«Tell me a story»: a training programme for improving narrative abilities
Angela Raimondo, Olga Capirci, Francesca Romana Lasorsa
«Tell me a story» is an experimental study for improving narrative abilities in children with language impairments. This project involved 8 subjects aged 7-11 years old with developmental disorders, and was carried out at Melfi’s AIAS Centre. Children’s narratives were elicited with the book Frog, where are you?» better known as The Frog Story, and they were videotaped. During the assessment, speech and gestures were transcribed and coded too. The treatment focused exclusively on the story grammar, and thus the ability to produce cohesive stories and to make good use of rhetorical devices. After six months, narrative skills were retested in order to examine the effectiveness of the implemented treatment, the development of narrative competence and/or an improvement in gestures.
Keywords
Narrative abilities, Gestures, Story grammar.