Oral narratives produced by Aboriginal Australian children: dilemmas with normative comparisons

This study investigated the characteristics of oral narratives produced by six Aboriginal children aged between 6;6 and 9;6 years in North Queensland. Fictional narrative retellings were analysed at microstructure and macrostructure levels. Results were compared to a narrative story retell database included in the Systematic Analysis of Language Transcripts software. Most children gained lower results on measures of narrative microstructure, such as mean length of C-unit and number of different words, but performed well on several measures of narrative structure, namely the Narrative Scoring Scheme (NSS) total score and component scores for Introduction, Character Development and Conclusion. Older children performed within normal limits, or better, on more NSS measures than the younger children. Implications for the development of appropriate assessment measures for Aboriginal children are discussed