Bilingual Children Demonstrate Variation Within Shared Narrative Macrostructure

We investigate the relationship between narrative macrostructure, current language exposure, and microstructure in second-grade Spanish-English bilingual children in the United States. Macrostructure knowledge has been claimed to be shared across languages in multilingual individuals. We examine the role of current language exposure and microstructure on macrostructure and how individual children organize their stories in English and Spanish. We use sociocultural theory to investigate differences in the macrostructural elements children choose to include in their stories by language.

Using existing data, we used a two-sample t-test to compare average macrostructure and microstructure performance in English and Spanish in addition to performance on subcomponents of macrostructure. A correlational analysis was used to compare narrative performance in both languages. We used regression analysis to investigate to what extent current language exposure and microstructure influenced the macrostructure of 62 Spanish-English bilingual second graders' stories.

Children used more words and a greater variety of words in Spanish compared to English. However, they demonstrated comparable use of overall macrostructure across languages, in addition to variation in what macrostructure subcomponents they use by language of story elicitation. No statistically significant relationship was found between current language exposure and macrostructure, except for Spanish story structure. Correlational analysis revealed a significant relationship between macrostructure performance in English and Spanish. A significant relationship was found within languages between microstructure and macrostructure and across languages between Spanish microstructure and English internal state terms.

Findings are consistent with extant literature that claims macrostructure is shared across languages. Children require lexical diversity across languages to express their ideas organized within macrostructural elements. Although bilingual children tell comparably complex stories, they may be making culturally and linguistically specific decisions about what macrostructure components to include in their stories.