Narratives: A Window on the Oral Substrate of Written Language Disabilities Elaine R. Silliman

Universityof South Florida Tampa, Florida

Oral precursors underlying competence with literacy activities are approached through a review of studies on narrative comprehension and production in children identified as language learning disabled (LLD). Areas addressed include a general overview of narrative types, the kinds of narrative knowledge that are acquired, the nature of story organization, and developmental acquisitions in story recall and generation. Nine studies on the oral comprehension and production of language learning disabled children are then compared with respect to methodological issues and patterns of performance. Implications from these studies are discussed in terms of their potential insight for subtypes of a LLD including the value of oral narratives in identifying precursors for competence with written language.

Introduction

The purpose of this review is to examine the oral foundations of narrative knowledge as a possible linkage to the problems in literacy acquisition, often subsumed under the diagnosis of a learning disability. An operative assumption is that a language learning disability (LLD) becomes transformed into a learning disability (LD) once the communicative demands of schooling shift to an orientation on literacy activities. Annals of Dyslexia,Vol.39, 1989. Copyright©1989by The Orton DyslexiaSociety ISSN 0474-7534 125

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Over the past ten years, there has been increasing interest in the study of narrative comprehension and production in children who are considered as learning disabled (LD) or language learning disabled (LLD), depending on one's disciplinary perspective. At least three reasons account for this interest. First, narratives provide insight into individual differences among children along three dimensions. These dimensions include the understanding and appreciation of humor, the ability to infer the intentions of others, and the scope of virtuosity in using language to entertain and to reformulate personal experience (Peterson and McCabe 1983). The narrative form reflects, therefore, an application of intelligent behavior, which Sternberg (1987) defines as purposeful "adaptation to, shaping of, and selection of real-world environments relevant to one's life." A second reason for the interest in narratives concerns the conceptual core of the narrative mode of thought (Bruner 1986). Concepts of intentionality and causality are essential aspects of mature narratives. These essential meanings express the understanding that in stories, as in life, human actions are always planful. Narrative discourse involves the underlying knowledge that stories are causal chains of events temporally linked together through their purposes, the actions chosen by characters in accord with how possible consequences, or outcomes, of actions affect achieving the purpose, and the specific content of events that can occur (Gordon and Braun 1985; Stein 1983; Whaley 1981). A third reason for the theoretical and practical interest in narrafives stems from the fact that narratives are an integral part of routine classroom events in the lower primary grades as found, for example, in sharing time. Moreover, many classroom "listening comprehension" activities at this level involve children's oral retelling of a story either read to them by the teacher or read aloud in reading groups. Children who are less able to retell the gist of a story or who do not convey story content in an organized way according to teacher expectations are more at risk for referral as potentially "learning disabled" (Palincsar and Brown 1987; Silliman 1987). As Heath (1986) observes, academic success is not dependent on the language a child knows but on the ways of using language that a child knows. Within the classroom setting, children's narratives meet the criterion of using naturally occurring performance as the data base of assessment and as the planning base for a program of intervention, if indicated. Narratives as a rich source of practical information on children's communicative competencies are equally applicable to language assessments conducted by speech-language pathologists in the clinical setting. The practicality of narratives as an assessment tool is supported by five findings: (a) if solicited appropriately, narratives avoid

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the contrived features of conventional language elicitation procedures; (b) narratives maximize the opportunity for children to direct talk, to engage in an uninterrupted flow of discourse, and to use longer, more complex utterances; (c) almost every child can tell a story; (d) skill in narration contributes to a child's sense of self-esteem during peer interactions; and (e) most critically, competency with oral narratives is an important precursor for effective participation in literacy activities, including reading comprehension and the composing of written language text (Cazden 1988; Feagans 1982; MacLachlin and Chapman 1988; Mehan, Hertweck, and Meihls 1986; Michaels and Cazden 1986; Norris and Bruning 1988; Stein 1983). Types of narratives are briefly reviewed first, followed by discussion of the kinds of narrative knowledge all children are assumed to acquire. Investigations of the performance patterns of language learning disabled (LLD) children on tasks of oral story recall and generation are then examined.

