported in order to interpret these data and implement teaching practices for students through online professional learning and development modules, within the context of a broader evidence-based approach to early literacy instruction. This article describes the development of this innovative, culturally relevant, online tool for monitoring children's oral narrative ability and listening comprehension in their first year of school. Three phases of development are outlined, showing the progression of the tool from a researcher-administered task during controlled research trials, to wide-scale implementation with thousands of students throughout New Zealand. The current iteration of the tool uses an automatic speech-recognition system with specifically trained transcription models and support from research assistants to check transcription, then code and analyse the oral narrative. This reduces transcription and analysis time to ~7 min, with a word error rate of around 20%. Future development plans to increase the accuracy of automatic transcription and embed basic language analysis into the tool, with the aim of removing the need for support from research assistants.

This special issue investigates the use of referential expressions in elicited picture-based narratives by children with and without developmental language disorders, across a range of languages and language combinations. All contributions use the Multilingual Assessment Instrument for Narratives (MAIN, Gagarina et al. 2012, 2019). The studies featured in this issue cover monolingual and bilingual children aged 4–11 years, but focus mainly on age 4–7, a period in a child's life where great strides are made in the development of narrative skills. This collection of papers offers a new perspective on referentiality for several reasons: all studies use the same stimuli and by and large the same procedure for the elicitation of narratives. The stimuli, four picture-based stories, are controlled for comparability of protagonists, plot and story structure. They were designed as a 'visual' representation of a multidimensional model of story grammar. This methodological and theoretical base allows for a comparative investigation of referentiality (including reference introduction, maintenance and reintroduction) in narratives, across languages and populations. This introduction addresses theoretical aspects of referentiality in decontextualised discourse and reviews the literature regarding the impact of language-specific referential systems and the age and path of acquisition in typically developing children and children with developmental language disorders. We also discuss methodological aspects of eliciting referentiality in narratives in detail. This introduction thus seeks explanations for the diverse and sometimes contradictory empirical results regarding children's mastery of referentiality. Finally, an overview of the contributions in the special issue is given. [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]

While the research on pretask planning has concentrated on its effects on learners' task performance in terms of fluency, accuracy, and complexity, its possible influence on the overall discourse level, such as discourse management and coherence, has been largely ignored. The present study addresses the inadequacy by uncovering the potential effects of pretask planning on Chinese EFL (English as a foreign language) learners' selection of referential expressions in oral narratives. Fifty-six intermediate-level learners were tasked with retelling the story of Modern Times under one of two conditions, that is, either with 10-minutes strategic planning or without any planning time. An additional 25 native speakers (NSs) also narrated the same story under the same task conditions. Their narratives were audio recorded, transcribed, and coded based on a coding scheme that distinguished the roles of characters, types of reference, and discursive status of reference. A combination of statistical analysis and discourse analysis showed that (1) compared with NSs, the EFL learners were overexplicit in using noun phrases and proper names to refer to singular characters, but not so in joint reference to the major characters; and (2) pretask planning facilitated more target-like selection of referential expressions when major characters were referred to, although it did not bring the learners' performance up to NS standards. However, the impact of planning time on referential use seemed to be moderated by the role prominence. These findings were explained within the framework of Levelt's speech production model and Skehan's Limited Attentional Capacity Hypothesis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The effects different awareness-raising techniques might have on language learners’ performance have been studied by many researchers. The present study specifically focused on improving EFL learners’ oral narrative task performance in terms of accuracy, fluency and complexity by awareness raising through semantic fields. The participants in the study included 40 intermediate learners whose initial homogeneity in terms of language proficiency was assessed via a Preliminary English Test (PET). They were further randomly assigned as one experimental group and one control group, each comprising 20 participants. The amount of instructional time was 17 sessions, during which the participants in the experimental group received an awareness raising technique through 'semantic fields'. Before and after the treatment, an oral narrative test was administrated. The results of the data analysis revealed that the experimental group which received the awareness raising technique outperformed the control group in three measures of accuracy, fluency and complexity on their performance. The participants showed significant improvements in language proficiency as they retold the narratives. The findings of the present study can create the floor for researchers to go deep through the EFL contexts and find more about the probable effects awareness raising techniques might have on language learning and teaching.

