A Research On Narrative Competence Of Children With Down Syndrome

Narrative competence, as a decontextualized language skill, is very important in children's social development and cognition. Children's narrative competence develops with the development of their language and cognition ability. Interest in development of children's narratives has grown in recent years. Many researches have been done in this area in foreign countries. But the research on narratives of Chinese-speaking children has not been found.The thesis introduces the research progress and findings on children's narrative competence in foreign countries, and highlights the importance of studying narrative competence of Chinese-speaking children with Down's syndrome. Successful experience of foreign researchers is borrowed, and seven irrelevant wordless pictures and a wordless picture book "Frog, Where Are You?" are used to study the narrative competence of Chinese-speaking children with Down's syndrome through analyzing their usage of vocabulary, MLU and syntax, and their expression of storyline, theme and protagonist's experiences.This research focuses on the features and development of narrative competence of Chinese-speaking children with Down's syndrome. There are thirty-six children with Down's syndrome involved as participants and their mental ages are from 2 to 5. The method of narrating wordless pictures is applied in this research. The participants' narratives are recorded, transcribed and coded in the way of syntax and narrative. All data is analyzed by CLAN.The participants mainly use meaningful words and simple sentences with verb as predicate in their narration. Mental age 4 is regarded as an important age for children to develop their ability in using complex sentences. After 4 years old, the older they grow, the more complex sentences they become able to use. With the development of their mental age, the children with Down's syndrome tend to use longer MLU, richer details and more integrated structures in their narration. They do better in telling storyline, theme and the protagonist's experience, and gradually form a beginning and an ending for a story. There are four factors which contribute to the task of narrating wordless pictures: ability of cognition, life experience, vocabulary and MLU. Those who handle better in syntax perform better in the task.On the basis of the research, suggestions are made that more opportunities should be provided for the children with Down's syndrome to listen to the story, and the mental age should be considered as an important index when developing intervention plan for the children with Down's syndrome.