Types of Narrative Heath (1986) defines the narrative genre as a map, or plan, for comprehending or generating stretches of discourse that are organized in a particular way. A narrative is distinguished from other discourse genres, such as jokes, lectures, or arguments, by virtue of its pattern of organization, its prosodic qualities (which are inferred from orthographic representations in written language), and its formulaic phrases, such as "Once upon a time . . . . " There are three general forms of the narrative genre. One form is the fictional narrative, the form underlying "make-believe" stories and the stuff of fairy tales, fables, and folklore. The fictional narrative is distinguished by a more conscious reshaping of language beyond its ordinary use and is considered to be more literate in form and content than personal experience narratives, which are the second type of narrative (Heath 1986). A subtype of the personal experience form is the recount in which a past experience is verbalized. Heath (1986) notes that recounts are most typically found in the primary grades, are usually solicited by teachers or other adults, and are less literate in form and content than fictional stories. Moreover, recounts may not be a narrative experience common to many cultural minority children before they enter school (Heath 1982, 1986). The third narrative form is the personal fiction (Sutton-Smith 1986). In this form both nonreality and reality based elements are mixed, for example, as found in children's retelling of events involving superhuman characters with whom they identify.

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Types of Narrative Knowledge Two basic issues in developmental, educational, and clinical research are the kinds of knowledge that are acquired and the processes through which learning proceeds. Stein (1983) provides a description of the types of narrative, or story, knowledge acquired and some general mechanisms for acquisition. Four types of narrative knowledge are acquired: functional knowledge, structural knowledge, goal structure knowledge, and thematic, or content, knowledge. Functional and structural knowledge will be the focus of discussion here.

Functional Knowledge Functional knowledge of stories refers to the purposes for telling a story to a listener or a reader, for example, to convey social information having entertainment value or to recapitulate experiences as means of teaching a moral or restructuring a set of experiences. In practice, as Stein (1983) observes, the social and teaching functions of narratives are often intertwined because stories represent "social human problem solving situations." The ability to infer the goals of a speaker in any communicative activity, including narrative discourse, is requisite for understanding the relationship between intentionality and causality. Stein (1983) notes that there has been little developmental research on the extent to which information on story purposes guides oral comprehension processes. Many stories used in research do not contain an explicit statement of purpose. However, in the case of reading comprehension, it is known that mature readers search out the purpose of what they are reading as a general strategy for organizing comprehension (Brown 1982), while younger children and poor readers tend not to do so (Wong 1985).

Structural Knowledge This type of knowledge refers to the internal structure, or organization, of a story. Most research with normally developing children, as well as children described as either learning disabled or language disordered, has focused on the recall of story categories. Story organization. Research on story structure typically uses an "ideal" story, one that contains all components. The following fictional story, taken from Graybeal (1981), meets the ideal criterion. (For a more extensive analysis of story structure, the reader is referred to Gordon and Braun 1985.)

Category Setting

This story is about Bobby. Bobby is in the second grade.

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Initiating Event Reaction Response

129 Episode 1 One da)9 Bobby saw a new boy in school. The boy's name was John. John was very tall. Bobby said, "John is very big. Big boys fight." "I don't want to play with John."

(Coal) Action (Attempt) Outcome (Consequence) Outcome (Consequence)

Initiating Event

Reaction

Response

At recess, Bobby did not say hello to John. Bobby ran outside. Then he played baseball with his friends. Bobby did not play with John. John played with some other children. The children were playing catch. Bobby saw John with the other children. John was not fighting. The children were laughing. Episode 2 The next da~ Bobby saw John again. John smiled at Bobby. John was carrying a baseball bat. Bobby said, "John plays baseball, too. I'm not afraid of John now." I want to talk to John.

(Coal) Action (Attempt) Outcome (Consequence) Outcome (Consequence/Ending)

At recess, Bobby walked up to John. Bobby said, "My name is Bobby. Do you like baseball?" "Yes," said John. "I love baseball. I play with my little brother." So Bobby talked with John. The boys talked about baseball. Soon John became Bobby's friend.

While the "Bobby" narrative may not meet implicit standards for good "storiness" (Brannen, Bridge, and Winograd 1986), nevertheless, its structure meets the ideal criteria. All stories consist of a setting and a goal which are realized through an episode system of one or more episodes (Westby 1984). The episode structure is the organizational framework that functions to set up a series of expectations for the plot of the story (Peterson and McCabe 1983; Whaley 1981). This model of internal organization, often described as a story grammar, derives from three major premises (Stein and Glenn 1979): (a) story material has an internal structure that can be described as a hierarchical network of categories and logical relations existing between these categories, for example, one episode is causally related to another; (b) the log-

