psych questions

CHILD DEVELOPMENT PERSPECTIVES

Oral Narrative Skills: Implications for the Reading Development of African American Children

Nicole Gardner-Neblett, Elizabeth P. Pungello, and Iheoma U. Iruka

University of North Carolina

ABSTRACT—This article reviews research concerning an

area of strength for African American children: oral narra-

tive skills. The article discusses the historical and cultural

factors that have contributed to the rich tradition of oral

narratives among African Americans and the implications

of oral narrative skills for reading development. Although

early research suggested that African American children

have a limited narrative style, more recent research shows

that, in fact, they can produce a range of narrative styles

using sophisticated discourse techniques. Recent research

also provides evidence that, compared to European Amer-

ican children, African American children produce narra-

tives of higher quality and have greater narrative

comprehension. The article discusses the implications of

this research for education and offers directions for future

research.

KEYWORDS—classroom discourse; literacy; low income;

oral tradition; storytelling; teacher–student relationship

In 2009, African American fourth graders scored 13 points

higher in reading on the National Assessment for Educational

Progress than did their counterparts in 1992 (Aud et al., 2010).

Despite this improvement, their scores were 25 points lower than

those of their European American peers (Aud et al., 2010). Simi-

lar group differences emerge among younger children as well;

whereas 30% of European American kindergarteners scored in

the highest quartile on a reading assessment, only 15% of Afri-

can Americans did (West, Denton, & Germino-Hausken, 2000).

Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Nicole Gardner-Neblett, FPG Child Development Institute, Univer- sity of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, NC 27599; e-mail: [email protected].

ª 2011 The Authors Child Development Perspectives ª 2011 The Society for Research in Child Development DOI: 10.1111/j.1750-8606.2011.00225.x

Volume 6, Number 3, 2

Differences by race are evident across social class, suggesting

that socioeconomic status does not fully explain the achievement

gap (e.g., Gosa & Alexander, 2007; Ogbu, 2003; Singham, 1998;

Washington, 2001). Weaker reading skills put African American

children at risk for reading failure and a host of poor academic

outcomes. Recent research, however, suggests that African

American children have strong skills in an area relevant for

reading: oral narrative.

Oral narratives are a form of discourse that communicates

real or imagined events (Schick & Melzi, 2010). Narratives

convey what happened during an event, as well as the context

of the event (Peterson & McCabe, 1994). Producing oral narra-

tives requires cognitive and linguistic skills to organize multi-

ple sentences (Peterson & McCabe, 1994) and sociocognitive

skills such as emotion recognition and perspective taking

(Curenton, 2006; Schick & Melzi, 2010). Early skill in oral

narrative has been linked with later reading comprehension

(e.g., Feagans & Farran, 1994; Griffin, Hemphill, Camp, &

Wolf, 2004; Hester, 2010; Klecan-Aker & Caraway, 1997),

reading fluency (e.g., Reese, Suggate, et al. 2010), and vocabu-

lary and emergent literacy skills, such as print concepts and

phonological awareness (e.g., Tabors, Roach, & Snow, 2001).

These associations suggest that the ability to share coherent,

well-developed narratives is important for reading development

(Boudreau, 2008; Curenton, 2006; Curenton & Justice, 2004;

Dickinson & McCabe, 2001).

One reason oral narratives are associated with reading devel-

opment may be that they contain decontextualized language, lan-

guage that is not bound by the immediate context or shared

knowledge with listeners (Curenton, 2006; Schick & Melzi,

2010). Decontextualized language uses grammar, vocabulary,

and explicit comparisons that require higher order thinking to

relate abstract objects, events, or concepts (Curenton, Craig, &

Flanigan, 2008), enabling storytellers to describe an experience

without pictures or background knowledge (Bliss & McCabe,

2008). In this way, oral narratives facilitate the use of written

language for reading comprehension (Snow, 1991). Children with

012, Pages 218–224

Oral Narrative Skills 219

well-developed oral narrative skills are equipped to understand

information that is not bound to the immediate context (Curen-

ton, 2006).

