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Applying Vygotskian Developmental
Theory to Language Intervention
Phyllis Schneider
University of Alberta, Edmonton, Canada
Ruth V. Watkins
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, IL
deally, each practicing speech-language
pathologist works within a theory of human
learning and development. The clinician's
theory serves as a guide for making moment-to-moment
decisions in clinical interactions, as well as in preplanning
intervention and selecting therapy materials. In most cases,
these personal theories will be influenced by formal
theories of learning and development, particularly when
working with children with language impairments.
As pointed out by van Kleeck and Richardson (1986, in
press), social interactionist views of development are
particularly adaptable to clinical intervention. After all,
clinicians are attempting to influence the learning and
development of child clients. As language interventionists,
our practice rests on at least an implicit belief that social
interaction provides the context for and has the potential to
effect developmental change.
The goal of the present article is to present a particular
social-interactionist view of development and to discuss
how this view can guide language intervention practice. We
ABSTRACT: The developmental theory of L.S. Vygotsky is
one that is particularly well suited to clinical application.
Vygotsky viewed social interaction as essential for the
development of individual functioning. His theory is thus
especially relevant to language interventth, in Which
clinicians attempt to influence children's development
through interaction. In this article, we present key
notions from Vygotsky's developmental theory and
applications of this theory to assessment. We then
discuss applications to language intervention in clinical,
settings using examples from intervention with a child
who has language impairments.
KEY WORDS: dynamic assessment, dynamic intervention,
Vygotsky, clinical interaction, scaffolding
LANGUAGE, SPEECH, AND HEARING SERVICES IN SCHOOLS Vol. 27
will present an extended example of how the approach can
be applied, focusing on the process of planning and
carrying out intervention based on the approach.
A SOCIAL-INTERACTIONIST VIEW OF
DEVELOPMENT
Theoretical Foundation
There is a developmental theory that views social
interaction with others as essential for the development of
independent cognitive and linguistic functioning-the theory
of Vygotsky (1978, 1987). Vygotsky viewed the child as
developing and functioning within a social context. For
Vygotsky, social interaction is essential for development,
not only as a source of stimulation and feedback, but as
the very means by which individual psychological function-
ing comes to be. Psychological functions such as problem-
solving and voluntary memory are carried out initially
between the child and adults or more capable peers;
eventually, the child internalizes the process that was
carried out jointly, and is then able to carry out the
function individually.
Vygotsky proposed a way by which responsibility for
psychological functioning is gradually transferred from the
adult to the child. Adults structure activities so that the
child's role is within the child's zone of proximal develop-
ment (ZPD), described as "the difference between a child's
actual developmental level as determined by independent
problem solving and the level of potential development as
determined through problem solving under adult guidance
or in collaboration with more capable peers" (1978, p. 86).
Thus, children's performance under adult guidance is at a
higher level than they are capable of independently.
Eventually, through participating in such interaction,
children become capable of carrying out similar activities
0161-1461/96/2702-0157 American Speech-Language-Hearing Association 157
on their own, because the types of assistance provided by
the adult in joint problem solving have been internalized by
the child.
Inside the Zone of Proximal Development
Wertsch (1984) developed the notion of the ZPD,
focusing on the aspects of interaction that are crucial
for later independent functioning. He proposed three
theoretical constructs that can help us understand the
zone. The central construct in his formulation is the
notion of situation definition, or "the way in which a
setting or context is represented" by participants (p. 8).
An adult and child may in many cases not have the
same definition of a situation at first; for example, a
child may view a set of blocks as objects to be thrown
or used for anything he or she likes, whereas the adult
views them as building materials. The adult and child
must come to some agreement on how to define the
situation before they can achieve intersubjectivity,
Wertsch's second construct.
According to Rommetveit (1979), although inter-
subjectivity between two adults is achieved through
reciprocal attempts at understanding the perspective of the
other and through a process of "negotiating" shared
meanings, for adult-child dyads, the process is less
reciprocal. The child is not able to take the adult's perspec-
tive, but may nevertheless accept the adult's situation
definition, at least after negotiation. It is the adult who
must attempt to understand the child's situation definition
and negotiate from there a definition the child will accept
and that will bring the child closer to the adult's defini-
tion. At the prelinguistic level, the child's attention is what
must primarily be negotiated for (Rommetveit, 1979); at a
later age, negotiations can involve the nature of the activity
and the ways to operate within it.
The adult carries out these negotiations through what
Wertsch (1984) terms semiotic mediation, similar to what
others have called scaffolding (Wood, Bruner, & Ross,
1976), assisted performance (Tharp, Gallimore, & Calkins,
1984), or controlled complexity (McNamee, 1979). Al-
though based on somewhat different metaphors, they are all
intended to describe the ways adults adapt their assistance
to help children participate in activities, and thus promote
their children's cognitive, social, and/or linguistic develop-
ment. Wertsch's term emphasizes mediation through
language; we would point out that other forms of mediation
(e.g., demonstration, gesturing, etc.) may also be helpful.
Application to Studies of Typical Development
Recent research by neo-Vygotskians has examined the
nature of assistance provided by adults during the course of
an activity, either a problem-solving task (e.g., Saxe,
Gearhart, & Guberman, 1984; Wertsch, 1985; Wertsch,
McNamee, McLane, & Budwig, 1980) or a task based on
everyday activities (Renshaw & Gardner, 1990). Parents
have been observed to adjust their assistance to the needs
of the child at a particular point in the activity, retaining
158 LANGUAGE, SPEECH, AND HEARING SERVICES IN SCHOOLS * Vol. 27
responsibility when the child is less successful and relin-
quishing it when the child is doing well.
Detailed descriptions of interactions, termed microgenetic
analyses (Wertsch & Stone, 1978), have been employed to
specify how adults adjust their assistance from moment to
moment in an interaction. Related changes in a child's
assumption of responsibility for aspects of the activity have
also been described (Wertsch, McNamee, McLane, &
Budwig, 1980).
Within an interaction, when the child has completed a
substep successfully, the adult provides what Wertsch and
Schneider (1981) termed abbreviated assistance, which
provides minimal direction and leaves maximal responsibil-
ity to the child for that portion of the activity (e.g., "What
do we need next?"). When such assistance is not re-
sponded to appropriately by the child, the adult typically
switches to unabbreviated help, which provides more
specific direction (e.g., "Do you think the small block
would go on top of that big one?", or demonstration); the
adult is thereby assuming a greater share of the responsibil-
ity for the overall activity (Saxe, Gearhart, & Guberman,
1984; Wertsch & Schneider, 1981).
Note that abbreviated assistance is neither better nor
worse than unabbreviated assistance; it is the match of
level of assistance, the child's ability, and the dyad's goals
that makes assistance helpful or unhelpful. The adult uses
the child's responses as cues to the child's task competence
at a given moment in the activity.