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ical relationships within an episode or between episodes are not necessarily bound by specific content (Liles 1987); and (c) this network corresponds to how people process (store and retrieve) story information. Stein and Glenn (1979) maintain that this hierarchical network for the processing and organization of prose corresponds to a cognitive structure that regulates how experience is understood and remembered (Mandler 1982; Whaley 1981). The major types of story elements are shown under the category heading of the "Bobby" story. All of the main categories shown are not necessarily found in all stories, not all subcategories are invariably found in all episodes (such as, subcategories of initiating events or consequences), and not all parts of an episode invariantly occur in the same order (Gordon and Braun 1985). To qualify as a complete episode, however, at least three categories must be present: (a) an initiating, or starter, event, often described as a beginning, that functions to motivate or precipitate a protagonist's action; (b) an action or attempt on the part of the protagonist; and (c) an obligatory outcome or consequence, which may be explicitly stated or implied (Gordon and Braun 1985; Peterson and McCabe 1983; Roth and Spekman 1986). The "Bobby" story represents an ideal story grammar, therefore, because it contains all of the general story categories occurring in a predictable temporal order and has two complete episodes as a result. From an acquisition perspective, it appears that children need specific and sustained opportunities for how to listen to stories and how to tell stories. Repeated experience results in the gradual understanding that social actions of others are planful. It is this understanding that appears to guide comprehension (Westby 1984). A comprehensive review of specific developmental acquisitions of structural knowledge, including cultural differences in acquisition, is beyond the scope of this article. General trends in acquisitions are summarized only for mainstream (nonminority) children. Cazden (1988) and Gee (1985) provide a synthesis of findings on cultural differences, however. By the ages of five to six years, mainstream children seem to have a knowledge of basic narrative structure as defined by story recall tasks. The amount of detail recalled continues to increase with age (Brown, Day, and Jones 1983; Stein 1983). Familiarity with the events of an oral or written narrative text also influences the amount of essential information recalled (Pearson and Gallagher 1983). Brown, Day, and Jones (1983) offer an important qualification to these trends. Even with the use of well-formed stories, children younger than ages 12 to 14 years may be using a rote memory strategy, rather than a summarization strategy, in their recall of story gist; hence, adequate recall does not necessarily imply that a summarization strategy has been used.

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In terms of narrative production, children are telling fictional stories with a centered plot by age seven years (Applebee 1978; SuttonSmith 1986), but the structural complexity of plots probably increases through early adolescence (Roth and Spekman 1986; Sutton-Smith 1986). Personal experience narratives are also told with a relative degree of episode completeness after the age of seven years (Peterson and McCabe 1983); however, interactive episodes in which one set of events is described from two perspectives, that of the narrator and of other individuals in the story, appear to be relatively infrequent until the end of preadolescence (Peterson and McCabe 1983; Roth and Spekman 1986). Further refinements continue to occur during adolescence. It is worth noting that, across studies, elicitation procedures used in both narrative recall and production vary considerably. Story Recall Studies with Language Learning Disabled Children The focus of this section and the following section on story production studies is on children and adolescents specifically designated as language disordered or language learning disabled rather than learning disabled. The rationale for this inclusion is that investigations with language learning disabled (LLD) populations usually focus on the oral dimensions of narrative recall. Studies with learning disabled (LD) or poor reader samples, in comparison, emphasize recall of written narrative or expository text. Review of research findings will concentrate on nine studies published in the past seven years. Each of these studies involved twelve or more school-age children. Although not always made explicit, it appeared that all nine studies consisted of white middle-class children who were standard speakers of English. Sample characteristics. Of the nine studies, six used some variation of a story grammar analysis (Graybeal 1981; Liles 1985; Liles and Purcell 1987; Merritt and Liles 1987; Ripich and Griffith 1988) with recall solicited through retelling of stories. One study (Crais and Chapman 1987) used an inference model in which children were asked to recognize true and false premises and inferences; another (MacLachlin and Chapman 1988) used retelling but the focus of analysis was the nature of communicative breakdowns in the retelling. The number of children in these nine studies totaled 119; however, in three studies (Liles 1985, 1987; Liles and Purcell 1987), the same children appeared to serve as the data base although this information is not specifically stated. Mean chronological ages ranged from 7 years 9 months (Graybeal 1981) to 10 years 8 months (MacLachlin and Chapman 1988). Severity levels of the language learning disability are not always given (for example, Crais and Chapman 1987; MacLachlin and Chapman 1988; Ripich and Griffith 1988). When severity level is specified

