Abstract

A common way to measure and stimulate narrative child development is through the retelling of a story (Owen, 2006). In Chile, retelling tasks are designed considering the structure of the verbal input, both on a lexical-syntactic and textual level, as well as setting levels of complexity among them (Pavez & Coloma, 2005). The research project FONDECYT 1130420 produced a storybook – as an input of a retelling task- emphasizing not only the verbal aspect, but also the visual narrative. Therefore, we set a double objective: to design narrative images of a story, enhancing its meaning through a visual grammar, and to observe how these elements were reflected in the oral retelling of the subjects. For this purpose, along with the Story Grammar (Glen & Stein, 1979) for the textual structure analysis, we used the Grammar of Visual Design (Kress & Van Leeuwen, 1996) as analytical tool for preparing narrative images. The story was piloted in a sample of 20 kindergarten children from a semiprivate school in the Region of Valparaiso. Their oral narratives were videotaped, transcribed and analyzed. It was noted that all narrative images were mentioned in more than 60% of the recounted version. In addition, three images were referred in 90% of the child narratives, representing key moments of the story or certain complexity of the narrative input as simultaneous actions. These results highlight the importance of the visual elements of a story for the task of child retelling.