In this article we explore the ways in which three young children from a non-mainstream cultural group created stories with the assistance of their caregivers and siblings in the social contexts of their homes. We assert that these children's oral narrations show us important dimensions of early experience with decontextualized content as practiced in their families that may offer suggestions for analysis of culturally sensitive experiences with literacy for all children. The dimensions we highlight are the tangibility of the elements around which the story is created, the interlocutor support children receive for beginning and continuing their stories, and the interaction between the storytelling process and the child's self-interest. These three dimensions illustrate how children "enter" into stories and storytelling and broaden our understanding for fostering culturally sustaining pedagogy within schools. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The performance of autoethnographic storytelling can amplify the voices of those who are often unheard, silenced, or marginalized. Moreover, personal storytelling in appropriate contexts can provide a forum for sharing the previously unspoken or unspeakable that, when shared, can begin to heal the teller and promote social justice and societal change. Yet, not all contexts are are appropriate and not all stories are safe to share. Thus, telling autoethnographic stories can present ethical concerns for which there are no pat answers or one-size-fits-all solutions. This article discusses a few of these concerns.

“Triptych,” a reflection in poetic form, does not provide or ponder easy solutions to ethical dilemmas in personal storytelling (true personal stories shared in classrooms and/or performed in public forums), but illuminates a few issues tellers, teachers, and researchers may encounter as they strive to nurture and develop true stories that give voice to a diversity of lived experiences.

In this article we explore the ways in which three young children from a non-mainstream cultural group created stories with the assistance of their caregivers and siblings in the social contexts of their homes. We assert that these children’s oral narrations show us important dimensions of early experience with decontextualized content as practiced in their families that may offer suggestions for analysis of culturally sensitive experiences with literacy for all children. The dimensions we highlight are the tangibility of the elements around which the story is created, the interlocutor support children receive for beginning and continuing their stories, and the interaction between the storytelling process and the child’s self-interest. These three dimensions illustrate how children “enter” into stories and storytelling and broaden our understanding for fostering culturally sustaining pedagogy within schools.

This article presents a commented analysis of the Ikpeng narrative Puron Mïran ‘Frog Story’, told by Ayre Txicão and registered in 2009. Ikpeng is a Carib language, spoken by the homonymous people who live in the state of Mato Grosso, in the middle Xingu region. The narrative consists of the Ikpeng people’s explanation for the fi rst appearance of the frog. Additionally, the text refers to women’s dietary restrictions during their menstrual periods. In this specifi c case, one menstruating woman’s transgression of a food taboo caused her to transform into the fi rst frog, the consequence of her indiscretion

Some of the most common stories shared by recipients of public assistance are "origin stories": personal experience narratives that describe how people found themselves in need of help. In terms of the narrative event, these stories initially appear complete, meeting common criteria for defining narrative. But participants also narrate futures that provide an alternative ending to their origin stories and, in doing so, reframe, redefine, and "refinish" these stories. Analysis of these alternative endings reveal narrators to be both bricoleurs and cultural commentators, often referencing two well-established narratives in US culture: the cultural myth of the American Dream and the legend of "the welfare queen." Further, the move to imagine the future encourages narrators to transform stories of their lives into more holistic life stories, revealing the life story as an emic genre of folklore. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the temporal structuring of Occitan and French oral narratives. Using contemporary linguistic theory and through a corpus-based analysis, it aims to explore the relationship between language and orality, with a specific focus on two key temporal features of oral narrative, i.e. frames and connectives. The authors create a digitised corpus involving three sub-corpora demonstrating different degrees of orality in Occitan and these are also compared with a French oral corpus. The analysis shows that there is quantitative evidence to support the idea that frames and connectives have complementary roles in narrative, with inverse proportions of frames and connectives in the four sub-corpora. In terms of degrees of orality, the results suggest that not only is the use of particular connectives strongly associated with oral as opposed to written narratives but also that factors relating to sources, transmission and storytelling practice are highly influential and interact with each other in complex ways. Frames are generally 'primarily structural' in function rather than 'temporal and structural' and certain frame introducers recur in all the sub-corpora but there are complex differences between the different sub-corpora and a clear link with story-type. Questions of sources, transmission and narrative practice are central to our argumentation throughout and are particularly striking in the case of the contemporary Occitan sub-corpus. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Our paper provides an empirically based perspective on the contribution of Conversation Analysis (CA) to our understanding of children’s second language learning practices in a multilingual classroom setting. While exploring the interactional configuration of a French second language learning activity, we focus our analytic lens on how five children and their teacher rely on multilingual resources (French, German, Luxemburgish, and Portuguese) in order to initiate and to improve the re-voicing of a story in French. Through a moment-by-moment (CA) video based analysis we can show how co-constructing the second language learning object involves various embedded linguistic and interactional competencies. We will point out how the participants engage in the re-voicing activity through their mutual orientation to each other’s language conduct. Effective second language learning becomes possible because the teacher’s student-directed talk provides opportunities for the children to provide oral narratives in a jointly constituted multilingually shaped interaction. Moreover, by offering insights into the interactional features (turn-taking system), CA allows us to visualize how the children’s second language learning practices are interrelated with the sequential structure of multilingual talk-in-interaction. Thus, in our case study we emphasize the fundamentally social nature of second language classroom talk.

