Yes / Ethnographic audio-visual research data recorded in a busy dementia care environment were initially considered to be ‘contaminated’ by unwanted background noise. This included a variety of elements: ambient sound, mechanical noise, non-narrative vocalisation and narrative fragments from parallel conversation. Using the methodological lens of conversation analysis, we present an exploration of the striking temporal and sequential resonances between the narrative of one man with dementia and a group of care staff holding a separate conversation some distance away. We suggest that in this and similar settings, where random and intrusive background sounds and conversation form a ubiquitous backdrop, the presence of such ‘noise’ can have a detectable influence on the content and direction of situated narratives. We argue that rather than attempting to filter out these apparently intrusive sounds from micro-interactional data, interference elements can usefully be incorporated into the analysis of interactions.

The association between receptive language skills and reading comprehension has been established in the research literature. Even when the importance of receptive skills for reading comprehension has been strongly supported, in practice lower levels of skills tend to go unnoticed in typically developing children. A potentially more visible modality of language, expressive skills using speech samples, has been rarely examined despite the longitudinal links between speech and later reading development, and the connections between language and reading impairments. Even fewer reading studies have examined expressive skills using a subgroup of speech samples – narrative samples – which are closer to the kind of language practitioners can observe in their classrooms, and are also a rich source of linguistic and discourse-level data in school-aged children. This thesis presents a study examining the relationship between expressive language skills in narrative samples and reading comprehension after the first two years of formal reading instruction, with considerable attention given to methodological and developmental issues. In order to address the main methodological issues surrounding the identification of the optimal linguistic indices in terms of reliability and the existence of developmental patterns, two studies of language development in oral narratives were carried out. The first of the narrative language studies drew data from an existing corpus, while the other analysed primary data, collected specifically for this purpose. Having identified the optimal narrative indices in two different samples, the main study examined the relationships between these expressive narrative measures along with receptive standardised measures, and reading comprehension in a monolingual sample of eighty 7- and 8-year-old children attending Year 3 in the UK. Both receptive and expressive oral language skills were assessed at three different levels: vocabulary, grammar and discourse. Regression analyses indicated that, when considering expressive narrative variables on their own, expressive grammar and vocabulary, in that order, contributed to explain over a fifth of reading comprehension variance in typically developing children. When controlling for receptive language however, expressive skills were not able to account for significant unique variance in the outcome measure. Nonetheless, mediation analyses revealed that receptive vocabulary and grammar played a mediating role in the relationship between expressive skills from narratives and reading comprehension. Results and further research directions are discussed in the context of this study’s methodological considerations.

Master of Philosophy in Education / Literacy skills include expressive language, oral and written, and receptive language, comprehension. This study explores both aspects of language in six Kindergarten children differing in early literacy development- three judged by teacher assessment to be 'at risk', and three acquiring Kindergarten skills as expected. Oral retellings of a familiar narrative and an unfamiliar story just heard, and a personal recount were taped and analysed using Halliday's Systemic Functional Grammar. Comprehension responses to individually shared narratives were also collected and analysed. The children's use of language and comprehension responses varied significantly. Those 'at risk' were unable to retell narratives, needed high levels of support to comprehend texts and produced less cohesive personal recounts. The linguistic analysis revealed vocabulary and rhetorical organisation affected the reconstruction of oral narratives. These children also seemed to find comprehending difficult when questions or recall involved following reference, negotiating marked Theme or drawing inferences. The study was designed as a series of one to one literacy experiences. A listening comprehension test showed that all children except one benefitted from the experience. The findings underline the importance of oral language development and the value of interactive teaching experiences to the attainment of sophisticated literacy skills.

Master of Philosophy in Education / Literacy skills include expressive language, oral and written, and receptive language, comprehension. This study explores both aspects of language in six Kindergarten children differing in early literacy development-three judged by teacher assessment to be 'at risk', and three acquiring Kindergarten literacy skills as expected. Oral retellings of a familiar narrative and an unfamiliar story just heard, and a personal recount were taped and analysed using Halliday's Systemic Functional Grammar. Comprehension responses to individually shared narratives were also collected and analysed. The children's use of language and comprehension responses varied significantly. Those 'at risk' were unable to retell narratives, needed high levels of support to comprehend texts and produced less cohesive personal recounts. The linguistic analysis revealed vocabulary and rhetorical organisation affected the reconstruction of oral narratives. These children also seemed to find comprehending difficult when questions or recall involved following reference, negotiating marked Theme or drawing inferences. The study was designed as a series of one to one literacy experiences. A listening comprehension test showed that all children except one benefitted from the experience. The findings underline the importance of oral language development and the value of interactive teaching experiences to the attainment of sophisticated literacy skills.

