Creating Context within Text: An Investigation of Primary-Grade Children's Character Introductions in Original Stories

This study examined primary-grade children's ability to construct felicitous, or audience-accommodating, character introductions in their stories. Character introductions were identified in original dictated and written stories collected from 36 children at Spring Grade 1, Fall Grade 2, and Spr...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Research in the teaching of English 1988-05, Vol.22 (2), p.161-182
Main Author: Villaume, Susan Kidd
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Children
English instruction
Grade 1
Grammatical clauses
Language
Literary characters
Noun phrases
Princesses
Referents
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Summary:This study examined primary-grade children's ability to construct felicitous, or audience-accommodating, character introductions in their stories. Character introductions were identified in original dictated and written stories collected from 36 children at Spring Grade 1, Fall Grade 2, and Spring Grade 2. The qualitative portion of the analysis showed (1) that children have tacit knowledge of the range of linguistic variation available for character introductions and that they make use of this knowledge even though it often leads to ambiguous introductions; and (2) that construction of felicitous character introductions includes audience accommodation as well as text accommodation. The quantitative analysis indicated (1) that a temporary setback in constructing felicitous introductions can be expected as children take on the multiple demands of the written mode; and (2) that the increase of felicitous character introductions over time can best be described as a growing ability to coordinate multiple narrative functions within an introductory clause. The findings support the view that language development cannot be analyzed as a stepwise addition of skills but must be analyzed as a dynamic process involving interactions between multiple social, linguistic, and cognitive dimensions.
ISSN:0034-527X
1943-2348
DOI:10.58680/rte198815551