Assessment of Preschool Narrative Skills

ike a French braid, language development comprises multiple strands, including phonology, semantics, syntax and morphology, and discourse, all of which must intertwine for literacy to emerge (McCabe, 1992). The relationship is such that delays in development of any of the language strands may have detrimental effects on learning to read. In fact, studies of children with language disabilities have found impairments in each strand to be linked to reading problems. Furthermore, prognosis for eventual language and literacy functioning depends on the particular aspect of language affected. Phonological problems, for example, are most likely to have minimal lasting impact (Bishop & Edmundson, 1987). In contrast, narrative discourse development has strong implications for emergent literacy in preschool children (Dickinson & McCabe, 1991). The ability to tell a coherent narrative predates and predicts successful adaptation to school literacy (e.g., Feagans, 1982). Because early intervention to prevent learning disability is predicated on early assessment of language-related literacy problems, narrative assessment holds promise in this regard. At present, however, few systematic protocols tied to good developmental research on narrative are available to accomplish this assessment. Information about preschool narration is relatively new and has received much less attention than, for example, the link between difficulties in phonological awareness and emergent literacy. The purposes of this article are (a) to Clinical Focus