Structure of personal narratives in Thai children aged 4 to 6 years old
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Abstract
Background: Understanding children’s narratives is crucial as it represents language capacity in a naturalistic context and also relates to children’s academic success. However, studies showed that narratives vary not only with age but also in content and structure across cultures.
Objectives: To study and compare components and patterns of personal narratives in Thai children aged 4-6 years old. Also, to find narrative structure differences between genders.
Materials and methods: Stories of past experiences were elicited from 86 participants aged 4-6 years old. The longest narratives from each participant were analyzed in terms of both narrative components and patterns by using high-point analysis. Comparisons were then drawn for the proportions and differences in narrative structure between age groups and between genders.
Results: For narrative components, Thai children told complicating action most frequently. With age, the use of resolution increased significantly from 4-6 years old. For narrative patterns, chronological patterns were found commonly at age 4. Moreover, the incidence of classic patterns rose significantly between the ages of 4 and 6 and reached the highest proportion in usage at ages 5 and 6. No gender difference was found in the narrative structure.
Conclusion: Thai children’s narrative structure was presented in this study. The abilities to range events in sequence and resolve the high-point of narratives were found more commonly with their increasing age.
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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
Personal views expressed by the contributors in their articles are not necessarily those of the Journal of Associated Medical Sciences, Faculty of Associated Medical Sciences, Chiang Mai University.
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