Disorganized or Underdeveloped Narratives

What are narratives?

Narrative language is a type of expressive language that we develop that allows us to tell stories or recount events. Narrative skills are an important part of communication that we use to comprehend what we read, retell events to others, and socially connect with others.

In typical development, narrative production emerges between two and three years of age when children begin to tell others about what they see and do.

Characteristics of narrative difficulties

Narrative skills allow us to tell stories or recap events in an organized, efficient, and engaging way. Children with underdeveloped narrative skills may jump all over the place, lacking any structure to their narratives. Their narratives may also lack details, contain short sentences, have contradicting details, and include unrelated tangents.

Assessing narrative skills

Test of Narrative Language - 2 (TNL-2)

The test of narrative language is a norm-referenced test that can be used to assess a child's narrative language skills such as their ability to tell and understand stories. It can be used with children ages 4;0-15;11 years old. In completing this assessment, the child's receptive and expressive language is assessed through their ability to produce and comprehend a fictional narrative, personal narrative and a script.

Strengths of this assessment:

Specifically gives information on a child's organization, cohesion, and story formulation, making it a great tool to diagnose language disorders as well as language-based learning disorders.
It is a quick assessment that can be completed in 15-20 minutes! This is great because the SLP is able to get lots of information on the child's development of narrative in a short period of time!

Weaknesses of this assessment:

This assessment cannot be used with highly unintelligible or nonverbal children because it utilizes verbal and expressive language throughout it.

Narrative Assessment Protocol-2 (NAP-2)

The Narrative Assessment Protocol-2 is a recently updated, free assessment tool that provides an overall summary of the narrative skills a child demonstrates while telling a story. It is able to be used for children ages 3-6 and can be used by those who complete the training. It can be used in addition to other language screeners and looks at 20 different narrative skills (measured by 60 items) required to tell a comprehensive, organized story.

Strengths of this assessment:

This assessment is free of cost for all materials! Included in this kit is: administration directions, a scoring form and a set of four wordless picture books that have been specifically designed to generate narratives
This assessment is scored directly from a video, making transcription of the child's narrative unnecessary and decreasing the time needed to score.
- As a result of this, administration and scoring typically takes no longer than 20 minutes

Weaknesses:

The assessment was created based on primarily monolingual English speaking children and so conclusions drawn may not be as applicable for multilingual/linguistically diverse children.

CUBED Narrative Language Measures - CUBED NLM

The CUBED NLM is an assessment that measures both listening and reading skills as they relate to narratives. Story retells and comprehension questions as well as personal story production is examined in this assessment for children ages 3-9 (typically grades pre-k to 3rd grade). This assessment is scored as it is being given and has high reliability between those who administer the test.

Strengths of this assessment:

This is another assessment that is completely free and can be downloaded directly from the language dynamics group website. Children needing intervention to help with organization of narrative as determined by this assessment can use the Story Champs intervention which was made by the same group!
Also comes with a reading measure that can be used to assess a child's decoding rate and accuracy, their writing, and reading comprehension.
The Preschool NLM listening subtests can be assessed in Spanish as well as English.

Weaknesses of this assessment:

This assessment is primarily considered a screener and therefore should be used in addition to other tests rather than completely on its own for diagnosis.

Narrative Interventions

Story Champs

Story Champs is an intervention curriculum that can be used to teach children narrative skills. It focuses on story grammar and the complex language features used to tell stories. The intervention begins with an SLP modeling a story using pictures and icons representing five elements of story grammar: character, problem, feeling, action, and ending. The child is then asked to retell the story using the icons and pictures for support. Over time, the visual supports are faded out to promote independent story retell and story generation.

Strengths of this intervention

Story Champs is supported by research as an effective intervention to teach narrative skills to preschoolers with expressive language deficits
It practices both story retell and personal story generation
It is available in English and Spanish

Possible weaknesses of this intervention

The actual curriculum is pretty pricey! If you want the official Story Champs curriculum that contains the manual, stories, and manipulatives, it will cost you a whopping $298.00. The basic components of Story Champs can be implemented without the official materials to create a similar intervention procedure at a much lower cost.

Steps and key procedures of Story Champ intervention curriculum

Sample Story Champs story, pictures, and icons

Video: Story Champs intervention demonstration in a group setting

Story Grammar Marker

Story grammar is the parts or elements of a story. Manipulative tools such as Braidy - The Story Grammar Marker allow a child to plan their ideas and translate them into words and sentences that correspond to each element of a story. Each icon on the doll represents a different element of the story: character, setting, initiating event, internal response, plan, attempts/actions, outcome, and resolution.

Strengths of this intervention:

One advantage of using the story grammar marker would be the flexibility of implementation. Braidy is simply a tool to support narrative development. The SLP can use it in a variety of activities including a story retell, story generation, or a personal narrative retell.
Additionally, the elements on the story grammar marker emphasize the thoughts and feelings of the character throughout the story which can help support children's perspective-taking skills

Possible weaknesses of this intervention:

One downside to the story grammar marker is that the official Braidy the story Braid doll comes at a high price. The digital icon set and printable sets are much more affordable!
Additionally, the complexity of the symbols and elements included on the story grammar marker might not be suitable for every child

Alternative intervention

Intervention doesn't always need to fall on the responsibility of the child! There are ways to help with easing comprehension of narratives as a communication partner.

One suggestion would be to encourage the communication partner to use story grammar when telling their narratives.
Another suggestion could be to structure narratives using "first, then, last."

Following a structured format such as using story grammar or a simple "first, then, last" format will help ease the child's comprehension and hopefully reduce some of the cognitive load they may be struggling with. Additionally, when a communication partner utilizes these same strategies, they are providing support and modeling for the child to learn and develop their own story-telling skills!

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