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The concept of "fairy tale" was introduced to China in the early twentieth century. Subsequently, a wave of collecting and publishing fairy tales, along with other genres of folklore, spread all over China. By the early 1930s, the most influential editor in this folklore collection movement, with more than a thousand tales in multiple volumes, was Lin Lan. The tales were collected from everyday people in rural areas. These tales have demonstrated a continuing interactive history of oral storytelling and written records in Chinese history. By the late 1930s, many of the tales from the Lin Lan series had been introduced to the West. However, at the same time, questions about the actual identity (or identities) of "Lin Lan" and why the Lin Lan phenomenon occurred were never openly mentioned or discussed. Further, Lin Lan is still unknown beyond the Chinese-speaking world. This article revisits the Lin Lan phenomenon, examines the social background, and argues that Lin Lan should be appropriately acknowledged as the "Brothers Grimm of modern China" [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The stories of Shah Ismail, having a significant place in the folk stories as an important part of a narrative tradition, centers around Shah Ismail as the emperor of Safavid State, as a statesman, and religious sect sheik as well as a poet. These folk stories expanded over several regions such as Anatolia, the Balkan, and Middle East. Although various written and oral versions of these stories have been found in these regions, it is seen that compiled from such narrative and oral sources, some parts of the stories of Shah Ismail are about to be forgotten. The story of Shah Ismail compiled in Alanya can be an example to the ones which are being forgotten within the narrative tradition. In this study, a general introduction to the folk stories was provided first, and following this, the life and literary identity of Shah Ismail was given. In the study, the motives and episode structures of the story were analyzed by comparing the similarities and differences among National Library copy, Greek copy, Suleymaniye copy, and Alanya version. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The potential that narratives have to transport storytellers and audiences across time and space has made them fertile sites to study temporal and spatial effects in many disciplines. Through an analysis of a corpus of oral narratives that we collected in Northern Italy, this article extends Bakhtin's notion of literary chronotopes to empirical real-time oral narratives as they emerge in our interviews with Italian executives. In particular, we explore how brand identities are (co)constructed in interview settings through the chronotopic stances that executives take vis-à-vis their corporate world and across various spatiotemporal scales. By bridging the latest theories on the Bakthinian chronotope with a more recent multiscalar approach, this article advances theories and methods in linguistic anthropology and sociolinguistics. • This article bridges the latest theories on Bakhtinian chronotopes with a more recent multiscalar approach. • Co-construction of northern Italian executives' brand identities in interview settings in Northern Italy. • How these executives' narratives fuse Italian history and art into their own personal and corporate identities. • Interactional performance of the Made in Italy brand in and through these narrative practices. • How participants' chronotopic stances help co-construct their brand identities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Studies in Oral Folk Literature / Estudis de Literatura Oral Popular is the property of Universitat Rovira I Virgili and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)