When the same child tells the same story at 5, 8 and 11 years old. Differences in narrtive skills

Abstract

With the double aim of learning about the development of narrative skills in Basque and providing indications for its teaching, the evolution of a bilingual child (Basque L1/Spanish L2) is analysed through an oral narration of the same story told in Basque at 5, 8 and 11 years of age. Based on the socio-discursive conception of language (Bronckart 1996/2004), three specific aspects of the short story as a textual genre are analysed: the thematic structure according to the three or five traditional phases (Adam, 1992), the connection through different textual organisers, and the pragmatic resources such as voices and some elements of modalisation. This detailed analysis shows that already at 5 years of age, despite the obvious difficulties, very fine resources appear to express not only the plot of the story but also the tension and drama demanded by the genre. At 8 and 11 years of age, greater grammatical and lexical correctness and the richness of connecting and modalisation resources show a great control of the oral story. This detailed analysis of the evolution of the oral narrative ability also provides the necessary knowledge for a didactic intervention in the teaching of Basque in bilingual contexts.

Keywords: evolution of narrative skills, textual organizer, didactics of storytelling in Basque.