Through adult assistance, children gradually learn how to
complete activities independently by learning the steps
necessary to carry them out and by taking responsibility for
carrying out the steps (Wertsch, 1978). However, they are
not only learning how to complete particular activities, they
are also learning the process of identifying the steps
involved in an activity.
Adults' assistance of children's performance must be
analyzed with regard to the goals of the participants for the
activity. The goal is simply what the participants are trying
to accomplish in an activity. The adult's goal for an
activity may differ from the child's goal-for example, an
adult may consider the goal for a coloring book to be
making the pictures look as realistic as possible as well as
teaching colors and shapes, whereas the child may have the
goal of trying out every crayon in turn. The participants'
goal(s) will direct the nature of the assistance and the
relative responsibility of child and adult (Renshaw &
Gardner, 1990; Wertsch, Minick, & Arns, 1984). Part of the
adult's task is to help the child to move toward a more
adult-like goal over time.
The adult's role in the ZPD is not typically that of
teacher in the way we usually think of this role, but rather
as a joint participant in everyday activities. In addition, in
other cultures, the ways adults and children divide respon-
sibility in joint activities and the goals they have for the
activities may be quite different from the patterns described
in observations of Western middle-class adults and children
(Wertsch, Minick, & Arns, 1984). However, the types of
assistance used by adults in everyday interaction in our
own culture can be adapted as deliberate remediation tools
for intervention with children from the same culture.
April 1996
Clinical Applications: Dynamic Approaches
Although the majority of neo-Vygotskian research has
focused on parent-child interaction, Vygotsky originally
introduced his notion of the ZPD as a means of assessing
children's potential for learning, as an alternative to the
static measures of IQ and mental age. He suggested that
determining a child's ZPD would provide guidance in
helping a child attain the next higher level of functioning.
He was especially interested in applying the notion to
children with developmental delays.
The ZPD notion has been incorporated into a number of
dynamic assessment instruments, both in the USSR
(Wozniak, 1975) and in the West (Brown & Ferrara, 1985;
Campione & Brown, 1987; Feuerstein, Rand, Hoffman,
Egozi, & Shagar-Segev, 1991; Feuerstein, Rand, Hoffman,
& Miller, 1980; Lidz, 1991). The term dynamic was
introduced to contrast the approach to standard assessment
techniques, which assess a child's current level of function-
ing rather than their proximal development-the product
rather than the process of learning (Lidz, 1991). Lidz
discussed several ways in which adults mediate an experi-
ence for a child in a dynamic interaction: They mediate
meaning to help the learner discriminate between what is
and is not important; they mediate regulation to help the
learner move from other- to self-regulation; they mediate
goal seeking, setting, and planning; and they mediate the
challenge of the activity, so that the learner can reach
beyond his or her current level of functioning without
being overwhelmed.
To date, most of the work in dynamic assessment has
focused on a test-intervene-retest format (also known as
test-train-retest and test-teach-retest). In the test phase, a
static measure, such as a standardized intelligence or
achievement test, is administered in order to determine a
child's independent level of functioning. In the intervene
phase, the examiner interacts with the child using materials
that tap the same skills as the static measure. The examiner
uses a predetermined hierarchy of cues to assist the child,
either moving systematically from least to most helpful
(e.g., Campione & Brown, 1987), or moving flexibly in
relation to the child's performance at a particular point in
the interaction (e.g., Feuerstein, 1980). Finally, the child is
retested using the same or a similar static measure.
The degree to which a child changes from test to retest
is termed the child's modifiability. Feuerstein (1980) has
argued against using a test phase in his procedures on the
grounds that if a child performs poorly on a pretest, it will
be difficult to engage the child in the task in the interven-
tion phase. Without a pretest, determination of modifiability
is based on an analysis of change (in, e.g., the child's
strategy use) during and after intervention.
Dynamic Assessment of Language
More recently, the dynamic approach has been applied to
language assessment. Olswang and her colleagues (Olswang
& Bain, 1991; Olswang, Bain, & Johnson, 1992; Olswang,
Bain, Rosendahl, Oblak, & Smith, 1986) developed a
hierarchy of cues for use with children at the early stages
of language development. The cues are designed to provide
different amounts of support for children's production of
lexical items. Olswang et al. (1986) presented data from
two children with delayed language development and found
that the children differed in their responsiveness to adult
cues, and that the more responsive child also learned more
words (both treated and control words) during the treatment
period. The authors concluded that the less responsive child
was probably a better candidate for therapy because he
exhibited change on treated words to a greater extent than
control words; changes in the child who was more respon-
sive were probably due to maturation rather than treatment.
Thus, dynamic assessment could be used to indicate
children who are in the process of developing a skill (i.e.,
those who need low levels of support to perform at a
higher level) and those who will need treatment to help
them develop the skill (those who need greater levels of
support in order to perform at a higher level). It could also
reveal those who did not benefit from any level of adult
support. Olswang et al. (1986) suggested that such children
may not be ready for treatment.
Olswang, Bain, and Johnson (1992) extended the
hierarchy of dynamic assessment to five cue levels for use
in eliciting two-word utterances. The hierarchy ranges from
least supportive (General Statement calling attention to an
object-"Oh, look at this") to most supportive (Direct
Model + Elicitation Statement-"Tell me, dog walk", and
Shaping-repetition of single term produced by the child
and model plus elicitation of the other target term). The
authors presented data from two children once again who
differed in responsiveness to adult cues.
Wade and Haynes (1989) compared dynamic interaction in
two contexts: child-directed and adult-directed. They looked
at children with and without language impairments whose
mean length of utterance was between 1.04 and 1.67. The
dynamic assessment cues consisted of elicitation questions
and statements adapted from Olswang et al. (1986). They
found that children with language impairments responded
more frequently and more often appropriately in the adult-
directed interaction, whereas the children without impair-
ments responded less often in the adult-directed condition
and did not differ in the number of appropriate responses in
the two conditions. The authors concluded that children with
language impairments may benefit more from dynamic
interactions when they are directed by the clinician.
The dynamic assessment approach has also been applied
to bilingual and bicultural assessment issues. Pefia, Quinn,
and Iglesias (1992) used a dynamic approach to assessment
with young children (test-teach-retest format involving
lexical items). They found that children who were "possibly
language disordered" improved less after the teach phase
and were rated lower on a "modifiability indicator" than
another group of children who had equally low pretest
scores but had not been identified as possibly having a
language disorder. The authors claimed that the approach
allows one to distinguish between children with language
impairments and children who have had different interac-
tional experiences: If a child can benefit from dynamic
interaction in a short time, then the child does not have a
Schneider * Watkins 159
language impairment; children who do not benefit in a
short time are in need of intervention.