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(Graybeal 1981; Liles 1985), the description is usually one of mild to moderate severity. What cannot be ruled out, therefore, is that findings may actually reflect the normal range of variability at the lower end rather than patterns specific to a language learning disability (Roth and Spekman, 1986). Methodologies. Variation is evident across studies in the methodologies employed, for example, whether retellings were elicited by means of fictional stories that were (a) read to children; (b) produced through an audiotape; or (c) based on the viewing of a film or video containing events about superhuman characters (Liles 1985, 1987; Liles and Purcell 1987; Merritt and Liles 1987). In one study (MacLachlin and Chapman 1988), children were "asked to tell about the characters in a favorite movie or television program and then retell an episode he or she had seen (p. 4)" suggesting that a personal experience narrative served as the substance of recall. Similar variation was apparent for the explicitness of the instructions and follow-up procedures to assure that instructions were interpreted appropriately. Performance patterns. Patterns of performance are obviously the product of sample selection procedures, how tasks are designed, and the units and methods of analysis. Keeping these caveats in mind, findings from the nine studies are summarized according to four areas: (1) amount of information recalled, the temporal ordering of information recalled; and the length of information recalled; (2) episode completeness; (3) the use of cohesive devices; and (4) the fluency of retellings.

(1) Amount, temporal ordering, and length of information recalled--At least for this broad sample of 119 children with generally mild to moderate levels of severity, the amount of information recalled indicated mastery of basic narrative structure by a mean chronological age of 7 years 9 months (Graybeal 1981). Although these LLD samples did not recall as much information as non-LLD control groups, the LLD did not significantly differ in the amount of plausible information recalled or in how the temporal ordering of events was recalled (Graybeal 1981; Ripich and Griffith 1988). While not a consensus, there is also the suggestion that the use of pictures to serve as the means for retelling may reduce the amount of information recalled by LLD with a PPVT-R Vocabularly Age below 7 years 8 months. Ripich and Griffith (1988) interpret this finding as indicating that pictures affect the story-teller's assumptions about the listener's need for more explicit kinds of information. With respect to the length of recalled information, the mean length of narratives retold by some LLD appeared to be greater than the mean length of other kinds of controlled adult-child interactions, such as question-answer sequences (MacLachlin and Chapman 1988).

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However, the overall length of non-LLD episodes appears to be greater than the overall length of LLD episodes (Merritt and Liles 1987). (2) Episode completeness--The frequency of use of story categories does not seem to differentiate LLD from non-LLD samples invariably; that is, both use initiating events and direct consequences equally frequently and internal responses the least frequently (Merritt and Liles 1987; Ripich and Griffith 1988). Recall, however, that the internal response category is not an obligatory category for an episode to be complete. What is suggested as a possible differentiating pattern is that difficulties with inclusion of internal responses persist for LLD samples (Ripich and Griffith 1988). This persistence may partially account for the problems LLD children encounter in inferring the emotional states of characters from wordless picture books and in explaining how actions can plausibly result from different emotional states (Westby 1985). (3) Cohesion--Story categories and episode completeness pertain to the organizational aspects of story recall. In contrast, cohesion gen-. erally refers to the topical continuity, or sequential relatedness, of discourse as constructed through semantic devices that explicitly tie meaning within and across utterance boundaries (Halliday and Hasan 1976). In narrative discourse, cohesive devices are the glue that binds together meaning relations between clauses and episode boundaries through use of the appropriate referring and connecting devices. As one example, in both spoken and written discourse, anaphoric reference, which consists of personal, demonstrative, and comparative reference, functions as a set of rementioning rules, or search instructions, to recover referential identity. In the utterance, "Tommy said he didn't buy the candy because his mother didn't want him to do it," the underlined elements refer back to what has already been mentioned and make the referential identity explicit in the actual "language being spoken" (Fine 1978, p. 257). Of the nine studies concerned with LLD children, only two (Liles 1985; Ripich and Griffith 1988) addressed the use of cohesive devices. Findings are less than unequivocal due to sample size and differing task conditions. Differences between LLD and non-LLD groups tended to center on the frequency and adequacy with which LLD children used various cohesive devices, such as the referential use of pronouns and connectives, to tie episode boundaries together in a logical way. An implication, therefore, is that LLD children may persist in the use of a more "oral" style of story retelling versus the kind of "literate" style more often characteristic of non-LLD children. The exact relationship of a persistent oral style to aspects of academic achievement remains unspecified. However, in a study on oral story recall with Black American children in kindergarten and Grade 1 who were classified according to reading achievement level (high versus low), Norris and

