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References Berry, R., & Hudson, J. (1997). Making the jump: A resource book for teachers of Aboriginal students . Broome, WA: Catholic Education Office. Butcher, A. (2008). Linguistic aspects of Australian Aboriginal English. Clinical Linguistics and Phonetics , 22 (8), 625–642. doi: 10.1080/02699200802223535 Centre for Community Child Health and Telethon Institute for Child Health Research. (2009). A snapshot of early childhood development in Australia – AEDI national report 2009 . Canberra, ACT: Australian Government. de Plevitz, L. (2006). Special schooling for Indigenous students: A new form of racial discrimination. Australian Journal of Indigenous Education , 35 (1), 44–53. Epstein, S., & Phillips, J. (2009). Storytelling skills of children with specific language impairment. Child Language Teaching and Therapy , 25 (3), 285–300. doi:10.1177/0265659009339819 Fey, M.E., Catts, H.W., Proctor-Williams, K., Tomblin, J.B., & Zhang, X. (2004). Oral and written story composition skills of children with language impairment. Journal of Speech Language, and Hearing Research , 47 (6), 1301– 1318. doi: 1092-4388/04/4706-1301 Freelon, D. (2011). ReCal: Reliability calculation for the masses . Retrieved from http://dfreelon.org/. Gould, J. (2001). Joint assessments for Koori children: Working with Aboriginal people to improve outcomes for Aboriginal English (Lingo) speaking Aboriginal children in the speech pathology assessment situation. ACQuiring Knowledge in Speech, Language and Hearing , 3 (3), 136–138. Heilmann, J., Miller, J.F., Nockerts, A., & Dunaway, C. (2010). Properties of the Narrative Scoring Scheme: Using narrative retells in young school-age children. American Journal of Speech-Language Pathology , 19 (2), 154–166. doi:10.1044/1058-0360(2009/08-0024) Hoff, E., & Tian, C. (2005). Socioeconomic status and cultural influences on language. Journal of Communication Disorders , 38 , 271–278. Malcolm, I., Haig, Y., Konigsberg, P., Rochecouste, J., Collard, G., Hill, A., & Cahill, R. (1999). Two-way English: Towards more user-friendly education for speakers of Aboriginal English . East Perth, WA: Education Department of Western Australia. Marinis, T., & Chondrogianni, V. (2010). Production of tense marking in successive bilingual children: When do they converge with their monolingual peers? International Journal of Speech-Language Pathology , 12 (1), 19–28. doi: 10.3109/17549500903434125 Mayer, M. (1969). Frog, where are you? New York: Puffin Pied Piper. Miller, J. F., & Iglesias, A. (2008). Systematic Analysis of Language Transcripts (SALT) , Research Version 2008 [Computer software]. Madison, WI: Language Analysis Laboratory. Muñoz, M.L., Gillam, R.B., Peña, E.D., & Gulley-Faehnle, A. (2003). Measures of language development in fictional narratives of Latino children. Language, Speech, and Hearing Services in Schools , 34 (4), 332–342. doi: 0161- 1461/03/3404-0332 Moses, K., & Wigglesworth, G. (2008). The silence of the frogs: Dysfunctional discourse in the “English-only” Aboriginal classroom. In J. Simpson & G. Wigglesworth (Eds.), Children’s language and multilingualism: Indigenous language use at home and school (pp. 129–153). New York: Continuum International Publishing Group.

at the beginning of every utterance. Possible reasons why this participant may have underperformed include tiredness, unfamiliarity with the task or shyness towards the examiner. The “shame” response that may arise in testing situations with Aboriginal children has been well reported and may also have been a factor here (Gould, 2001; Malcolm et al., 1999). Feelings of “shame” may lead to a reluctance to speak or desire to leave a situation. Shame may arise from situations where a person does not know what is expected of them or feels singled out from the group. Interesting trends are apparent when the results from P#3 are excluded. Most other participants did well with the Introduction, Character development and Conclusion components. This is consistent with the observation that people and place are of key importance in Aboriginal storytelling (Malcolm et al., 1999). It is unclear why most participants had difficulty describing the Mental states of the story characters (feelings and thoughts). Referencing, Cohesion, and Conflict resolution were challenging components for the younger children but older children had good mastery of these. This suggests that experience with narratives at school contributed to the ability of Aboriginal children to produce more mature oral narratives as measured by the NSS. Conclusion This study was a preliminary exploration of oral narrative in Aboriginal children. As such, the study is limited in several ways including its small sample size and scope, and limited information about the home languages and hearing status of the children. However, the findings lead to some important clinical implications. Speech pathologists need to consider the language background of the Aboriginal children they assess (including dialects, creoles, and traditional languages) as well as information about the child’s level of exposure to SAE. Until reliable normative data are available, our ability to use grammatical or oral narrative microstructure measures to define LI in Aboriginal children is limited. There may also be greater benefit from using measures that are more independent of grammar and linguistic variation such as oral narrative structure. The development of Australian English normative data is needed as a focus of ongoing studies. Information is needed on the language development of Aboriginal, Torres Strait Islander, and non-Indigenous children, across the range of remote, rural and urban contexts, language groups and socioeconomic backgrounds. In addition, exploration of appropriate assessment and language sampling practices for Indigenous Australian children is required to ensure optimum accommodation of cultural differences in communication style (Gould, 2008). These differences may include the need for relationship and purpose within the interaction, avoidance of display questions, acceptance of silence or a non-response, and strategies to minimise “shame”. Until we have better normative data, clinicians are advised to collect and analyse language samples over time in order to monitor progress in response to intervention. Acknowledgments This paper is based on the honours project work of the second author, supervised by the first author. Appreciation is extended to the children who participated in this study and to the school staff members, parents and caregivers who supported them.

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ACQ uiring Knowledge in Speech, Language and Hearing