Gutierrez-Clellen and Quinn (1993) extended this notion
to interaction involving narratives. They suggested that
dynamic interaction could be used to familiarize children
from another culture (and possibly different narrative
traditions) with storytelling conventions and organization. A
child who is "highly modifiable" in a narrative dynamic
assessment would be likely to adapt relatively easily to
narrative tasks; previous poor narrative performance would
likely have been caused by insufficient experience with
dominant-culture narratives. Children who demonstrate low
modifiability would be candidates for intervention.
The Purpose of Dynamic Assessment
Different authors have expressed different notions of the
goal driving the dynamic approach. Several authors have
proposed that the primary goal is to determine a child's
modifiability (Campione & Brown, 1987; Olswang et al.
1986; Pefia et al., 1992)-the degree to which a child is
likely to benefit from a program of intervention. Modifi-
ability includes the amount of assistance needed and
transfer to other tasks or to independent task performance
(Pefia et al.. 1992).
According to Olswang et al. (1986), a child's modifiabil-
ity as determined by dynamic assessment may lead to
decisions concerning whether a child is a suitable candidate
for intervention at a particular point in time. Olswang et al.
(1992) refer to this approach as quantitative. The focus in
the quantitative approach is typically a predetermined
context, such as single-word elicitation, in which the child
will be assessed. Assessment protocols are then drawn up
with a hierarchy of cues to assess children in that context.
Another approach to dynamic assessment, which Olswang
et al. (1992) call the qualitative approach, is to identify the
proximal or next level the child will reach-that is, the
skills a child is currently developing but cannot yet
evidence independently (Minick, 1987). The goal is to
determine in which contexts and with what types of
assistance a child can perform an activity. A child might
not show much benefit from adult assistance in a particular
context. However, this does not necessarily mean that the
child is not modifiable in a general sense-rather, it
suggests that the task was not in the zone of the child's
proximal development and thus the child may not have
been modifiable for this particular skill.'
Minick (1987) stated that although the modifiability
approach has resulted in useful work, the second view of
dynamic assessment goals is more consistent with
In fact, the child described as less modifiable by Olswang et al. did not
use words expressively in the static assessment, whereas the other child,
who did appear modifiable, used 12 words during the static assessment
phase of the study Thus, these two children were different in their
independent level of functioning and would be expected to benefit from
interaction in different activities or to different extents in the same activity.
The less modifiable child would be a candidate for intervention according to
Olswang et al Once that decision is made, it would be helpful for planning
intervention to figure out in what ways and for what tasks the child could
be helped
160 LANGUAGE, SPEECH, AND HEARING SERVICES IN SCHOOLS
Vygotsky's perspective. The size of the ZPD, as measured
by the amount of assistance a child needs to accomplish a
task or the efficiency with which the child accomplishes it,
is not the crucial aspect to determine (Minick, 1987:
Winegar, 1988). Rather, the question to ask is, "For which
skills and at which levels is adult assistance helpful?"
Although it may be the case that some children turn out
to be more modifiable than others for particular skills and
skill levels, the focus for Vygotsky and many Vygotskians
(Rogoff. 1990; Schneider, Gallimore, & Hyland, 1991;
Tharp & Gallimore, 1988) has been how and in what
contexts a child's performance can be assisted. The
assumption is that most children are modifiable (i.e., are
capable of further development with assistance) if the
appropriate skill area, type of assistance, and professional
can be identified. A child does not have a ZPD-it is not a
feature of the child. Rather, a zone is created whenever
children interact with more capable others in particular
activities. Thus, the quantitative and qualitative aspects of
the zone will vary depending on the nature of the activity,
the adult's contribution. and the child's independent level
of functioning. It is also important to remember that a
child's modifiability for (readiness to learn) a particular
skill area can itself change with practice or instruction
(Campione & Brown, 1987).
When designing dynamic assessment or intervention,
then, it is crucial to consider the child's independent
performance level when determining where to begin. If a
child does not appear to benefit from assistance, it is
necessary to consider whether a lower skill level might be
closer to the child's ZPD. Much of the work in dynamic
assessment to date has focused on the quantitative ap-
proach-measuring children's modifiability. We take a
qualitative approach, focusing on what goes on in dynamic
interaction and how the adult adjusts assistance to mediate
for the child in particular points in the interaction.
The Dynamic Approach to Intervention
The notion of the ZPD lends itself equally well to what
we could call a dynamic intervention approach to language
impairments. Van Kleeck and Richardson (1986) discussed
ways a clinician might respond to errors in intervention in
terms of the theory by which the clinician is guided. The
authors concluded that a social interactional approach such
as Vygotsky's would provide excellent guidance in how to
deal with children's errors, and beyond that, to help
children to move toward better independent performance.
The clinician can use the child's errors to guide decisions
concerning the level of assistance that will be most helpful
at a particular point in interaction.
In a sense, dynamic approaches to assessment and
intervention blur the distinction between the two. Dynamic
assessment involves mediation by the adult in order to
determine the child's assisted level of performance;
dynamic intervention requires constant assessment of the
effect of adult cues on the child's performance in order to
keep the adult's assistance at the appropriate level. The
goal of dynamic assessment is to determine the skills with
Vol. 27 April 1996
which the child is currently ready to be helped. In dynamic
intervention. the goal is to assist the child to develop those
skills by internalizing the process carried out between the
adult and the child in interaction.
By combining Vygotsky's original notion of the ZPD
with what has been learned from parent-child interac-
tions, we can devise a means of applying Vygotskian
developmental theory to language intervention. We will
focus on the process of planning and carrying out such
a Vygotskian intervention. We will discuss the process
in general and present examples from specific interven-
tion sessions in which we attempted to use this process.
Our aim is to highlight the process of developing and
implementing language facilitation as driven by
Vygotsky's theory, rather than to document the outcome
of a particular treatment strategy.
A VYGOTSKIAN APPROACH TO PLANNING
MEDIATION IN THE CLINIC
This case study describes the application of Vygotskian
principles in several individual language intervention
sessions with an adolescent with language impairments. The
intervention focused on facilitating the client's narrative
skills through the clinician's mediation of various story-
telling tasks. As in planning any intervention, a preliminary
step to planning and conducting actual therapy sessions was
to consider the client's communication strengths and
weaknesses, and to formulate appropriate general and
specific intervention goals from the client's profile.
We have found that Vygotskian mediation in the clinic
requires some effort and reflection to implement, despite its
ubiquity in parent-child interaction and surface-level
appearance of being a simple and natural strategy. Though
the first impression of many clinicians is often, "That's
what I always do," after analysis of our own initial
attempts, we found that there is a tendency to retain
responsibility and to keep the child's role at a low level, at
which he or she attains consistent success. We hope that by
closely examining the process of planning and conducting a
dynamic intervention, the unique properties of this form of
intervention will become apparent.