This article reviews research on the oral narrative skills of

African American children and highlights their implications for

reading development. This research suggests that African Ameri-

can children produce narratives characterized by flexibility of

style (e.g., Bliss, Covington, & McCabe, 1999; Champion, 1995,

1998, 2003), complex organizational structures (e.g., Mainess,

Champion, & McCabe, 2002; McGregor, 2000; Price, Roberts,

& Jackson, 2006), and increasing syntactic and logical-temporal

complexity with age (e.g., Curenton & Justice, 2004; Horton-

Ikard, 2009). Evidence also suggests that African American chil-

dren outperform European American children in comprehending

narratives (Curenton, 2011) and producing well-developed, vivid

narratives (Reese, Leyva, et al. 2010; Vernon-Feagans, 1996;

Vernon-Feagans, Hammer, Miccio, & Manlove, 2001). Despite

the strong narrative skills that African American children dem-

onstrate and the associations between narrative skills and read-

ing, the reading achievement among African American children

remains low. This article explores these issues by discussing

storytelling in the African American community, the develop-

ment of oral narrative skills among African American children,

and the implications that these skills have for education and

future research. The focus is on children of preschool and ele-

mentary school ages, given that the majority of development in

narrative skills occurs during these ages (Bliss & McCabe, 2008;

McCabe, 1997b).

HISTORICAL AND CULTURAL INFLUENCES

The oral traditions birthed from African American historical and

cultural experiences have resulted in a preference among many

African Americans for the spoken word (e.g., Ball, 1992; Grace,

2004; Smitherman, 1977). These oral traditions have their ori-

gins in West Africa, where storytelling served to preserve history

and teach and comfort members of the community (Champion,

2003). Even though today African American stories can be pre-

served in written form, this oral tradition continues as a result of

the value that many African Americans place on the spoken

word (Smitherman, 1977, 2000).

Vygotskian sociocultural theory suggests that social interac-

tions provide a mechanism through which the African American

oral tradition influences the narrative skills that children develop

(Peterson & McCabe, 1994). As children interact with others,

they develop ways of thinking, remembering, reasoning, and

solving problems that allow them to become skilled in the narra-

tive style that is valued within their families and communities

(Rogoff & Chavajay, 1989). During conversations, adults scaffold

children’s narratives through questions and feedback based on

cultural values regarding storytelling, helping children learn

what information to include in a narrative (Peterson & McCabe,

1994; Schick & Melzi, 2010). Over time, children internalize the

Child Development Perspectives, Volum

necessary information and become less reliant on scaffolding

(Vygotsky, 1962), developing culturally distinctive storytelling

styles (Boudreau, 2008; Schick & Melzi, 2010). For example,

Vernon-Feagans (1996) found that African American children

were more likely than European American children to create

interactive narratives with vivid imagery and rich, rhythmic lan-

guage. These features are reflective of African-based discourse,

which involves such traditional elements as call-response inter-

actions between speakers and listeners; signification or verbal

surprises to put down a listener; tonal semantics, in which tone

conveys meaning; and narrative sequencing of events to make a

point (see, e.g., Smitherman, 1977). Together, these elements

create the culturally distinct oral discourse many African Ameri-

cans use (Smitherman, 1977, 2000).

NARRATIVE STYLE

Early research suggested that African American children have

a limited style of narrative. Michaels’s (1981) study of sharing

time in an urban first-grade classroom found that European

American children told narratives organized around a single

event or topic (a style known as ‘‘topic-centered’’), whereas Afri-

can American children told narratives consisting of a series of

implicitly associated anecdotes, with no explicit overall theme

and few lexical connectives (a style known as ‘‘topic-associat-

ing’’). Unlike topic-centered narratives, which are characterized

by a linear and chronological progression, topic-associating nar-

ratives are lengthier and contain seemingly unrelated events

(Champion, 2003; Hyon & Sulzby, 1994; Michaels, 1981).

