Comparisons of Oral Narrative and Expository Stories for Children with Language Impairment and Typical Development

Abstract

The National Assessment of Educational Progress has found deficits in reading ability among elementary school-age children. Oral language is foundational to reading ability, so assessing oral language abilities among elementary school-age children could provide insight into the below average reading scores. The purpose of this study is to assess oral narrative and expository story production abilities in third grade students with and without a language impairment. 37 children, either language impaired or typically developing, were recruited from elementary schools in Northern Nevada, and each child provided an oral narrative story and an oral expository story. The stories were analyzed at the word, sentence, and discourse level. The narrative story results were compared to the expository story results, and the language impaired results were compared to the typically developing results. The results of comparing narrative and expository stories indicated significant differences at the word and discourse level, with narrative story performance scoring higher than expository story performance. The results of comparing children with a language impairment to children with typical development indicated no significant differences between the two groups.