Strengthening the oral narrative skills of 1st grade students through narrative structure

Abstract

The aim of the current study is to examine if teaching the structure of narrative texts improves the oral narrative skills. Fourteen 1st grade students of a primary school in a northern suburb of Athens participated. The variables were, on the one hand, the narrative quality of retellings and, on the other, the narrative stage. The assessment of both variables took place before and after the intervention. The intervention lasted seven weeks. After the completion of intervention program, students’ performance showed statistically significant improvement on both variables. These results highlight the necessity of the application of similar interventions that focus on the development of oral narrative discourse from the very beginning of schooling. Of course, the results of this study cannot be generalized due to the small size of the sample.