Although topic-associating narratives are often seen as inex-

plicit, poorly integrated, and lacking syntactic complexity (Gee,

1985; Hyon & Sulzby, 1994), they typically employ sophisti-

cated literary techniques, including prosody, time and sequence

markers, parallelism, repetition, sound play, juxtaposition, fore-

grounding, and suspenseful thematic development (e.g., Gee,

1985), elements reflective of African-based discourse described

by Smitherman (1977). The topic-associating style, with its use

of literary techniques, may benefit African American children

in their comprehension of narrative texts that contain similar

literary features, thus serving as a potential resource for reading

development (Grace, 2004; Lee, 1993). For example, Lee

(1993) found that classroom discussions linking elements of the

African-based discourse of signification to written text facili-

tated improved reading comprehension among African Ameri-

can children.

In contrast to the early research suggesting that African Amer-

ican children tell topic-associating narratives, later research

indicated that African American children use more than one

style of narrative depending on interpersonal interactions, elici-

tation methods, and the type of analysis applied to their narra-

tives (e.g., Champion, 1995, 2003; Hyon & Sulzby, 1994;

Mainess et al., 2002; Price et al., 2006). For example, when

Hyon and Sulzby (1994) asked 48 low-income African American

e 6, Number 3, 2012, Pages 218–224

220 Nicole Gardner-Neblett, Elizabeth P. Pungello, and Iheoma U. Iruka

kindergartners to tell a story to a familiar adult during free play,

without interruption by the adult, they found that the majority of

children told topic-centered narratives. Later research confirmed

that topic-centered narratives are used frequently by African

American children (e.g., Champion, 1998, 2003; Mainess et al.,

2002; Price et al., 2006). In addition, using thematic and socio-

linguistic analyses incorporating West African narrative tradi-

tions, Champion (2003) found that some African American

children told moral-centered narratives (i.e., narratives with a

moral lesson) and performative narratives (i.e., narratives that

involve interactions between the narrator and audience and the

use of rhythm, pauses, gestures, and tonal semantics). These

findings suggest that African American children are capable of a

range of narratives, including topic-centered narratives, the type

of narrative typically expected in school (Crais & Lorch, 1994;

McCabe, 1997a).

NARRATIVE STRUCTURE

African American children produce increasingly complex narra-

tive structures as they develop. Narrative structure refers to both

the organization of the narrative (i.e., macrostructure) and gram-

matical and semantic features of the narrative (i.e., microstruc-

ture; Curenton & Lucas, 2007). One way of assessing narrative

macrostructure is through high-point analysis, which assesses

elements of a classic narrative. The structure of a classic narra-

tive may include the following: an abstract to summarize the

main point of the narrative, orientation to provide contextual

information about the setting (i.e., who, where, what, and when),

complicating actions that provide a chronological description of

the events leading up to the high point, the high point, evaluation

as the narrator shares thoughts about the event, resolution of the

events, and a coda or concluding remarks that bring the narrative

back to the present (Labov, 1972; Peterson & McCabe, 1983).

Peterson and McCabe (1983) found that among European Ameri-

can children, the developmental progression is typically as fol-

lows: Two- and 3-year-olds tell one- or two-event narratives; 4-

year-olds tell leapfrog narratives, which omit major events or are

not sequenced in order; 5-year-olds tell narratives that end at

the high point and lack resolution; and 6-year-olds tell classic

narratives. After age 6, children’s narratives increasingly

lengthen and contain orientative comments at the beginning of

the narrative (Peterson & McCabe, 1983).

