No. 42 (2026): julio-diciembre
Research articles

Narrative language assessment in monolingual Spanish-speaking children. A comparative study in educational settings

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Paulina Meza-Rubio Autonomous University of Queretaro image/svg+xml
Lourdes Martinez-Nieto
https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5808-4487 A.T. Still University image/svg+xml

Bio
Luisa-Josefina Alarcón-Neve
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1435-5684 Autonomous University of Queretaro image/svg+xml

Published 2026-04-12

How to Cite

Meza-Rubio, P., Martinez-Nieto, L., & Alarcón-Neve, L.-J. (2026). Narrative language assessment in monolingual Spanish-speaking children. A comparative study in educational settings. Revista Panamericana De Pedagogía, 42. https://doi.org/10.21555/rpp.3722

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Abstract

Narrative competence is a key indicator of children’s language development and academic success, particularly in reading comprehension and written expression. In educational settings, narrative assessment plays an important role in supporting teachers’ instructional decisions and the early identification of language-related difficulties. However, many narrative assessment tools require lengthy administration and analysis, which limits their practical use in classroom contexts. This study aimed to compare the narrative performance of typically developing monolingual Spanish-speaking children using two commonly used instruments: Frog on His Own, analyzed with the Narrative Scoring Scheme (NSS), and the Dog Story from the Multilingual Assessment Instrument for Narratives (MAIN), with a specific focus on their applicability in school settings. Ten monolingual Spanish-speaking children aged 9 to 11 years with typical language and cognitive development participated in the study. Narratives were elicited through retelling tasks and analyzed using microstructural measures (mean length of utterance, lexical productivity, subordination index, and grammaticality) as well as narrative macrostructure. Results indicated no significant differences between instruments in syntactic complexity or macrostructural organization once scores were standardized. Differences emerged only in verbal productivity, with longer narratives produced in the frog story task. Overall, the findings suggest that both instruments provide comparable information about children’s narrative abilities. However, the MAIN offers a clear advantage for educational practice due to its shorter, more structured format, which reduces administration and analysis time while still yielding meaningful narrative profiles. These characteristics make the MAIN particularly well suited for teachers and school-based professionals seeking efficient and informative tools to support language monitoring and instructional planning in the classroom.

Keywords

  • Education,
  • Assessment,
  • Children's language,
  • Storytelling,
  • Children
PDF (Spanish)

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