Much of the work using a dynamic approach to
language has involved children at prelinguistic or early
linguistic stages of language development. Lidz (1991)
argued that dynamic interaction is most effective with
children who have some metacognitive abilities, and are
thus over 3 years of age. Before this age, children will
not have the metacognitive skills that would allow them
to eventually take over responsibility for an activity.
Working with older children has the advantage of
permitting the adult to provide assistance when the
child provides an incorrect or partially correct verbal
response. Such attention to errors provides an opportu-
nity to bring the child's situation definition closer to
that of the adult (Wertsch, 1984). The child will be
capable of developing a metacognitive strategy based on
internalization of the adult's mediation.
Description of Client
The subject of this case study was "Bill," a 13-year-old
male enrolled in a regular sixth-grade educational place-
ment. Bill displayed moderate difficulties with expressive
and receptive language as the result of a cerebrovascular
accident (CVA) that occurred approximately 15 months
before the beginning of the intervention activities described
here. In the period between the CVA and the intervention
described, Bill was enrolled in month of diagnostic
therapy at a rehabilitation center, and approximately year
of individual language intervention, attending two 30-minute
sessions per week. That intervention emphasized improving
Bill's functional language skills (e.g., recalling months of
the year, understanding math vocabulary, oral and written
narrative skills) through relatively traditional therapy
methods (e.g.. drilling on the months of the year).
Progress was noted in certain areas following the year of
language intervention. For example, Bill improved in
specific areas of language knowledge (e.g., naming months
of the year in order). However, other tasks continued to be
problematic, such as organizing academic material, using
academic study skills, and completing writing activities.
Bill's language skills at the time of the study were docu-
mented through both formal assessment procedures and
informal narrative analysis, as described in the following
sections.
Formal assessment data. Several standardized measures
of Bill's language skills were collected at the beginning of
this case study. These measures included the Clinical
Evaluation of Language Fundamentals-Revised (CELF-R;
Semel, Wiig, & Secord, 1987), the Test of Language
Development-2 Intermediate (TOLD-2 I; Hammill &
Newcomer, 1988), and the Peabody Picture Vocabulary
Test-Revised (PPVT-R; Dunn & Dunn, 1981). Table I
summarizes Bill's performance on these measures. Overall,
formal measures suggested that semantic skills were a
relative strength for Bill, whereas grammatical abilities
were more problematic. Bill's receptive language appeared
to exceed his expressive skills.
Specific standardized measures of Bill's reading ability
and academic achievement were not collected at the time of
Table 1. Bill's standardized language assessment results.
Standardized test Standard score Percentile rank
Clinical Evaluation of Language Fundamentals-Revised
Receptive Language score 72 3
Expressive Language score 64 1
Total Language score 66 1
Test of Language Development-Intermediate
Semantics Quotient 88
Syntax Quotient 75
Spoken Language Quotient 82
Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test-Revised 102 55
Note. All scores and quotients reported have a mean of 100 and a
standard deviation of 15.
Schneider * Watkins 161
the study. However, informal reports from Bill's classroom
teacher and caregiver indicated that Bill was experiencing
difficulty in mastering academic material and maintaining
the pace of his school peers. In the context of this study, it
was observed that Bill had solid fundamental literacy skills
and was able to read and comprehend relatively simple
material.
Baseline narrative measures. Several informal samples
of Bill's narrative abilities were collected at the onset of
the case study. These baseline samples were used to (a)
obtain information concerning Bill's strengths and weak-
nesses in narrative production and (b) identify potential
intervention targets. A number of different oral narrative
types were elicited, including personal experience stories,
stories generated from a brief story stem or starter, and
story retelling.
Three narrative samples, collected before the beginning
of the intervention, are presented in the Appendix. The first
sample is a personal experience story, the second is a story
generated from a starter, and the third is a retold story
(refer to the Appendix for a summary of each narrative
task). Despite obvious differences in the nature and
character of these narrative tasks, informal analysis of
Bill's narratives revealed several consistent problem areas.
First, Bill often failed to include key story elements in his
narratives (i.e., characters, setting, action, resolution). For
example, Bill began his personal experience narrative (see
Example 1) a story concerning a recent trip to the circus,
with the sentence "We had to find a parking space." Bill
did not provide important information such as who attended
the circus or where the circus was held. In retelling a story
that was told to him (see Example 3). Bill omitted many
key points, including the initiating event of a blizzard and
the protagonists' attempts to survive it.
Two additional problems evident in Bill's baseline
narratives were his difficulty in structuring a story and in
presenting stories in an appropriate and interpretable
sequence. These problems were manifest in several ways in
Bill's narratives. For example, Bill frequently appeared to
be uncertain about what to include in his stories, and often
relied on the clinician to provide prompts and assistance
for continuing.
In the story Bill generated from a starter (see Example
2), Bill's comments suggest that he is not sure what should
come next in the story (e.g., "My mind went blank" and "I
think I don't have any more sentences to put together"),
and continues with the story only after the clinician
provides a recap of the story he has told thus far.2 Bill's
personal experience narrative (see Example 1) also suggests
some specific difficulties with describing events in an
appropriate manner. Specifically, Bill's discussion of the
parking garage seems out of place and is difficult to
interpret without additional information.
2Given the etiology of Bill's problems, it is possible that difficulties in
narration may be related to memory skills rather than to a particular lack of
knowledge of story structure. Even i memory is involved, however, Bill's
ability to produce narratives should be enhanced by strengthening his
knowledge of key story elements and structure.
162 LANGUAGE, SPEECH, AND HEARING SERVICES IN SCHOOLS * Vol. 27
Planning the Intervention
Given this profile, the general goal for the intervention
described here was to improve Bill's oral narrative abilities.
An intervention approach was needed that would assist Bill
in overcoming the particular difficulties identified in his
baseline narratives, that is, an approach that highlighted the
inclusion of key story elements and gave Bill a framework
from which stories could be generated with greater inde-
pendence. To address these areas, increasing Bill's ability
to use story grammar elements in telling a story with a
complete episode was established as the specific goal of
our intervention. Story grammars (Stein & Glenn, 1979)
were originally proposed to represent what children know
about story structures. They have been widely used in
research on children's narratives as well as in clinical
analyses.
Although there is disagreement as to the adequacy and
universality of story grammar as a model of story produc-
tion and comprehension (e.g., Wilensky, 1983), stories
fitting the story grammar format are generally accepted by
adults and children as good stories (Stein & Policastro,
1984). Thus, we felt that if Bill could learn to generate
stories that fit the story grammar format, he would be
telling better stories than he was previously, and the basic
story grammar framework could provide a foundation for
further development and expansion of Bill's narrative
abilities. An outline of Stein and Glenn's story grammar
model is presented in Table 2.
