A scalable tool for assessing childrens language abilities within a narrative context The NAP (Narrative Assessment Protocol)文档.pdf

Early Childhood Research Quarterly 25 (2010) 218–234 Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Early Childhood Research Quarterly A scalable tool for assessing children’s language abilities within a narrative context: The NAP (Narrative Assessment Protocol) Laura M. Justice a,∗ , Ryan Bowles b , Khara Pence c , Carolyn Gosse d a School of Teaching and Learning, The Ohio State University, 356 Arps Hall, Columbus, OH 43210, United States b Michigan State University, United States c Washington DC, United States d University of Virginia, United States a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t Article history: Analysis of children’s spoken narratives represents a potentially informative approach to Received 21 January 2009 language assessment within early childhood settings. Yet, narrative assessment is not read- Received in revised form 29 October 2009 ily amenable to at-scale use given the time needed to collect, transcribe, and analyze a child’s Accepted 6 November 2009 narrative sample and the lack of consensus regarding what aspects of narrative expression ought to be examined (e.g., language form, language content). The purpose of this study Keywords: was to describe a direct assessment of children’s language abilities within a narrative con- Narrative assessment text, the Narrative Assessment Protocol (NAP), which examines five aspects of language: Language development Measurement sentence structure, phra