7-vuotiaiden monikielisten kielihäiriöisten ja tyypillisesti kehittyneiden lasten kerronnan makrorakenteet

Objectives. Narrative production demands coordination of many linguistic and cognitive skills and therefore it is considered as a multifaceted measurement tool in assessing children’s linguistic skills. Narratives can be observed at global and local levels, in other words through macro- and microstructures. Previous studies have shown contradictory results regarding the ability to distinguish children with developmental language disorder (DLD) from typically developing peers by examining the narrative macrostructures. Regarding the issue, there is a limited research data when examining Finnish as a second language. In this thesis the narrative macrostructures are examined in successive bilingual children with typical and atypical language development. The objective of this thesis is to examine qualitatively the macrostructures, especially story grammar and episodic GAO-structures of the narratives and the qualitative features appearing in above mentioned and in overall structures of the narratives. The thesis aims to clarify the differences and similarities between the typically developed children and children with DLD. Methods. The sample of this thesis was collected in 2021 as a part of the MULTILINGUA -research project. The sample consists of narrative assessments of eight successively bilingual 7- year-old children, four with a typical development and four with a suspected language disorder. The assessments were made with the Kissatarina assessment tool developed by Leena Mäkinen (2019). A theory-based approach was used in the analysis of the story grammar and furthermore the narratives were analyzed qualitatively through a data-driven approach. For the analysis of the story grammar, a scoring template was made using Stein and Glenn’s (1979) story grammar model and the information scoring in the Kissatarina. The expressions children used in the macrostructural elements in their narratives were analyzed in the light of the data, focus being on the settings, episodic structures, and the overall structures of the narratives. Results and conclusions. Overall production of the story grammar elements was poorer with children in the DLD-group in comparison to the children with typical development. In addition, the individual variation within the DLD-group was greater. Differences between the groups appeared most evident in the production of the narrative’s initiating events and expressing characters’ internal reactions and emotions, in which the children in the DLD-group showed weaker performance. For the qualitative analysis, typically developed children mainly produced more complex and coherent narratives. In all examined areas the qualitative differences between individuals were evident. The results of this thesis reveal that assessing the macrostructures in narratives might help in differentiating children with DLD from typically developing children.