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Ricerche di Psicologia/Psychological Research Journal - Open Access

Articoli

No. 1 (2024)

Many languages, a single story: The development of narrative ability in bilingualism

DOI
https://doi.org/10.3280/rip2024oa18565
Submitted
settembre 27, 2024
Published
2024-11-08

Abstract

Narratives are an important part of the children’s linguistic development and represent one of the privileged communication modalities in early childhood. They offer a complex communicative model and the assessment of narrative competence provides a great deal of information regarding the different levels of linguistic processing and their integration. For this reason, the analysis of narrative competence in bilingual children is of particular interest in which three issues are essential.
The first concerns the comparison of the languages spoken by the child, as analysing differences and similarities in narrative skills can provide valuable insights into how bilingual children acquire and use language in different contexts. The second topic analyses the microstructure and macrostructure of the narratives produced in the languages spoken by bilingual children with the aim of exploring in detail both the linguistic and structural aspects of the narratives. The third topic explores the application of narrative competence in the clinical context. The focus here is on the use of storytelling as an assessment and intervention tool for bilingual children with communication and/or language difficulties, offering valuable insights for practitioners.

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