We used two forms of mediation in the intervention: (a)
the verbal mediation moves of the clinician, which are
clinician utterances that mediate between the child and the
goal; and (b) written mediation in the form of a cue card
to which Bill could refer. The cue card contained a list of
story grammar units (which we called "important parts of a
story that all complete stories should have") with a brief
explanation of each, such as, "Starting Event-what
happens to begin the story." The major contents of this cue
card are displayed in Table 2.
In an initial therapy session, the clinician and child had
reviewed these important story units and discussed what
they were and why they were important. At the beginning
of the first session to be discussed here, the summarized
Table 2. Story Grammar: Key elements and cue card adapta-
tions.
Story Grammar elements" Cue card
Setting Setting: Characters and places
Initiating event Starting event: Action/problem that
starts story
Internal response Thoughts and feelings: Characters'
thoughts and plans
Attempt Attempts: Characters' actions
Consequence Results: Results of actions
Reaction Reaction. Outcomes and endings
As proposed by Stein and Glenn (1979).
April 1996
story units on the cue card were reviewed. The goal for the
session was explained: Bill was to retell stories read to him
by the clinician, using the story units to guide him and
referring to the cue card as necessary. In order to reduce
memory load, Bill also had a copy of the story to which he
could refer as well.
The next step in planning our mediation was to determine
what would constitute different levels of assistance, from a
high level, which would leave maximum responsibility to the
child, to a low level, which would give the child minimal
responsibility for the task. Given the nature of our task,
there appeared to be three distinct levels of responsibility
Bill could exhibit at any point: He could demonstrate high
individual responsibility by independently consulting his cue
card for story grammar information; he could rely on the
clinician to remind him to look at the card or to provide
story grammar information, while he retained responsibility
for providing story details; or he could require help with the
recall even of the story details. Thus, we planned three
corresponding levels of clinician assistance:
1. High: Mediation moves that require the child to
remember to look at the card, or to provide the next
important story part without referring to the cue card,
if possible. With high moves, responsibility for the
task would rest primarily with Bill. Thus, high moves
are analogous to Wertsch and Schneider's abbreviated
directives (1981) mentioned previously. An example
of a high mediation move would be: "What comes
first (or next) in the story?" In order to respond
correctly to this move, the child would need to both
mention the story unit that should come next
according to the cue card and provide the story line
or lines that constituted that unit from the story to be
retold. For example, in responding to the clinician's
high mediation move of "What comes first in the
story?" a correct response from Bill would be
"setting-there was a little boy riding a bike."
2. Mid: Mediation moves in which the clinician
assumes some of the responsibility for linking the
cue card to the story or for referring the child to the
cue card. A mid-level move such as, "And in this
story, what was the setting?" links the information
on the cue card with the task of telling the story. If
the child had not looked at the cue card, an appro-
priate mid-level move would be, "How could you
find out what comes next in the story?" or "Don't
forget about your card."
3. Low: Mediation moves that do not refer to the cue
card or to the task of using important story units to
tell the story. For example, "Who was in the story?"
"How did he feel about that?" or "What did he do
then?" would constitute low-level moves because the
child would not have to consider the overall goal at
all to respond to them correctly, and thus are a type
of "unabbreviated" prompt (Wertsch & Schneider,
1981).
The clinician's ongoing decisions concerning the level of
mediation move appropriate at any point in the interaction
depended on several factors. The basic principle was to
stay at as high a level as possible-in other words, to give
as much responsibility at any time to the child as long as
he was successful. After a correct response, the clinician
was to go up to a higher level or stay up if her moves
were already high. After an error or partially correct
response, she might go down to a lower level, or she might
decide to stay at a higher level if she believed it would be
sufficient at that point.
In order to implement this strategy. it was necessary to
specify what would constitute an error, a correct response,
and a partially correct response on the child's part. If in
response to a high mediation move such as "What comes
next in the story?" Bill consulted his cue card, read the
next unit, but did nothing with the information, it would be
considered partially correct, and the clinician would most
likely go down a level. If he responded incorrectly, she
would also go to a lower level move. If he provided the
next story part, but did not identify it with a story unit,
this would also be considered only partially correct. Note
that with a different goal, such as merely telling a story,
such a move would be considered correct. However, with
the goal for this intervention, namely, getting Bill to use
story units to structure his story retelling, it must be
considered only partially correct.
A second factor in the clinician's decision regarding the
appropriate level of prompting was the importance of an
error. If a particular error was trivial and not related to the
overall goal of telling a good story using story units, then
the clinician could move down to a low move rather than
try to help the child function more independently. An
example of a trivial error would be forgetting a character's
name or the story's location (see Example 2, line (20) for
an example). If the error seemed more central to the
storytelling process, then the clinician was to stay at a high
or mid level if possible to try and help the child work
through the error. Miscellaneous factors, such as the child's
level of frustration with and attention to the task, were also
to be considered by the clinician in deciding on the
appropriate level of move to be used.
Thus, the clinician was to mediate Bill's attempts to tell
or retell stories by adjusting her mediation moves to his
level of performance. High moves would be those that
leave a high level of responsibility for the overall task to
Bill; in order to respond correctly, he would need to
consider both the story units and the story itself. Low
moves would be those that leave little responsibility for the
overall task to the child; in order to respond correctly, he
would only need to provide some bit of information about
the story, without considering the overall task of using the
story units. Mid-level moves would be between these two
extremes-they would be attempts by the clinician to link
the two parts of the goal-the story units with the story
part that constitutes that unit.
In some cases, the clinician's mid-level move would
relate the child's mention of a story unit to the story, such
as, "So, in this story......."In others, it would attempt to
connect a story fragment provided by the child with story
units ("And what part of the story was that?"). At each
level, there may be a variety of types of mediation moves
Schneider * Watkins 163
 depending on the nature of the child's responses. In this 1. C OK, so then what comes next in the story
article, we will focus on level of mediation rather than on [HIGH]?
specific prompt type. 2. B [looks at cue card) Starting events [PARTIAL].
