Narrative Co-construction in the Classroom: Strategies for Teachers' use of Story Retelling

Priya Prithiviraj presented on 'Narrative Co-construction in the Classroom: Strategies for Teachers' use of Story Retelling' at the 7th online Future of English Language Teaching Conference.

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Abstract

Shared storytelling and retelling have been found to have a nurturing effect on children’s narrative development. While stories serve as a model narrative, enabling children to notice structural elements, the event of narrative co-construction provides a meaningful context to develop their narrative and conversational abilities. Research shows that the nature of maternal scaffolding, elicitation, and elaboration during these narrative conversations is strongly linked to children's narrative comprehension and production (Peterson & McCabe, 1994; Fivush et al., 2006). Understanding how mothers and children interact during such narrative conversations can help develop effective approaches to integrating narrative co-construction into classroom pedagogy. This paper discusses how teachers can use story retelling in the classroom and presents some sample activities for young learners.

About the presenter

Priya Prithiviraj is a doctoral researcher at the School of English Language Education, the English and Foreign Languages University in India. Her research interests include home literacy, parental engagement, and child second language acquisition in bi-/multilingual contexts. Her current research deals with bilingual narrative development.