Global TALES Project Protocol 2018
Creators: name: Westerveld, Marleen
name: Nelson, Nickola
name: Fernandes, Fernanda
name: Ferman, Sara
name: Gillon, Gail
name: McKean, Cristina
name: Petinou, Kakia
name: Tumanova, Tatjana
name: Vogindroukas, Ioannis
name: Westby, Carol
Publisher: name: Open Science Framework
Year: 2022
Subjects: subject: First and Second Language Acquisition
subject: Discourse and Text Linguistics
subject: Syntax
subject: Linguistics
subject: FOS: Languages and literature
subject: Semantics and Pragmatics
subject: Education
subject: Social and Behavioral Sciences
subject: Applied Linguistics
subject: Personal Narratives
subject: Speech Pathology

description: Much social interaction occurs in conversations; and most conversations involve telling our stories (or personal narratives). Telling stories about ourselves, our families and our friends helps to cement friendships, to develop our sense of ourselves and to build and strengthen shared memories and experiences with those who are important to us. Whether the story is about the fantastic football match we watched last night, the memorable camping holiday we had last year, or how we managed a conflict with another person, sharing stories about our lives builds our sense of identity and community, both of which are vital to mental well-being. Research shows that story telling is universal and that it plays numerous important roles in all cultures. For example, stories can be used to pass along cultural history in oral tradition, to interpret individual experiences and share them with others, or to entertain others with humorous or dramatic stories. What is not clear is if humans around the world all learn similar forms of story-telling structure, regardless of their culture. That is, to what extent does narrative macrostructure (such as sequence and cohesion) differ from one cultural-linguistic group to another and to what extent are they the same or similar? In addition to expected variations in narrative macrostructure, the purpose and content of personal stories is likely to vary across cultures (e.g., McCabe &amp; Chang, 2013). Although there is a great deal of research about children and young people’s narrative abilities using story retell, even in the field of typical language development little is known about the nature of children’s personal narratives about their own lives (Westby &amp; Culatta, 2016). Given narratives’ importance for contributing to friendships, families, and identity this is a significant gap in the evidence for those wanting to develop approaches to support personal narratives in children with language disorder and other vulnerable groups. This knowledge is also needed to know to what degree story telling or retelling can contribute to culturally fair approaches to assessment. In this project, the Child Language Committee members of the International Association of Communication Sciences and Disorders (IALP) developed the Global TALES protocol for eliciting personal event narratives. To pilot the Global TALES protocol, personal event narratives were elicited from 10-year-old participants from a range of countries / cultural-linguistic groups. This initial study aimed to identify the degree of diversity in personal event narratives in 10-year-old children across an international sample with a range of cultures and languages.