Psycholinguistics Review: Narrative Skills in Language Learners

Overview of the Study

The study by Gamez, Lesaux, and Rizzo (2016) compares early-adolescent Spanish language speakers to same-age English-only language speakers in terms of narrative production skills. The researchers provided subjects with picture books and then asked them to produce a narrative based on the pictures. What the researchers found was that the Spanish language speakers and the English language speakers utilized the same story structure in the creation of their narratives. Both groups produced narratives that had a "goal — action — outcome framework" (p. 952). However, the Spanish language speakers demonstrated less grammatical diversity than the English-only speakers; they showed a tendency to revise and to commit errors when using prepositions, and their narratives were longer than those produced by the English-only speakers. The researchers concluded that both groups share a sense of how a narrative should be constructed, but that language minority learners may require more training and education in the area of microstructuring.

The article is interesting primarily because it builds on the work of previous researchers, particularly those focused on language minority students and how they craft narratives — or, more specifically, how culture plays a part in the way they stylize their narrative creations (Gamez et al., 2016, p. 953). The way in which the Spanish-speaking learners utilized internal responses within their narrative structures could indicate that there is a cultural influence at play, though the study did not find any strong statistical correlation. Nonetheless, the researchers recommend this as an area that could use further research. This finding showed that there is at least one area of inquiry that can be explored more fully in order to open up the world of language acquisition and deepen our understanding of concepts related to culture and narrative construction.

Cultural Influences on Narrative Construction

What the study also demonstrates is that "sources of strength for LM learners" — language minority learners — can be found by comparing their output with that of English-only speaking learners (Gamez et al., 2016, p. 953). This is a useful finding because it illustrates a new approach to supporting language learners and suggests that cultural diversity of influences can have a positive impact on a classroom devoted to developing language and narrative skills. Exposure to these differences can be helpful in revealing how various styles and techniques are reinforced through cultural imperatives, which could in turn prepare young language learners to be more open to diversity and cultural complexities — and particularly to how language both impacts and is impacted by them — as they age and mature.

Strengths Found in Language Minority Learners

Another finding of note is that the language minority learners had difficulty using prepositions correctly. This is an interesting indication because it draws attention to the nuanced manner in which English-only speakers embrace prepositional usage, developing a sense of how prepositions are used over time through exposure to conversational English rather than through explicit grammatical instruction. For language minority learners, the difficulty can be perceived in the sometimes apparent clash between how a preposition may be intended to be used based on its meaning or definition and how it is actually used in English parlance, both orally and in writing.