Other utterances by the clinician, such as repetitions of
the child's utterance or feedback to his mediation moves, 3. B Actions or events that start the story [PAR-
differed from the mediation moves described above in that TIAL].
they were not intended to evoke an immediate response by 4. C OK, and in this story [MID]?
the child. They undoubtedly serve important functions of 5. B He found a bone and buried it in the backyard
their own. For example, what we have labelled feedback [CORRECT].
includes utterances that attempt to show Bill what might be
6. C Good [FEEDBACK].
incorrect about his move, or to summarize what he has
done in terms of the overall goal. Thus, they no doubt The clinician begins with a mediation move at a high
serve an important role in the mediation process. For level, giving the child responsibility for the overall task.
illustration purposes, however, we will focus on the use of Bill responds in (2)-(3) by looking at his cue card and
moves that can be described in terms of levels of assistance reading the story unit that comes next. He does not,
as we have defined them above. however, go on to relate the unit to the story, making it a
We will now present a microgenetic analysis of the partially correct response. In (4), the clinician shifts to a
interaction to demonstrate how we conducted a Vygotskian- mid-level move that links Bill's contribution to the story to
oriented intervention session. Our focus will be on the be told. This move takes responsibility for linking the goal
moves made by the clinician and on how she adjusted her with the retelling task, while simultaneously modelling such
levels of assistance in response to the child's performance. a linking for the child. Bill responds in (5) with the
(We will return to the planning of the intervention in more requested story information, which is a correct response to
detail in the Discussion section.) the clinician's mid-level move.
In the examples, the transcript and coding conventions
are those used by Systematic Analysis of Language Example 2. Key point: Shifting mediation moves to
Transcripts (SALT; Miller & Chapman, 1986). C stands for clarify story unit definitions (from the retell of a
the clinician and B for Bill. The codes are designed to different story, second session)
highlight the analysis; no quantitative analysis was carried
1. C How should you start the story [HIGH]?
out or intended. The important aspect of level of mediation
move is not how many moves of each type occurred, but 2. B There was a little boy riding a bike [PARTIAL].
rather in what context each type of move was used. The 3. C What part of the story was that [MID]?
meanings of the codes are as follows: 4. B Um, setting, starting event [PARTIAL].
[HIGH], [MID], [LOW]: "Level" of the clinician's 5. C Okay, you told me the setting [FEEDBACK].
mediation move
6. C Do you remember what the setting was [MID]?
[FEEDBACK]: Feedback to child's contribution
7. B There was a boy riding a bike [PARTIAL].
[REP]: repetition (with or without recasting) by the
clinician of the child's utterance 8. C (That would be) I think that would not be the
setting [FEEDBACK].
[CORRECT]: child contribution that was "correct" with
regard to clinician's request and the overall goals for 9. C What is a setting supposed to be [MID]?
the session 10. B (looks at cue card} Place of story, people in the
[PARTIAL]: child contribution that was partially correct story [CORRECT].
with regard to the clinician's request or the overall 11. C Right [FEEDBACK].
goals for session (though it may be fully correct in 12. B A little boy and a dog PARTIAL].
itself, without regard to goal)
13. C But the dog doesn't start at the beginning of the
[ERROR]: incorrect contribution by the child story [FEEDBACK].
Examples are taken from two consecutive intervention 14. C Who was the person at the beginning of the
sessions using the goal and the planned moves outlined story [LOW]?
above. They do not constitute a complete story retelling;
rather, examples were chosen to illustrate particular points. 15. B The kid [CORRECT].
Examples are, however, ordered chronologically. In the first 16. C Right [FEEDBACK].
of the two interactions, the clinician and child reviewed the 17. C And it did also tell you something else about
story units, outlined the overall goal, and practiced with a setting [MID].
story that was labelled with each story unit. Then, the 18. C You may have forgotten that part.
clinician read a new story to the child, repeated the goal,
and began the retelling interaction. The first example comes 19. B Mmhm.
from a point after the beginning of this interaction. 20. C I said there was a little boy who lived in a big
Example 1. Key point: Shifting mediation moves to city [LOW].
elicit a complete response 21. B Okay.

164 LANGUAGE, SPEECH, AND HEARING SERVICES IN SCHOOLS Vol. 27 April 1996
 Once again, the clinician starts with a high-level media-
tion move for a new story retelling. Bill again responds
with a partially correct answer, but this time he included the
story part and omitted mention of the story unit that it
constituted. Again, this would be considered correct if the
goal were merely to get Bill to retell stories; but, with our
goal, it can only be considered partially right. Therefore, the
clinician asks the child to relate the previous contribution to
the story unit information, which is a mid-level move.
In (4), the child provides a response that is only partially
correct for a different reason: While "setting" is correct,
"starting event" is an error-he has not yet mentioned the
starting event of the story. The clinician indirectly provides
feedback that this response was not correct, and then in (6)
asks the child to consider the meaning of setting. Bill's
response is again partially correct because "riding a bike"
is not part of the setting but is a minor part of the starting
event. (The clinician may have confused Bill in (8) by
stating that what he said was not the setting, when in fact
part of his statement was setting information.) The clinician
then asks him what the setting is "supposed to be," a clear
indication that the cue card should be consulted. In (10),
the child does this, and reads the information, which is a
correct response to the clinician's previous move. However,
he once again provides a partially correct contribution in
(12), in that the dog is not part of the setting. The clinician
provides direct feedback as to why the child's statement
was in error, and then in (14) uses a low-level move that
only requires Bill to provide a bit of information from the
story, which he then provides.
The clinician then prompts for another piece of informa-
tion about the setting, but chooses to move quickly in (20)
to a low level to get the information out, rather than
spending time on it, since she assumed the child had
forgotten it by this time and it would not further the
overall goal to have him try to recall it.
Example 3. Key point: Reducing the child's reliance on
the clinician's mediation
1. C So, what should come next in the story
[HIGH]?
2. B (looks at cue card} Uh, starting events [PAR-
TIAL].
3. C Mmhm pauses for several seconds}.
4. C And what is a starting event like [MID]?
5. B {looks at cue card} Actions or events that start
the story [PARTIAL].
6. C {pauses for several seconds) So in this story,
what was our starting event [MID]?
7. B He was riding his bike [PARTIAL].
8. C And trailing intonation} [LOW]?
9. B He saw a little dog [CORRECT].
10. C He saw a little dog, good Bill [FEEDBACK].
In this example, which came immediately after the
previous one in the session, the clinician again begins with
a high-level move. However, she does not immediately
provide the mid-level move after Bill's partially correct
response in (2); instead, she merely acknowledges it and
pauses in both (3) and (6) to allow the child to complete
the response. The pauses alone did not cue the child that
he should provide more information, and the clinician went
on to provide mid-level moves. The clinician was attempt-
ing to shift responsibility to Bill for the task, but he did
not spontaneously accept it. He appears to rely on the
interactive nature of intervention and expects to provide a
single response per turn to the clinician's questions-a not
unusual pattern in both clinic and classroom settings.
However, the goal of the clinician in Vygotskian mediation
is to go beyond correct responses and to shift responsibility
to the child when possible.
Example 4. Key point: Staying at a high level to allow
Bill to take responsibility for the task
1. C All right, what comes next in the story [HIGH]?
2. B He called to the dog [ERROR].
3. C I'm thinking what part of the story comes next
[HIGH]?
