VDM Verlag Narrative Comprehension in Kindergarten: An Analysis of Talk about Narratives by Children Differing in Early Literacy Development

Literacy skills include expressive and receptive language that is comprehension. This monograph is an exploration of how children in the first year of formal schooling gather information from text. Six children, three of whom were judged through teacher assessment as being "at risk" for developing literacy skills as expected, were involved in a series of one to one literacy experiences. Personal recounts, oral retellings of familiar and unfamiliar narratives and talk around texts to probe understanding were collected. The transcripts were then analysed using Halliday's Systemic Functional grammar. The linguistic analysis revealed that the children's use of language and comprehension responses varied considerably. Those "at risk" were unable to retell narratives, needed high levels of support to comprehend texts and produced less cohesive personal recounts. The findings underline the importance of oral language development to engage with more formal oral and written language and the value of interactive teaching experiences.