The construction process of the narrative discourse in preschool children

Abstract

This article describes a research whose objective was to analyze the process of construction of the narrative discourse of preschool students. The study was carried out between 2009 and 2011 comparing data from a private school and from a public one, in a vulnerable context, both of them situated in Talca, Chile. This research started assuming that preschool children, 5 and 6 years old, use multiple language functions; for example, the imaginative function distinguishing between literary and nonliterary discourse. It was expected that a greater cultural background could contribute to the construction of the fictional narrative discourse, making evident a greater symbolization capacity and presence of the elaborated code. The most important result show that language is not commonly used in an imaginative way in both contexts. The subjects studied develop their own fictional narrative discourse having their teachers as a model and distinguishing between a literary and non-literary text. The subjects make use of the narrative discourse when they narrate the tales and, especially, the descriptive discourse when they create their own stories. This is principally detected at the school located in a vulnerable context, because the context where these children are situated would affect their symbolic construction. Moreover, we can add the effort the school makes of the language use with an instrumental function.