ACQ Vol 13 no 3 2011

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ACQ Volume 13, Number 3 2011 129
perform within normal limits on measures of oral narrative
microstructure when compared to reference data from the
US (Miller & Iglesias, 2008). In contrast, most children
performed within normal limits for the total NSS score, a
measure of narrative macrostructure, with variable results
for the NSS components.
Microstructure measures
Results suggest a different language profile to the SALT
database for Aboriginal children who may be acquiring SAE
as a second dialect. Three participants produced narratives
of comparable length to the database while one produced
a longer narrative and two produced much shorter
narratives. On the other hand, lexical diversity was more
limited (lower measures for NDW), and syntactic complexity
was poorer (lower MLCU). Grammatical accuracy also
differed from SAE standards. These findings are congruent
with Marinis and Chondrogianni (2010) who showed that
children learning a second language required more years of
exposure to reach monolingual norms. Reasons for the
different language profile may be hypothesised from what is
known about Aboriginal culture and language use. Some
participants may not have felt fully confident due to
unfamiliarity with the task or a person from outside of their
cultural community, or unease about telling the examiner
something she already knew (Moses & Wigglesworth, 2008;
Turnbull, 2002). While “talking less” is often valued more
within Aboriginal culture (Malcolm et al., 1999; Moses &
Wigglesworth, 2008), shorter stories were not evident for
the participants in this study. However, this cultural value
may have contributed to lower measures for MLCU. The
lower MLCU scores may also have resulted from the
reduced use of prepositions, verb auxiliaries, and copulas,
which is typical of many forms of AE (e.g., “what you
doing?”). The low socioeconomic background of the
participants may also have contributed to lower
performance on the vocabulary-related microstructure
measure, NDW (Hoff & Tian, 2005).
Results show that it is important to evaluate GA on
the basis of AE features where Aboriginal children have
not yet fully acquired SAE. Use of the GA-SAE measure
may underestimate the child’s linguistic proficiency. A
comparison of two GA measures may provide a means
of measuring progress towards competency in both the
child’s home dialect and competency in use of SAE, if
suitable norms are developed. This is line with Munoz et al.
(2003) who recommended excluding utterances that have
features of the participant’s language from being classed
as grammatically inaccurate, as GA may be an indicator
of normal or impaired language development only in the
context of the syntactic structures that are typical of the
community. Varieties of AE have different grammatical
rules from that of SAE and hence require developmental
normative data that is individualised to their capacities, to
more reliably examine LD and LI.
Macrostructure Measures
Unlike the microstructure measures, the NSS
macrostructure measures were less influenced by features
of AE. Most participants gained NSS scores within normal
limits compared to the database. Furthermore, variations
among the NSS components suggest areas of strength and
weakness across different aspects of narrative structure.
One exception was P#3, who performed below two SDs on
many NSS measures, using the phrase “once upon a time”
Results
Results for all measures and comparisons to the reference
data norms for each participant are shown in table 1.
Comparisons to the reference data norms are presented
with respect to standard deviations for the reference data.
Microstructure analysis
For the number of C-units, three participants performed
within normal limits (WNL), two performed at least one
standard deviation (SD) below the SALT database mean,
and the eldest participant performed more than two SDs
above the mean. For the NDW measure, two participants
performed WNL, while two performed at least one SD
below the mean and two performed at least two SD below
the mean, compared to the reference data base. For
MLCU, one participant performed WNL, while four
participants performed at least one SD below the mean and
one performed at least two SDs below the mean.
The adjusted measure for grammatical accuracy, GA-AE,
was higher than GA-SAE for five of the six participants,
with only one participant’s accuracy remaining the same.
The highest increase in GA was seen in P#1, an increase
of 56% and the smallest increase of 8% was seen in P#2,
from a reported SAE background. The most frequently
occurring feature of AE was “reduced past tense markings
on verbs” (22 occurrences across participants). Other
features present were reduced use of prepositions, verb
auxiliaries, copulas, and possessives, and subordinate
conjunctions. Less common features of AE were future
tense marked with the use of “gonna” and variable past
tense marking. Examples are provided in the appendix.
Macrostructure analysis
Compared to the reference data base, all except one
participant performed WNL for the total NSS score. P#3
was an anomaly, scoring much lower than other
participants, at least two SDs below the mean. With the
exception of P#3, the total NSS scores increased with age.
P#3 attained below average scores for each NSS
component. Results for the five other participants were
more varied and are reported here with key patterns
highlighted. For the NSS Introduction component all other
participants attained scores WNLs. The two eldest
participants gained above average scores for Character
development, while all other participant scores were WNL.
For Mental states, two participants scored WNLs, one
scored at least one SD below the mean and the two eldest
participants scored at least two SD below the mean. For
Referencing and Cohesion, the two youngest participants
scored at least one SD below the mean. P#4 scored at
least two SDs above the mean for Referencing while the
remaining older participants scored WNLs for Referencing
and Cohesion. For Conflict resolution, only the two oldest
participants scored WNLs while the two youngest scored at
least one SD below the mean and one other participant
scored at least two SDs below the mean. For the
Conclusion component one participant scored at least one
SD below the mean, the youngest and eldest participants
scored at least one SD above the mean and the remaining
two participants scored WNL.
Discussion
Within this small study, Aboriginal children identified by their
teachers as progressing well at school did not consistently