How to Tell a Good Story: The Intersection of Language and Affect in Children's Narratives

Abstract

Abstract This article reports two studies in which the developmental relationship be-tween affective and linguistic expression is explored by comparing the comple-mentary skills of storytelling (performance) and story construction (structure). In the first study, children of the two age groups (3- to 4-year-olds and 6- to 8-year-olds) were shown a picture book, Frog, Where Are You?(Mayer, 1979) and then asked to tell the story. Analyses of the data revealed a striking dif-ference in both story structure and storytelling performance. The older group consistently produced stories of greater length and complexity than those of the younger group; with respect to storytelling performance, however, 3- and 4-year-olds used significantly more affective elements of good storytelling than did the 7- and 8-year-olds. In a second study, ten 7- and 8-year-olds and ten 10- and 11-year-olds retold the same story, but to a 3-year-old. In this con-text, the 10- and 11-year-olds used significantly more affective devices, both linguistic and paralinguistic, than did the 7- and 8-year-olds. Considering both cognitive and discourse perspectives, the developmental implications of these findings are discussed.