Socio-cultural environment and preschool children's narrative skills

Understanding cross-cultural differences in narratives, especially among young children from diverse cultural backgrounds, can assist teachers to appreciate these normal narrative variations. This study examines the similarities and differences in micro-macro-structural elements of young children’s narrative from various cultural backgrounds. Our annotations indicate similarities across children’s narratives in the developmental profile of each age group and narratives’ structure around the theme of the story (topic-centered stories) whereas differences were found in the use of macrostructural elements, such as character development and references to the relationships between the characters of the story around the central theme of interest. Concerns arise about the influence of the educational environment in shaping children’s emergent narrative discourse.