“But I first… and then he kept picking”: Narrative skill in Mandarin-speaking children with language impairment

This study investigates the narrative skill of school-aged children with language impairment in Taiwan. Twelve children, 6 children with language impairment (LI) and 6 children with typical language development (TLD), aged from 8;0 to 9;5 participated in this study. They were asked to tell three personally experienced stories and the longest one was selected and coded along four dimensions, i.e., narrative structure, conjunction, referential strategies, and discourse context. The revision of the Chinese Narrative Assessment Profile (NAP) was also used to score children’s narrative performance. Results show that the children with LI had more difficulties in producing clear, coherent narratives. In comparison with the stories narrated by children with TLD, the stories produced by children with LI exhibited fewer narrative components, evaluation devices, and connectives, but more ambiguous referencing information was evident in their narratives. The narrative profile of each child with LI, however, varied. Limitations of this study and suggestions for further research on narrative skill in children with LI were provided.