Is Narrative “Primary”? Some Insights from Kindergarteners' Pretend Readings of Stories and Information Books

Abstract

This paper involves a consideration of the validity of the common assumption in literacy development that narrative or story is somehow primary-that children's abilities to understand and compose stories precede their capabilities to understand and use non-story, informational written language. An examination of kindergarteners' repeated pretend readings of two stories and two information books was made to gain insights into their strategies in dealing with the distinctive textual properties of the two genres. Two features were specifically addressed: (a) their use of co-referentiality of stories versus the co-classification aspects of information books, and (b) their acquisition of lexical items in the two genres. These analyses indicated that children were just as successful in reenacting the information books as they were the stories. Based on these findings, as well as children's preferences for the information books over the stories, it is argued that our unexamined, unacknowledged narrative as primary ideology needs to be reevaluated.

Informational Texts as Read-Alouds at School and Home

“…First is the belief that informational books are too difficult for young children. However, several studies (Duke & Kays, 1998;Pappas, 1991aPappas, , 1991bPappas, , 1993 demonstrated that kindergarten children can learn from and about informational text, as evidenced by their pretend reading of unfamiliar informational books and informational books that had just been read aloud to them. In these studies, young children used the language of informational text in their pretend reading, including such features as timeless verbs and generic nouns.…”

On the embedded cognition of non-verbal narratives

“…Th is is another aspect that would be interesting to approach from a biosemiotic point of view. In an earlier study, Pappas (1993) set out to question the "common assumption" that children's abilities to understand and compose stories precede their capabilities to understand and use non-story written language. But this is diff erent from saying that a capacity to form and generate non-language-based stories precedes our later capacity of codifying stories with the aid of language.…”

Research in Writing, Preschool Through Elementary, 1983-2003

“…The earliest research in children's written genre development focused on narrative, which has traditionally been seen as the most appropriate form for young children (Pappas, 1993). Applebee (1978) described how two basic processes, first centering and then chaining, produce increasingly mature narrative forms, from "heaps" to true narratives.…”