4. B {looks at cue card} Um. feelings and thoughts
[PARTIAL].
5. B He thought that if he would call the dog, then
the boy could pet him [CORRECT].
Once again, the clinician follows up a correct answer (#6
in the previous example) with a high-level move. Bill skips
a section of the story in (2) and thus is in error; if he had
not skipped a section, he would have only been partially
correct because he had not related the story part to the
story units. The clinician chooses to treat the error as an
error with respect to the overall goal, rather than focusing
on the fact that he skipped the internal response part.
Presumably, she focused on the overall goal interpretation
because she wanted him to take responsibility for the two
parts of the goal without waiting for a mid-level move
from her. And in fact, in (4) and (5), he produces a
response that meets the two aspects of the overall goal,
without an intervening clinician move. We consider this a
shift in responsibility from the clinician to the child, in that
a high-level move was successful in prompting the child to
satisfy the goal requirements.
Example 5. Key point: Bill takes responsibility for
overall goal
1. C What comes next in the story [HIGH]?
2. B {looks at cue card) Oh, attempts [PARTIAL].
3. C All right [FEEDBACK].
4. B Uh, the one attempt, he calls to the dog
[CORRECT]?
In this example, with merely an intervening acknowledg-
ment by the clinician in (3), Bill carries out both parts of
the overall goal. Thus, it appears that the clinician has been
successful for transferring some of the responsibility for the
goal to the child.
Thus, we see that the clinician moved from high to mid
to occasionally low moves in response to the child's correct
and incorrect contributions. By Example 5 the child had
begun to take on more responsibility for overall task-he
Schneider * Watkins 165
provided both the story unit and the part of the story that
constituted that unit. We believe that with more interven-
tions like this one, Bill would gradually take more and
more responsibility for the storytelling and retelling, and
would eventually internalize the process of using story
units to produce better and more complete stories.
Preliminary support for such increases in Bill's story-
telling competence can be seen in Example 6. In this
example, Bill is responsible for generating his own story,
rather than retelling a story told by the clinician. This is a
difficult task, which requires Bill not to retell story
elements, but to generate appropriate story elements
independently. Up to this point in the intervention, story
retelling skills had been emphasized; note that although Bill
is generating rather than retelling in this task, he can still
make use of his knowledge of story grammar elements, as
well as his cue card.
Example 6. Key point: Bill's ability to use story
retelling skills in a story generation task.
1. C I want you to make up just a real simple story.
2. C What I do want you to remember is>>
3. B What a setting was.
4. C Yes, to include the important parts of a story.
5. C OK, all right.
6. B {reviews cue card without prompt from clini-
cian} Setting, starting, feelings and thoughts,
attempts, results, and reactions.
7. C Okay, very good.
8. C All right, how should you start your story?
9. B (looks at cue card before talking} One day, my
teacher. Ms. Smith. had to go to jury duty.
10. C OK, Bill, that was a very good start to the
story.
11. C And what part of the story was that?
12. B The setting.
13. C Excellent.
14. C OK, what comes next?
15. B The starting event.
16. C Mmhm.
17. B She was down at the courthouse and- she had to
go to jury duty down at the courthouse.
In Bill's story. going to the courthouse is the initiating
event that sets off an internal response: The teacher worries
about her class misbehaving in her absence. 3 Despite the
fact that this was a different storytelling task than used in
preceding intervention activities, Bill used the cue card in
planning and beginning the story ((6), (9)) and was able to
generate appropriate story events ((9), (17)) and accurately
identify story elements ((12), (15)).
3We accepted Blil's submission of "having to go on jury duty" as setting
information and "going to the courthouse" as the initiating event. Although
alternative mterpretations are possible. it Is reasonable to see the jury duty
as background for the real initiating event-the trip to the courthouse,
necessitating the absence of the teacher from the classroom.
166 LANGUAGE, SPEECH, AND HEARING SERVICES IN SCHOOLS
What if we had found that storytelling tasks were too
difficult, that is, that even low moves did not help Bill
succeed in telling stories? This would have meant that the
overall goals we had identified were not within Bill's
ZPD-in other words, that they were not in the range in
which he could complete a task with the benefit of adult
assistance. If the task had been too easy, that is, if high
moves alone were sufficient to complete it. then that would
also mean that it was not in his zone. In these cases, the
goal would need to be adjusted so that it was beyond his
independent functioning but within his functioning with
assistance. Goals also need to be adjusted as the child is
able to take responsibility for a particular overall goal.
DISCUSSION
To relate our intervention back to Wertsch's (1984)
discussion of the ZPD: Bill's definition of a narrative
situation was minimal-it appeared to consist of giving any
information, however tangentially related to the topic, in no
particular order. We were trying to change his definition by
providing him with a story grammar framework for his
stories. We tried to accomplish this in a dynamic way by
mediating his use of the story grammar framework when he
was in the process of telling or retelling stories. Bill
appeared to be ready for such an approach in that his
current level of language skills included the syntactic and
semantic skills needed to formulate utterances when telling
the stories, as well as the literacy skills needed to use the
written form of mediation.
In the clinical interactions, the clinician attempted to
achieve intersubjectivity by trying to understand Bill's
understanding of the situation while attempting to bring
him closer to her own understanding. Thus, she was
attempting to mediate his performance in the narrative task
by taking on more or less responsibility for the overall goal
as was necessary at any given point.
Our plan for this intervention was specific to the
particular goal for this interaction and this child, namely,
definitions of high, mid, and low levels of responsibility
for the goal, and of the goal itself. The use of two forms
of mediation, the written cue card and the clinician's levels
of assistance, were also geared to this particular interven-
tion. However, some aspects are more generally applicable:
the notion of levels of assistance, the use of which are
determined by the correct responses or errors of the child;
and the notion of transferring responsibility to the child for
the overall goal of the intervention.
We mentioned earlier that although clinicians often feel
that they are already interacting with clients in a way that
corresponds to scaffolding, on closer inspection, it often
appears that the clinician is directing the interaction and
retaining responsibility for the overall goals. In this case
study, considerable effort was required for the clinician to
adjust her level of assistance in response to the child's level
of performance, rather than to apply a predetermined set of
strategies for language facilitation. This moment-to-moment
adaptation is the essence of Vygotskian intervention and
Vol. 27 April 1996
challenges the clinician who has learned to apply interven-
tion techniques in the same manner across contexts, skill
levels, and activities. For the clinician attempting to use
Vygotskian mediation, significant effort in planning and
practicing the use of levels of assistance and appropriate
mediation moves will be required, as will ongoing evalua-
tion of intervention sessions. We have found that the
assistance of a colleague with whom the clinician can
discuss and analyze intervention sessions is invaluable in
this process.