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Bruning (1988) found that reading level was correlated with less adequate use of cohesive ties. Clearl3~ the development of cohesion and its role as a precursor for proficient reading comprehension are areas meriting further research as well as inclusion in assessment approaches to the diagnosis of a LLD (Norris and Bruning 1988). (4) Fluency of retellings--This final aspect of story comprehension, as measured through recall, concerns the smoothness and efficiency with which a child monitors and repairs his or her verbal retelling. This monitoring and self-repair of on-line verbal formulation is typically reflected in the detection and correction of violations in linguistic elements. Detection of error is usually indicative of transient failures either in verbal planning, such as silent pauses unassociated with breath junctures, filled pauses ("uh', "ah', etc.), or revisions, or in the motor execution of the verbal plan, for example, repetitions of syllables, words, or phrases. (A more comprehensive discussion of this topic with LLD children is provided by Brinton and Fujiki [in press] and Silliman and Leslie [1983]). Again, as with the study of cohesion in the story recall of LLD children, only limited attention has been paid to the self-repair of transient communicative breakdowns in the story flow. Liles and Purcell (1987) did not find a significant difference in the frequency with which LLD and non-LLD samples produced violations; however, non-LLD children tended to repair inaccurate statements more frequently when they occurred, a finding that suggested the non-LLD sample was more adept at correction. In another study in which sample selection was carefully controlled, MacLachlin and Chapman (1988) found that the narrative retellings of their LLD sample resulted in a significantly higher rate of communicative breakdowns in comparison to other kinds of "conversations," such as question-answer sequences. Moreover, LLD children experienced more breakdowns than did control groups matched for chronological age or the mean length of communication unit. These patterns of results were interpreted in two ways. First, it appears that the opportunity for breakdowns in verbal formulation increases as the length of the communication unit increases, an outcome that may be related to the greater cognitive complexity required in anticipating and coordinating what to say next with how to say it. Secondly, a dynamic interaction seems to exist between the length of narrative utterances in retellings and the scope, nature, and accessibility of a child's linguistic repertoire. Story Generation Studies with Language Learning Disabled Children Theoretically, independent story generation appears to be a more difficult task than story recall (Westby 1984). In story recall, the child is given a preformulated schema on which to operate. Story generation,

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in contrast, requires the unassisted formulation of a narrative schema. In practice, there is probably a continuum between assisted and unassisted story retelling and telling w h e n elicitation procedures are considered. For example, a solicited narrative is the outcome of procedures in which a child is given a story stem, such as "I'm going to tell you the first part of a story and I want you to make up the rest of i t . . . Once upon a time, two friends were in a deep dark c a v e . . . " (Merritt and Liles 1987), or is given a specific set of instructions to " . . . make up your own story about something that is make-believe or something that is not real" (Roth and Spekman 1986). A spontaneous narrative, on the other hand, whether defined as fictional or personal experience, is one that emerges from the ongoing flow of conversation and is not intentionally solicited. Studies on the story generation of LLD children typicaUy use solicited narratives. Methodologies. Of the nine studies whose focus was LLD children, only two (Merritt and Liles 1987; Roth and Spekman 1986) structured their tasks specifically to elicit a self-generated story. Because of the more rigorous criteria employed to solicit narratives, discussion is confined to these two studies. In two other studies (MacLachlin and Chapman 1988; Ripich and Griffith 1988), procedures were less explicitly designed to solicit a self-generated, fictional narrative. However, even in the well-designed study by Roth and Spekman (1986), instructions appeared to confound fictional with personal experience narratives. A total of 68 LLD children participated in these two studies. Children in the study by Merritt and Liles (1987) were generally younger (N = 20; mean age, 8:7), while the Roth and Spekman (1986) subjects (N = 48) were divided into three different age groups with mean ages of 8:9, 10.9, and 13.0, respectively. Another major difference between the two studies was their data base. Only one story per child was solicited by Roth and Spekman versus three per child in the study by Merritt and Liles. Performance patterns. The same variations in research design previously mentioned for story recall are equally applicable here in the interpretation of results. Given these qualifications, pertinent findings for episode completeness and cohesion are presented. (1) Episode completeness--A consistent finding across both studies was that LLD children, in comparison to control groups, produced more episodes that were less complete. Also, consistent with the research on story recall, incompleteness was related to the omission of internal responses, as well as to the omission of actions (attempts) and plans. In effect, elements omitted were those containing the planning, actions, and attitudes of the protagonists (Roth and Spekman 1986). The higher frequency of incomplete episodes in the LLD sample,