Research has confirmed that by age 6, African American

children more commonly produce classic narrative than other

types of narratives (e.g., ending at high point, leapfrogging;

Champion, 1995, 1998, 2003). Work by McGregor (2000) with

low-income African American preschoolers shows that, with

age, their narratives increasingly contain more of the elements

associated with classic narratives. Compared to 3-year-olds,

4- and 5-year-olds are more likely to refer to setting and com-

plicating actions in their narratives and to include a coda

(McGregor, 2000). Also, Price et al. (2006) demonstrated

Child Development Perspectives, Volum

growth in narrative structure by showing that African Ameri-

can children at kindergarten entry were more likely to include

introductory elements, initiating events, and characters’ inter-

nal responses in their narratives than they were when they

were 4 years old.

Recent work suggests that African American children tell

narratives of high macrostructural quality. Reese, Leyva, and

colleagues (2010) found that narratives told by African American

preschoolers were more likely to include descriptors, qualifiers,

internal states, temporal and causal terms, character introduction,

and dialogue than were narratives told by European American or

Hispanic American children. This finding suggests that African

American children are skilled in telling well-developed, vivid

narratives.

As African American children develop, the complexity of their

narrative microstructure increases (Curenton, 2004, 2011;

Curenton & Justice, 2004). Compared to the narratives of

3-year-olds, for example, those of 4- and 5-year olds exhibit

more syntactic complexity, and those of 5-year-olds demonstrate

more coherence and internal-state talk (Curenton, 2004). In

addition, whereas 3-, 4-, and 5-year-olds are similar in their use

of noun phrases and adverbs, 4- and 5-year-olds are more likely

to use conjunctions, and 5-year-olds are more likely to use

mental and linguistic verbs, than are 3-year-olds (Curenton &

Justice, 2004).

There is little evidence of differences by race in the noun

phrases, adverbs, conjunctions, or mental and linguistic verbs

that children use in their narratives (Curenton & Justice, 2004).

African American children score as highly as their European

American peers on measures of narrative complexity (e.g., mean

length of communication unit), coherence (e.g., number of com-

munication units), and internal-state talk (e.g., number of cogni-

tion and emotion words used; Curenton, 2004, 2011; Curenton &

Justice, 2004).

Research on narrative development demonstrates that African

American children are not deficient in their oral narrative skills

but instead are on par with European American children and

outperform European American children in the quality of their

narrative macrostructure (Reese, Leyva, et al., 2010). These

findings appear to hold regardless of whether African American

children speak African American English or Standard American

English (e.g., Hester, 2010; Horton-Ikard, 2009; Price et al.,

2006). Also, African American children have a repertoire of dif-

ferent narrative styles, which suggests that they are capable of

flexibility in their narratives depending on contextual factors,

such as the task at hand or their audience. Children’s flexibility

has been associated with achievement above and beyond intelli-

gence (e.g., McDermott, Leigh, & Perry, 2002; McWayne, Fant-

uzzo, & McDermott, 2004; Yen, Konold, & McDermott, 2004).

These findings suggests that oral narrative skills are an area of

strength for African American children, a strength that may stem

from cultural practices that emphasize using stories to enrich

interpersonal interactions.

e 6, Number 3, 2012, Pages 218–224

Oral Narrative Skills 221

IMPLICATIONS AND FUTURE RESEARCH

Findings from research on the narrative development of African

American children hold implications for fostering children’s

reading development. Whereas having phonological awareness is

crucial for learning to decode letters into sounds, oral narrative

skills can help children develop mastery in language that will

facilitate reading comprehension (Dickinson, Golinkoff, &

Hirsh-Pasek, 2010). Although there are few studies that have

examined the links between oral narrative skills and reading

among African American children, some evidence suggests that

African American children who are able to tell well-developed

narratives are more likely to demonstrate higher reading achieve-

ment than children who tell less developed narratives (e.g., Hes-

ter, 2010; Klecan-Aker & Caraway, 1997). Also, recent evidence

finds that African American children excel in narrative compre-

hension about a character’s motives and beliefs, suggesting that

understanding a character’s internal state may be a strength of

African American children, a strength that may facilitate reading

comprehension (Curenton, 2011). Additional research is needed

to better understand the role of oral narrative skills in reading

development among African American children, as well as the

extent to which oral versus written narratives are indicators of

African American children’s reading skills.

