title: Oral narratives in monolingual and bilingual preschoolers with SLI.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  The body of literature on narratives of bilingual children with and without specific language impairment (SLI) is growing. However, little is known about the narrative abilities of bilingual preschool children with SLI and their patterns of growth.
  
  
  OBJECTIVE
  To determine the similarities and differences in narrative abilities between preschoolers with and without SLI who are either monolingual or bilingual at two time points.
  
  
  METHODS
  Forty children completed a narrative retell task in English at two test points. The mean ages were 52 and 58 months at Times 1 and 2, respectively. We examined performance on measures of narrative macrostructure (narrative information) and microstructure (sentence length, number of different words, verb accuracy, first mentions) in monolingual and bilingual children with and without SLI. The bilingual children were from diverse first-language backgrounds and all spoke English most of the time.
  
  
  RESULTS
  A series of repeated-measures analyses of variance was used with language ability (typical development or SLI) and bilingual status (monolingual versus bilingual) as the between-subjects factors and time (Times 1 or 2) as the within-subjects factor. Results indicated a significant main effect of time for four measures (i.e., Information Score, lexical diversity, sentence length and verb accuracy). The between-subjects analyses indicated a significant difference between the typically developing children and the children with SLI in all measures and a significant difference between monolingual and bilingual children for verb accuracy only.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  This study showed that all four groups of children showed growth over a 6-month period and that bilingual children exposed predominantly to English in the home performed similarly to their monolingual peers in measures of narrative information, sentence length, number of different words and first mentions.
authors.affiliation: Department of Speech-Language Pathology, University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada.
authors.forename: Stefano
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Rezzonico
authors.affiliation: Ontario Institute of Studies in Education, University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada.
authors.forename: Xi
authors.initials: X
authors.lastname: Chen
authors.affiliation: School of Human Communication Disorders, Dalhousie University, Halifax, NS, Canada.
authors.forename: Patricia L
authors.initials: PL
authors.lastname: Cleave
authors.affiliation: The Hanen Centre, Toronto, ON, Canada.
authors.forename: Janice
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Greenberg
authors.affiliation: Ontario Institute of Studies in Education, University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada.
authors.forename: Kathleen
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Hipfner-Boucher
authors.affiliation: Department of Speech-Language Pathology, University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada.
authors.forename: Carla J
authors.initials: CJ
authors.lastname: Johnson
authors.affiliation: Department of Speech-Language Pathology, University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada.
authors.forename: Trelani
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Milburn
authors.affiliation: Ontario Institute of Studies in Education, University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada.
authors.forename: Janette
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Pelletier
authors.affiliation: The Hanen Centre, Toronto, ON, Canada.
authors.forename: Elaine
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Weitzman
authors.affiliation: Department of Speech-Language Pathology, University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada.
authors.forename: Luigi
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Girolametto
mesh_terms: D002675:Child, Preschool; D005260:Female; D005500:Follow-Up Studies; D006801:Humans; D007805:Language Development Disorders / Q000175:diagnosis* / Q000523:psychology / Q000628:therapy; D007807:Language Tests; D008297:Male; D019303:Multilingualism; D033262:Narration; D011594:Psychometrics
keywords: bilingualism; narrative; specific language impairment (SLI)