Master of Philosophy in Education / Literacy skills include expressive language, oral and written, and receptive language, comprehension. This study explores both aspects of language in six Kindergarten children differing in early literacy development- three judged by teacher assessment to be 'at risk', and three acquiring Kindergarten skills as expected. Oral retellings of a familiar narrative and an unfamiliar story just heard, and a personal recount were taped and analysed using Halliday's Systemic Functional Grammar. Comprehension responses to individually shared narratives were also collected and analysed. The children's use of language and comprehension responses varied significantly. Those 'at risk' were unable to retell narratives, needed high levels of support to comprehend texts and produced less cohesive personal recounts. The linguistic analysis revealed vocabulary and rhetorical organisation affected the reconstruction of oral narratives. These children also seemed to find comprehending difficult when questions or recall involved following reference, negotiating marked Theme or drawing inferences. The study was designed as a series of one to one literacy experiences. A listening comprehension test showed that all children except one benefitted from the experience. The findings underline the importance of oral language development and the value of interactive teaching experiences to the attainment of sophisticated literacy skills.

Master of Philosophy in Education / Literacy skills include expressive language, oral and written, and receptive language, comprehension. This study explores both aspects of language in six Kindergarten children differing in early literacy development-three judged by teacher assessment to be 'at risk', and three acquiring Kindergarten literacy skills as expected. Oral retellings of a familiar narrative and an unfamiliar story just heard, and a personal recount were taped and analysed using Halliday's Systemic Functional Grammar. Comprehension responses to individually shared narratives were also collected and analysed. The children's use of language and comprehension responses varied significantly. Those 'at risk' were unable to retell narratives, needed high levels of support to comprehend texts and produced less cohesive personal recounts. The linguistic analysis revealed vocabulary and rhetorical organisation affected the reconstruction of oral narratives. These children also seemed to find comprehending difficult when questions or recall involved following reference, negotiating marked Theme or drawing inferences. The study was designed as a series of one to one literacy experiences. A listening comprehension test showed that all children except one benefitted from the experience. The findings underline the importance of oral language development and the value of interactive teaching experiences to the attainment of sophisticated literacy skills.

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This dissertation presents a comparative case-study of how two groups of culturally diverse elementary school students engage with particular forms of narrative practice shared by cultural educators through First Nations cultural education programs. The project develops the argument that different cultures afford different symbolic resources useful in “structuring” and “organizing” experience for individuals and that one important way in which these “possible worlds” are shared in a community is through storytelling. To develop this argument the project was structured around two main research questions: 1) what are the forms and functions of narrative practices that children experience during the First Nations cultural education programs? And 2) how do children “echo” and “transform” these narrative practices through their participation in the narrative activities organized around the programs? Participants in the project were two First Nations cultural educators conducting cultural education programs in public schools who participated as research partners, as well as 16 students from a grade 1 classroom (Class A) who participated in the first educator’s program and 15 students from a grade 4 classroom (Class B) who participated in the second educator’s program. Data for this project came from a multiple sources and analysis focused especially on stories told from the cultural educators during their programs as well as retellings of these stories from students in the two classrooms. Additional data was included from interviews and discussions with the cultural educators and student participants, field notes on the cultural education programs, and the classroom communities, as well as discussions with classroom teachers. This additional data was integrated into the project at various points to support interpretations. An ethnopoetic or verse analysis (Hymes, 1981, 1996, 2003) of stories told by the cultural educators revealed recurring patterns in the stories that both educators employed for particular rhetorical effects. In addition, these patterns revealed a number of “cultural features” of the storytelling performances that the educators used to emphasize specific points, to make parts of the stories especially memorable for the audience and to share lessons with the audience. Verse analyses of students’ story-retellings revealed a number of ways in which these students echoed and transformed these cultural features and made use of them to share the meaning or lesson of the stories. Finally, comparative analyses of story-retellings from the differently aged students in the two classrooms through a number of analytical frameworks showed that the retellings from grade 4 students were more complex in a number of ways, but also that students in both classrooms skillfully employed these different forms of narrative resources. The results reported in this study suggest that students were making use of the space provided in the cultural education programs to explore particular forms of narrative practice shared by the cultural educators and that they were making use of these narrative resources in meaningful ways. / Graduate / 0620 / jwallen@uvic.ca, james_w_allen@hotmail.com