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again, appeared more typical of oral strategies defined by Merritt and Liles (1987) as a "series of loosely joined initiating events combined with irrelevant information" (p. 546). It should be noted, however, that Merritt and Liles found that incompleteness tended to occur more often at the beginning of the narrative suggesting a problem initially in "getting going." Once this phase was passed, LLD children in their sample were more likely to generate a complete episode. This pattern is reminiscent of Westby's (1984) description of "slow retrievers," children w h o need more time and more external guidance in selecting the appropriate strategies for recalling an orally presented story or in constructing an oral narrative. Whether variability of this kind represents a LLD or, simply, an individual difference remains unresolved. Both of these studies provide some additional evidence for the use of the episode as an analytic unit and, most critically, as a psychological unit through which children access existing story schemas for generating and retelling narratives. (2) Cohesion--Similar to the general findings for story recall, data from both studies indicated that LLD children, as a group, consistently used causal connectives less often to link content across episode boundaries. Roth and Spekman (1986) speculate that less frequent use may be related to the complexity of planning required for the execution of appropriate causal structures.

Some Implications An objective of this review was to scrutinize evidence for the proposition that narratives of LLD children offer a potential window for viewing the oral foundations of competence with literacy activities. From both a theoretical and clinical perspective, an important question concerns whether current interpretations of these performance patterns provide a principled basis for future research on possible subtypes of a LLD. One interpretative framework is that a LLD is a manifestation of a broader, cognitively-based, organizational limitation (Graybeal 1981; Merritt and Liles 1987). This basic organizational problem is often expressed through narrative comprehension and production tasks by two related patterns. One pattern is reflected in the reduced ability to plan out the episode structure efficiently across the narrative on recall tasks particularly w h e n the listener is unfamiliar to the child (Liles 1987). A second pattern found on tasks soliciting the generation of a narrative is failure to include sufficient planning information. It may be that patterns of these kinds represent one subtype of a LLD in which an

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insufficient knowledge base is the issue. Insufficient content knowledge would place internal constraints on the scope of processing strategies that can be employed, for example, for the selective comparison or integration of information across a variety of tasks (Sternberg 1987) and, in the specific case of narratives, would influence the social awareness that people plan their behavior in goal-directed ways (Roth and Spekrnan 1986; Westby 1985). A related research issue concerns the intersections between episode organization and the appropriate and adequate use of cohesion. Liles (1987) proposes that these two components are separate, but interdependent, levels of processing. That is, the use of causal connectives to link meaning relations can be separated from how episodes themselves are constructed; however, the nature of episode construction may directly influence the adequacy of cohesion assuming that a linguistic repertoire is available for encoding cohesive relations. A second interpretation of performance differences emphasizes the efficiency of strategy utilization rather than the general sufficiency of the knowledge base and is similar to recent descriptions of a learning disability (for example, Palincsar and Brown 1987; Wong 1985). The implication is that metacognitive strategies are not deployed well for planning how to approach problem solving and to assess its outcomes. In terms of narrative comprehension and production, Liles and Purcell (1987) propose that proficient communication results from an interaction of general metacognitive factors. One factor concerns how efficiently a child uses self-monitoring strategies for coordinating the multiple levels of the linguistic and discourse systems. A second factor involves the effectiveness of the child's strategy selection for interpreting the meaning, purpose, and complexity of the task (Brown 1982). A third factor pertains to the speed and accessibility of strategies for realizing practically the awareness that human behavior is planful when some level of awareness does exist (Roth and Spekman 1986). Children who manage available processing resources inefficiently, therefore, may constitute a second subtype of LLD. This second subtype may also subsume the slow retrievers identified by Westby (1984). A final implication is more purely clinical. Whether story generation yields a richer data base than story retelling is still a matter of debate. Story recall tasks do provide a model for the child, appear to result in better interjudge reliability, and permit more controlled use of comprehension questions to probe understanding particularly in mildto-moderately impaired children (Crais and Chapman 1987; Merritt and Liles 1987). Story generation tasks, on the other hand, if appropriately scripted for solicitation, for example, the use of story stems or prefacing scenarios (Peterson and McCabe 1983), allow more latitude for children to display their creativity and verbal virtuosity. In either

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case, carefully listening to children's oral narratives offers essential information for the teacher, clinician, and researcher about oral precursors for the acquisition of literacy.

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