Assessing children’s oral narrative abilities may provide a way

of determining instruction that is appropriate for children’s abili-

ties and allow for intervention to prevent reading difficulties

(Rollins, McCabe, & Bliss, 2000). Traditional narrative assess-

ments, however, are typically time consuming and expensive

(Justice, Bowles, Pence, & Gosse, 2010). Standardized assess-

ments (e.g., of expressive and receptive vocabulary), which are

commonly used to assess children’s oral language abilities, often

lack ecological validity (Justice et al., 2010) and may be biased

against African American children (e.g., Champion, Hyter, Mc-

Cabe, & Bland-Stewart, 2003; Fagundes, Haynes, Haak, &

Moran, 1998; Washington, 2001). Narrative assessments provide

a culturally sensitive, naturalistic, and ecologically valid means

of assessing children’s language strengths and needs for instruc-

tion (Justice et al., 2010; Rollins et al., 2000). In addition, narra-

tive assessment may provide a more informative determination of

African American children’s language abilities than do standard-

ized measures, given the evidence that African American chil-

dren’s language performance improves when assessed in

naturalistic contexts (e.g., Fagundes et al., 1998). Further

research is needed concerning how using narrative assessments,

compared to standardized assessments, may reveal different lan-

guage competencies among African American children.

The narrative skills that African American children demon-

strate within their communities tend not to translate into success

in the classroom (e.g., Labov, 1972; Vernon-Feagans, 1996).

Some scholars propose that this disconnect may result from

cultural mismatches between the narrative skills that African

American children present and educators’ expectations and per-

Child Development Perspectives, Volum

ceptions (e.g., Heath, 1983; McCabe, 1997a; Michaels, 1981;

Schick & Melzi, 2010; Washington, 2001). When African Amer-

ican children’s stories fail to conform to educators’ expectations

of a story, educators may evaluate the stories negatively, dismiss-

ing them as rambling and not making sense, or they may judge

the children’s speech as impaired (Curenton, 2006; Dickinson &

McCabe, 2001; Michaels, 1981). Also, cultural differences in

discourse patterns between teachers and children may contribute

to differences in teaching strategies. Vernon-Feagans (1996), for

example, found that when they did not know the answer to a

teacher’s question, African American children tended to give

irrelevant responses in an attempt to engage the teacher in a

dialogue, whereas European American children were more likely

to give no response or say ‘‘I don’t know.’’ In turn, these different

reactions elicited two different types of strategies from teachers,

one successful, the other not. With children who gave no

response or said they did not know the answer, teachers tended

to restructure the question to help them arrive at the correct

answer, but with children who gave irrelevant responses, teach-

ers were more likely to simply ignore the child’s answer or

complicate the question. Thus, African American children were

more likely to receive ineffective teaching strategies than were

European American children.

Differential instruction could contribute to African American

students’ having fewer opportunities for reading instruction

(Michaels, 1981), which may explain, in part, why despite strong

narrative skills, the reading achievement of African American

children remains low. Additional research is needed to investi-

gate both the criteria educators use to assess children’s narra-

tives and the extent to which educators’ differential use of

teaching strategies may contribute to reading outcomes. Cultural

mismatches between home and school also warrant attention,

given that experiences African American children have at home,

such as home literacy practices and dialectal variation, may con-

flict with educators’ expectations and contribute to children’s

reading and writing skills (Washington, 2001). Understanding

these factors will become crucial as educators increasingly face

students who bring racial, ethnic, cultural, and linguistic diver-

sity to the classroom (Hussar & Bailey, 2011).

