| Although a large body of research has been conducted to investigate the relationship between emergent literacy skills and subsequent reading success in later years, there are several constructs that have not been studied in depth, even when they are also important predictors of reading success, such as oral narrative skills.;The overall purpose of this study was to analyze oral narrative discourse in Chilean preschool children using High Point Analysis and Narrative Assessment Profile in a cross-sectional study of monolingual Spanish speakers, and to establish the relationships between oral narrative discourse development and emergent literacy skills, as well as socio-emotional development of the subjects.;A sample of 94 subjects four to six-years-old was recruited from a public school of an urban area of Santiago de Chile.;The findings of the study were the following: (1) NAP and HP are consistent and reliable measures to evaluate oral narrative skills of Spanish-speaking preschool children. It is suggested to use both procedures together since they showed a good correlation between them, and they do complement each other in the narrative aspects they evaluate. (2) Sequence of events, Informativeness , and Topic Maintenance are the most consistent categories of NAP. (3) The Woodcock-Munoz language battery is a reliable and consistent language measure which discriminates and shows variability when administered to a sample of Spanish-speaking preschool children. (4) The Woodcock-Munoz sub-scale that is high and positively correlated to NAP and HP is Picture Vocabulary, which assesses language development and lexical knowledge. Therefore, these two are highly related to oral narrative skills. The other sub-scale that highly correlates to NAP and HP is Understanding Direction, which targets working memory, also very important when telling a story. (5) Woodcock-Munoz's sub-scales Letter-Word Identification, Spelling, and Passage Comprehension, obtained lower correlations to NAP and HP, which might be suggesting that the abilities they measure (reading decoding, spelling ability, and reading comprehension, respectively) may not be closely related to oral narrative skills or that their relationship may show later in life. (6) Socio-emotional tasks (Pencil tapping, card sorting and walk-the-line ) are very consistent, validated as measures of executive function and self-regulation. There is a positive, but not significant, correlation among HP, NAP and the socio-emotional tasks pencil tapping and walk-the-line. |