The components of the intervention and the strategies the
clinician found useful in learning to implement the inter-
vention are summarized in Table 3. Planning and imple-
menting this intervention involved five primary steps. The
first and final steps are typical of most language interven-
tion approaches. The three intermediate steps, however, are
specific to a Vygotskian approach.
In learning to successfully implement these components
of a Vygotskian model, particular strategies were found
useful by the clinician. For example, in developing media-
tion techniques for Bill, it was helpful to consider Bill's
strengths, such as his literacy skills. This led to the use of
a cue card to supplement verbal mediation. It was also
necessary to begin intervention by trying out various levels
of assistance and assessing Bill's responses in order to
arrive at appropriate levels of mediation. Further, the
clinician initially found it challenging to recognize target
behaviors and their level of accuracy/inaccuracy on-line.
Two strategies were helpful here. The clinician planned and
even scripted particular stories and utterances and identified
the level of accuracy associated with them. In addition, it
was helpful to begin the intervention using a relatively
simple task; focusing primarily on story retelling narrowed
the range of Bill's productions, and enabled the clinician to
better provide assistance at the optimal level. Finally, in
terms of adjusting levels of assistance on-line, it was also
beneficial for the clinician to review videotaped interven-
Table 3. Implementing Vygotskian intervention: Strategies for clinicians.
Standard intervention components Specific concerns of a
1. Establish intervention goals and desired
outcomes.
2. Develop mediation techniques; specify
levels of assistance.
3. Recognize target behaviors and their level
of accuracy on-line.
4. Adjust levels of assistance on-line.
5. Monitor change in child's skills over time.
tion sessions. Transcription of narrative activities was
needed to fully track the levels of assistance provided in
response to particular aspects of Bill's story production.
Although this is a labor-intensive activity, it is likely to be
beneficial for a clinician beginning to apply a Vygotskian
perspective.
CONCLUSIONS
In general, we believe that the effort invested in applying
Vygotskian principles to clinical interactions has the
potential for strong return in the diversity of cases and
settings to which they could be applied, and in effective-
ness as an intervention approach. Vygotskian principles are
compatible with the underlying premise on which most
language intervention sessions are structured-the belief
that social interactions, appropriately engineered, can
promote change in a child's language system.
At present, limited research has specifically focused on
the application of Vygotskian principles to language
intervention settings. This article represents a preliminary
attempt in that direction: we hope future research will be
directed toward modifying and extending this basic
approach to clients with diverse language impairments in
varied treatment settings. In addition, investigations
specifically directed toward evaluating the effectiveness of
mediation in clinical settings are warranted.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Portions of this article were originally presented as part of a
short course, "Vygotskian Developmental Theory and Language
Intervention," at the American Speech-Language-Hearing Associa-
tion Annual Convention, November 1991. The authors' names are
Strategies for implementing a Vygotskian
gotskian approach approach
2a. Consider child's current performance, as
well as useful strengths.
2b. Conduct diagnostic intervention sessions,
trying and evaluating various forms of
mediation.
3a. Plan (script) possible child utterances,
identify level of accuracy and appropriate
clinician mediation.
3b. Begin with a simplified task (e.g., start
with simple narratives min a retelling
activity).
4a. See 3a and 3b above.
4b. Use video- and/or audiotape to review
sessions; transcribe sessions to track
clinician and child performance more
fully.
Schneider * Watkins 167
listed alphabetically; however, both authors contributed in equal
amounts to the collaboration. The authors would like to thank
Anne van Kleeck, Bonnie Brinton, and Wayne Secord for their
comments on the article.
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Received June 6. 1994
Accepted June 13, 1995
Contact author: Phyllis Schneider, PhD, Department of Speech
Pathology and Audiology, University of Alberta, 2-70 Corbett Hall,
Edmonton, Alberta T6G 2G4, CANADA

67. it-L in Ip · iL -"bisi4g

APPENDIX. BASELINE NARRATIVES

Key: B Bill is speaker Example 2: Generating a Story from a Starter

C Clinician is speaker
= Transcriber comment Bill was given a phrase to begin a story, and asked to "tell
Note: Some clinician utterances have been removed to a whole story" with it. In this story. the starter used was
clarify examples. from Merritt & Liles (1987).

C Okay, here's a sentence to help you get started. Once

Example 1: Personal Experience Narrative upon a time two friends were in a deep dark cave.
B Deep dark cave. And they saw lots of bats. So they went
Bill was asked to identify an interesting recent event or
on. They seen stalactites.
activity, and then "tell a story" about it.
= B pauses.
C It's a good story so far.
C Okay, tell me the whole story of your trip to the circus.
B My mind went blank.
B Okay. We had to find a parking space.
= C summarizes B's story thus far.
= B pauses.
C Okay, keep going.
C You had to find a parking space?
B And they saw> Do they really have monsters in caves?
B We couldn't find it bad. The parking garage, it was real
C For the story they could.
bad. Cause they had animals down on the second floor. I
B They have a monster in the cave following right behind
mean first floor.
them. And the kid's screaming. They go "help."
= B pauses.
= B pauses.
C That's kind of strange.
C Doing good so far.
B Stinks.
B Okay.
= B pauses.
= B pauses.
C All right, you have a good start.
B Okay, now, we bought tickets. And we bought a book C Don't give up.
with posters, a poster in it. Tell them all about it. And we B I think I don't have any more sentences to put together.
= C summarizes story thus far.
had to find a seat. Our seats. The 127.
= B pauses. B And the cops came. The cops came to help them. No,
C That was your seat? Could you see pretty well? let's make it the ranger helped them.
B We seen pretty good. = B pauses.
C All right, tell me more about it. C That's good.
B There was one thing that I liked. That is when they shot
the big gun off.

Schneider * WatkinQ 169

Example 3: Retelling a Story
Bill was asked to listen carefully to a story that was going
to be read aloud to him, because when he finished listen-
ing, he would tell the story to the clinician. In this
example, the story Bill heard was the version of Buried
Alive developed by Merritt & Liles (1987). This story is 28
sentences in length and follows story grammar format. In
brief, the story involves a truck driver trapped in a blizzard
and his multiple attempts to resolve the situation. The truck
driver is successful, and is ultimately rescued.
C Now, tell back the story to me as much as you can
remember.
170 LANGUAGE, SPEECH, AND HEARING SERVICES IN SCHOOLS * Vol. 27
B I don't know if I can remember that much.
C Do the best that you can and tell me what you remem-
ber.
B Jim had been a truck driver for how much years?
C You can just make up how many. It doesn't matter.
B Three.
= B pauses.
C Keep going. You don't have to remember the story word
for word. You can just give me the general idea.
B A whole week went by.
C Doing good.
B Then the state police came and started digging snow out.
Then they saw how Jim was safe. But he was hungry and
tired.
April 1996