Spanish-Language Narration and Literacy

Allyssa McCabe, Ph.D., is Professor of Psychology at the University of Massachusetts, Lowell. She founded and co-edits the journal Narrative Inquiry and has researched how narrative develops with age, the way parents can encourage narration, cultural differences in narration, as well as interrelationships between the development of narrative, vocabulary, and phonological awareness. She is the recipient (with L. S. Bliss and A. Covington) of the Editor's Award from Contemporary Issues in Communication Science and Disorders, presented at the 1999 Annual Convention of the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association, San Francisco, CA, for the article “Assessing the Narratives of African American Children.” Her current work concerns a theoretical approach to early literacy called the Comprehensive Language Approach, which looks at ways that the various strands of oral and written language affect each other in the acquisition of full literacy. With Lynn Bliss, she most recently published Patterns of Narrative Discourse: A Multicultural Lifespan Approach. Alison Bailey, Ed.D., is Associate Professor and a former Division Head of the Psychological Studies in Education Program in the Department of Education, University of California, Los Angeles, in addition to being a faculty associate researcher for the National Center for Research on Evaluation, Standards and Student Testing (CRESST). A graduate of Harvard University, Dr. Bailey's research focuses primarily on language and social communicative development, English language development in second-language learners, early narrative and literacy development, and language assessment. She serves on the advisory boards of the California Department of Education, the consortia of numerous other states, and commercial publishers developing language and literacy assessments for English learners. Dr. Bailey is co-author of the new PreK-K IPT Assessment of English Language Development, editor and contributing author to The Language Demands of School: Putting Academic English to the Test, and co-author with Margaret Heritage of Formative Assessment for Literacy K–6: Building Reading and Academic Language Skills across the Curriculum. Gigliana Melzi, Ph.D., is an Associate Professor and the Director of Undergraduate Studies in the Department of Applied Psychology at New York University's Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development. Dr Melzi obtained her doctoral degree from Boston University and later published articles and chapters focusing on the early literacy and language development of Spanish-speaking Latino children living in the U.S. and in their countries of origin. In one line of research, she has investigated through qualitative methodologies the daily literacy activities of immigrant parents and their impact on children's school performance. She also conducted studies on various discourse and linguistic features of Spanish-speaking mother-child dyads from non-immigrant and immigrant Latin American families across various socioeconomic groups. Currently, Dr Melzi is funded by the National Institute of Health and the Administration for Children and Families for her work on educational involvement of Latino Head Start families. She is also a co-investigator in other funded projects housed in New York University's Medical School and the Center for Research in Culture, Development and Education, which examine numerous factors influencing Latino children's academic engagement and performance.

“If you teach Spanish-speaking children or conduct research on language development, you’ll want to own this timely and relevant book. The ability to create oral narratives—for instance to tell someone what happened at the park—is a necessary foundation for literacy. But children learn to construct narratives as they interact with those around them, and what is included or emphasized in the narrative varies by culture. Spanish-speaking children are sometimes misinterpreted when they are actually producing narratives that are typical and appropriate in Peru or Guatemala or the Dominican Republic. The book provides information and interesting examples that can help teachers use Latino children’s distinctive narrative skills in a positive and rewarding way. Researchers will want to read the carefully designed studies that contribute materially to the literature on discourse development.” —Jean Berko Gleason, Boston University

• 1. Introduction Alison Bailey, Allyssa McCabe and Gigliana Melzi; Part I. Parent-Child Interaction: 2. Cultural variations in mother-child narrative discourse style Margaret Caspe and Gigliana Melzi; 3. Early socio-communicative narrative patterns during Costa Rican mother-infant interaction Pablo Stansbery; 4. Lessons in mother-child and father-child personal narratives in Latino families Tonia N. Cristofaro and Catherine S. Tamis-LeMonda; 5. Evaluation in Spanish-speaking mother-child narratives: the social and sense-making function of internal state references Camila Fernández and Gigliana Melzi; 6. Love, diminutives, and gender socialization in Andean mother-child narrative conversations Kendall A. King and Colleen Gallagher; Part II. Developing Independent Narration: 7. The intersection of language and culture among Mexican-heritage children three to seven years old Alison Wishard Guerra; 8. Beyond chronicity: evaluation and temporality in Spanish-speaking children's personal narratives Paola Uccelli; 9. Narrative stance in Venezuelan children's stories Martha Shiro; 10. Mestizaje: Afro-Caribbean and indigenous Costa Rican children's narratives and links with other traditions C. Nicholas Cuneo, Allyssa McCab, and Gigliana Melzi; Part III. Links to Literacy and Other School Achievements: 11. Latino mothers and their preschool children talk about the past Alison Sparks; 12. The contribution of Spanish-language narration to the assessment of early academic performance of Latino students Alison L. Bailey, Ani Moughamian and Mary Dingle; 13. Cultural variation in narrative competence and its implications for children's academic success Sarah W. Beck.