As African-based discourse includes literary features found

in written text, educators have an opportunity to utilize literary

language features found in African American children’s narra-

tives for scaffolding language and reading development (Lee,

1993). Although little research has examined how scaffolding in

school may benefit African American children’s oral narratives

and reading development, some research suggests that scaffold-

ing discussions of written narratives through strategies such as

challenging questioning may improve African American chil-

dren’s reading comprehension (e.g., Lee, 1993), motivation, and

engagement (Rickford, 2001). By incorporating African

American children’s strengths in oral narrative (e.g., use of signi-

fication), educators’ use of scaffolding techniques (e.g., complex

questions, rare vocabulary, linguistic recasts, elaborations) dur-

e 6, Number 3, 2012, Pages 218–224

222 Nicole Gardner-Neblett, Elizabeth P. Pungello, and Iheoma U. Iruka

ing narrative sharing time and discussions about narrative texts

holds promise for supporting reading development (see e.g., Lee,

1993 and Rickford, 1999). Such use of elaborations and higher

order interpretative and analytical questions has been associated

with gains in children’s language skills (e.g., Cain, Eaton, Baker-

Ward, & Yen, 2005; Ruston & Schwanenflugel, 2010; Zucker,

Justice, Piasta, & Kaderavek, 2010). With appropriate scaffold-

ing, educators can use children’s narrative skills to support their

use of more complex semantics, syntax, and morphology and pro-

mote higher order thinking and narrative comprehension that will

prove helpful when the children encounter academic content

(Spencer & Slocum, 2010). A recent study, however, found that

educators in classrooms with high proportions of African Ameri-

can children were more likely to use didactic approaches than

they were to use scaffolding during teaching (Early et al., 2010).

More research is needed to examine the instruction around nar-

ratives that African American children receive, the effectiveness

of different scaffolding techniques across different age groups,

and how these factors may be associated with reading develop-

ment. To maximize the benefit of African American children’s

oral narrative skills for reading development, educators may

need instruction on the diversity of narrative traditions and the

best ways to scaffold children’s oral narratives to foster reading

achievement.

Research on African American children’s oral narratives also

has implications for future studies exploring narrative develop-

ment. The current research varies in quality, with many of the

studies using small samples and reporting primarily descriptive

findings. The majority of the studies have been cross-sectional in

nature, thus limiting understanding of how narrative develop-

ment changes over time and the factors that contribute to growth

in narrative skills. In addition, some studies have failed to con-

trol for potential covariates such as low socioeconomic status or

have included only children from low-income families. These

methodological issues limit the interpretation and translational

significance of the findings. Future studies with larger samples,

more rigorous methodology, longitudinal designs, and children

from both middle-class and low-income families will add to our

knowledge.

Better understanding of the roles that families and communi-

ties play is also needed. For example, the style parents use to

elicit children’s narratives predicts the level and kind of elabora-

tion that children produce in their own narratives (e.g., Leyva,

Reese, Grolnick, & Price, 2008; Reese & Newcombe, 2007).

Little is known, however, about the strategies that African Amer-

ican parents use to elicit narratives from children, how these

strategies change as children develop, and how differences in

parental elicitation styles contribute to differences in children’s

oral narrative skill and reading development. Also needed is

research that extends beyond examining the influence of parents

to assess that of peers and other adults in children’s lives, given

the role of extended family members and fictive kin in the lives

Child Development Perspectives, Volum

of African American children (Taylor, Chatters, Hardison, &

Riley, 2001).

Historical and cultural factors have contributed to a rich tradi-

tion of oral narratives among African Americans that has

resulted in oral narrative skills being an area of strength for Afri-

can American children. Oral narrative abilities are associated

with a number of literacy-related skills that have the potential to

enhance reading development and beyond. Future research is

needed to explore whether the reading achievement scores of

African American children can be improved by providing read-

ing instruction that is consistent with children’s cultural back-

grounds and that capitalizes on the oral narrative skills that

African American children possess.

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