none 10.1075/sibil.61.02fia John Benjamins Publishing Company John Benjamins Publishing Company 1757 118419004 3600514 1421002 202507030845000035 10.1075 2025-07-03T02:44:38Z 2020-07-31T11:03:25Z 7 0928-1533 10.1075/sibil https://benjamins.com/ catalog/sibil Ute Bohnacker Uppsala University https://ror.org/048a87296 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6715-7470 Natalia Gagarina Leibniz-ZAS https://ror.org/03wz9xk91 Uppsala University https://ror.org/048a87296 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5136-1071 Multilingual Assessment Instrument for Narratives Comprehension of texts and understanding of questions is a cornerstone of successful human communication. Whilst reading comprehension has been thoroughly investigated in the last decade, there is surprisingly little research on children’s comprehension of picture stories, particularly for bilinguals. This can be partially explained by the lack of cross-culturally robust, cross-linguistic instruments targeting early narration. This book presents an inference-based model of narrative comprehension and a tool that grew out of a large-scale European project on multilingualism. Covering a range of language settings, the book uses the Multilingual Assessment Instrument for Narratives to answer the question which narrative comprehension skills (bilingual) children can be expected to master at a certain age, and explores how such comprehension is affected (or not affected) by linguistic and extra-linguistic factors. Linking theory to method, the book will appeal to researchers in linguistics and psychology and graduate students interested in narrative, multilingualism, and language acquisition. 61 12 10 2020 11 26 2020 9789027208088 9789027260345 John Benjamins Publishing Company Amsterdam 10.1075/sibil.61 http://www.jbe-platform.com/content/books/9789027260345 https://www.jbe-platform.com/deliver/fulltext/9789027260345.pdf https://www.degruyter.com/document/doi/10.1075/sibil.61/html Rachel Fiani Saint Joseph University of Beirut https://ror.org/044fxjq88 Guillemette Henry Saint Joseph University of Beirut https://ror.org/044fxjq88 Philippe Prévost University of Tours, Inserm https://ror.org/02wwzvj46 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6201-1800 Abstract This chapter examines the development of comprehension of macrostructure in narratives by 48 simultaneous bilingual Lebanese Arabic-French children aged 4–9. Fictional storytelling and narrative comprehension tasks were administered in both languages, using the Multilingual Assessment Instrument for Narratives ( Gagarina et al., 2012 ). The comprehension scores were compared across the two languages and analyzed in relation to age, macrostructure production scores, language dominance, expressive vocabulary, and a composite measure of exposure to stories. The results showed significant age effects on comprehension and no differences between languages, irrespectively of language dominance. Significant correlations were found between comprehension and production scores, between comprehension scores in both languages and exposure to stories in French, and between comprehension and expressive vocabulary. The results suggest that story comprehension is invariant across languages, meaning that a bilingual child carries over narrative abilities across languages even when one language is less dominant than the other. Nonetheless, the results also show that exposure to storytelling affects performance on macrostructure comprehension and that assessment of macrostructure comprehension requiring verbal answers necessitates minimal language proficiency. 12 10 2020 11 26 2020 31 60 10.1075/sibil.61.02fia https://benjamins.com/catalog/sibil.61.02fia https://www.degruyter.com/document/doi/10.1075/sibil.61.02fia/html Le bilinguisme arabe-français au Liban. Essai d’anthropologie culturelle Abou 1962 10.1075/sibil.23.07aki 10.21832/9781783093137 Relating events in narrative: a cross-linguistic developmental study Berman 1994 10.1348/026151004X20685 10.1044/2016_JSLHR-L-15-0064 10.1111/1460-6984.12234 10.1017/S0142716415000405 10.1191/0265659002ct224oa 10.1097/01.TLD.0000318932.08807.da Acts of meaning Bruner 1990 10.3102/00346543065001001 10.1348/026151003322277739 10.3109/02699059509008206 10.3406/caief.2004.1523 10.2307/747807 Beginning literacy with language Dickinson 2001 Développement de la macrostructure du récit oral: Analyse de la trame narrative chez les enfants libanais âgés entre 5 et 9 ans à partir de l’outil “Frog, where are you” Fiani 2016 10.1044/0161-1461(2004/016) ZAS Papers in Linguistics, 56 Gagarina 2012 MAIN: Multilingual Asssessment Instrument for Narratives 10.21832/9781783093137-011 10.1177/1053815107313858 10.1177/0142723704042369 10.1016/S0898-5898(01)00061-4 10.3406/espos.1997.1790 10.3406/caief.2004.1525 10.1017/S0142716415000454 10.1017/S014271641500051X ELO: évaluation du langage oral Khomsi 2001 10.1017/S0142716415000442 La rencontre de l’enfant libanais avec le livre. Entre littérature pour la jeunesse française et francophone Lassalle-Gharrios 2011 Liban dans l’aménagement linguistique dans le monde. Québec, CEFAN, Université Laval Leclerc 2015 10.1007/s11618-007-0040-9 10.1044/jshr.3605.868 Developing narrative competence. Swedish, Swedish-German and Swedish-Turkish children aged 4–6 Lindgren 2018 The CHILDES Project: Tools for analyzing talk MacWhinney 3 2000 10.1017/S0142716415000429 Frog, where are you? Mayer 1969 10.1080/136820310000108133 10.1007/s11145-005-3355-z 10.1080/10888438.2010.529219 10.1177/0142723704043529 10.1598/RRQ.38.1.3 10.21832/9781853595721-008 Raven’s coloured matrices Raven 1986 10.1016/S0093-934X(03)00101-9 10.1017/S0142716415000417 Encyclopedia of language and education Shaaban 251 1997 Bilingual education in Lebanon Developmental Psychology Sénéchal 73 2 445 2002 Parental involvement in the development of children’s reading skill: A five-year longitudinal study 10.1207/s1532799xssr1001_4 10.1177/0142723711433583 10.1111/1460-6984.12044 Discourse processing: Multidisciplinary perspectives Stein 53 1979 An analysis of story comprehension in elementary school children 10.21832/9781783093137-014 10.1080/01638539209544812 The development of future-oriented processes Trabasso 323 1994 Using goal-plan knowledge to merge the past with the present and the future in narrating events online 10.1017/S0142716415000478 10.21832/9781783093137-013 10.1044/0161-1461(2007/024) Developmental spans in event comprehension and representation Van den Broek 321 1997 Discovering the cement of the universe: The development of event comprehension from childhood to adulthood 10.1097/00011363-198612000-00009 10.1080/13670050.2013.835302 Batterie d’Evaluation du Langage Oral chez l’enfant libanais (ELO-L) Zebib 2017 Plurilinguisme et troubles spécifiques du langage au Liban Zebib