The Master's Thesis focuses on the differences in narrative abilities of children with speech and language disorders, and children with typical development.
The initial theoretical part presents storytelling and the development of storytelling in children. Children start to narrate when they start to use two-word sentences, and their narrative ability develops rapidly from ages two to six. Due to gradual evolvement of storytelling techniques, older children are better storytellers than younger ones. Younger children are more likely to use simple descriptions of real events, while the narration of older children is already more complex and their stories are more structured. The following part of the Master's Thesis presents the assessment of children's storytelling. Storytelling assessment is important, because we can monitor children's speech and language development through it. Criteria for assessing a child's storytelling skills are presented, as well as tools for assessing storytelling. Standardized tests or informal assessment can be used to assess storytelling. Both methods have their advantages and disadvantages, therefore we are recommended to use both. The last section of the theoretical part of the Master's Thesis presents the storytelling of children with typical development and the storytelling of children with speech and language disorders. In both groups of children, it should be considered that each child is an individual – each child has his own pace of development, characteristics and special features, so storytelling varies from child to child.
The aim of the empirical part of the Master's Thesis is to analyze and also to compare the differences in the narrative abilities of children with speech and language disorders, and the narrative abilities of children with typical development. For research purposes, the sample included girls and boys, namely 5- to 8-year-olds, divided into two groups; namely in the group of children who are – in line with the Criteria for defining the type and level of deficits, obstacles or disorders of children with special needs (2015) – defined as children with speech and language disorders, and in the group of children with typical development. The groups were further divided into two subgroups: younger children, aged from 5 to 6, and older children, aged from 7 to 8. The Bus Story Test by Catherine Renfrew (2010) was used to examine the differences in narrative abilities between these two groups. In addition to the evaluation criteria included in the test, the cohesion and coherence of child's storytelling were also analyzed by making use of the criteria developed by the authors Marjanovič Umek et al. (2004, in Marjanovič Umek and Fekonja, 2019).
Research has shown that the narrative abilities of children with speech and language disorders differ statistically significantly from the narrative abilities of children with typical development. Research has also shown that children with speech and language disorders tell less coherent stories than children with typical development. The analysis of cohesion revealed that there were no statistically significant differences in narration between the groups. The research also indicated that, in both, i.e. children with speech and language disorders and children with typical development, the narrative abilities of older children, namely 7-year-olds and 8-year-olds, are better developed than those of younger children, namely 5-year-olds and 6-year-olds.
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