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Story Grammar

Page history last edited by PBworks 16 years, 11 months ago

FrontPage

Suzanne Pfeiffer

Cynthia Boles

 

 

Story Grammar

 

Outline:

Introduction

Story Structure

Psychological Validity of Story Structure

Comprehension and Memory

Canonical Story Grammar Model

Conclusion


 

Introduction

Story grammar evolved from analyses of folktales conducted by anthropologists in the early 1900s. They found that, regardless of age or culture, when individuals retell stories, the retells follow a pattern. This pattern is referred to as story grammar. Story grammar involves expression of the character’s problem or conflict, a description of attempts to solve the problem, and an analysis of the chain of events that lead to resolution. Story grammar also involves analysis of how characters react to the events in the story (Dimino, Gersten, Carnine, Blake, 1990). Mandler and Johnson (1977) found that children of all ages used their knowledge of how stories are structured to help them remember important details.

 

During the 1970s, emphasis began to shift from defining language in terms of form (syntax) and phonology - see Phonological Awareness) and content (semantics) to defining language in terms of its use. Stein and Glenn (1979) believed that narratives that were understood and created by children were made up of specific consistently ordered story elements. These elements were said to make up a "story grammar."

 

Story Structure

Story grammar is a means for investigating the characters of the story Schema, a hypothesized mental structure, and for testing predictions about story processing (Spivey, N., 1989). Story grammarians, as researchers in this field are called, have developed formal procedures for identifying the elements (e.g., setting, initiating event) of a story and developed rules for creating their sequence, as well as their causal and chronological relations.

 

The foundation of story grammar rests on the story structure rewrite rules of Mandler and Johnson (1977). In their definitive work, Remembrance of Things Parsed: Story Structure and Recall, they examine the underlying structure of well-formed stories in hopes of exposing common elements and to “derive generalizations about structure form traditional folktales” (p. 114). Because folktales have retained their structure over time through only oral retellings Mandler and Johnson suggest this structure to be the ideal schema or framework by which to construct a story. By analyzing elements of folktales and their organization within the structure, Mandler and Johnson created a series of guidelines that help the reader rewrite or diagram the story for study, hence the name “rewrite rules.”

 

Although these stories move through a seemingly simple progression of beginning, middle and end, they also rely on underlying elements of setting, events, episodes, action and reaction, goals, attempts, and emphasis to signal where attention is to be paid and the storing of information for later recall. For a story to be well-formed these elements, or constituents, must follow the organizational framework as laid out in the rewrite rules.

 

Click here for an example of a simple story and its diagram using the rewrite rules.

 

Stein and Glenn (1979) suggest a more simplified version of story structure as revealed in their story elements below.

 

Story Elements Defined by Stein and Glenn (1979)

 

ElementDefinitionExample
SettingIntroduction of main charactersOnce upon a time there were three bears, the momma bear, the popa bear, and the baby bear. They all lived in a tiny house in a great big forest.
Initiating EventAn action or happening that sets up a problem or dilimma for the storyOne day a little girl named Goldilocks came by.
Internal ResponseThe protagonist's reactions to the initiating eventShe was surprised to see the house and noticed it was empty.
AttemptAn action or plan of the protagonist to solve the problemShe went inside to find the three bears gone and ate the baby bear's soup, broke the baby bear's chair, and fell asleep in the baby bear's bed.
ConsequenceThe result of the protagonist's actionsThe bears return to find things eaten and broken and to find Goldilocks in the baby's bed.
ReactionA response by the protagonist to the consequenceGoldilocks ran away.

 

 

Psychological Validity of Story Structure

Mandler and Goodman (1982) state that “the psychological validity of story structure refers to the extent to which story constituents influence processing, regardless of the ability to bring such knowledge to awareness” (p. 508). In other words, no matter if a person knows of it or not, the more they use the elements discussed earlier in Story Structure to store and recall information about a story the more valid the structure they are using becomes.

Mandler and Goodman (1982) conducted experiments to test the psychological validity of story structures. The first tested the “effects of the constituents of traditional stories on comprehension and retrieval times,” and a second tested the ordering rules for story constituents.

The tests indicated a strong psychological validity of story structure.

As predicted, the reading times for the first sentence in a constituent (which usually signals important information) took longer to read than other sentences. When this information was later used as a cue for recall the participants could retell the information in more detail and faster than when a different sentence located later in the constituent was used a cue.

Participants who read a story that did not conform to the ordering (organizational) rules of story structure reordered (in correct order) the constituents when asked to retell the story. Participants also compensated for omissions in story structure, filling in the missing information with their own prior knowledge or assumptions.

 

Comprehension and Memory

Thorndyke (1977) identified the underlying structural elements common to a class of narrative discourses. These elements and their rules of combination comprise a framework or schema that describes the organization of numerous texts.

 

Grammar Rules for Simple Stories

Rule #Rule
1Story -- Setting + Theme + Plot + Resolution
2Setting -- Characters + Location + Time
3Theme -- (Event)* + Goal
4Plot -- Episode*
5Episode -- Subgoal + Attempt* + Outcome
6Attempt -- Event*/Episode
7Outcome -- Event*/State
8Resolution -- Event/State
9Subgoal/Goal -- Desired State
10Characters/Location/Time -- State

The symbol “+” indicates the combination of elements in sequential order. The parentheses around Event indicate that the element is optional; the asterisk (*) indicates that the elements may precede the statement of the goal.

 

 

This formulation of a story grammar assumes a stereotypy in the structure of and relationships between the elements of a narrative discourse. The stereotypical narrative framework can be adapted to fit the characteristics for a particular story by specifying how the details of the story map onto the abstract rules and relationships. This is similar to Bartlett’s idea that a story is reconstructed from memory using a general schema and a few specific details. During comprehension of a story, the frame for general “stories” produces a description of the current story by substituting real properties of the story for prototypical ones provided by the frame.

 

Thorndyke’s study suggested that both structure and content play an important role in memory for connected discourse. In both experiments conducted by the researcher, rated story comprehensibility and recall were correlated and were found to be a function of the amount of identifiable plot structure in the passages. When the narrative structure was readily understandable due to repetition and redundancy in the text, subjects could readily produce an organization hierarchy for the plot and use it to encode the information from the passage. Such stories were rated as easy to comprehend and produced high recall. As the amount of identifiable structure in the passages decreased, there was a corresponding decrease in comprehensibility and recall. The influence of passage structure on memory was further highlighted by the proactive facilitation effects obtained by repeating the same structure with different characters in consecutive passages. This model of memory for narrative discourses seems to have the potential for isolating the effects on memory due exclusively to passage structure. To the extent that people are able to identify a particular story as an example of a general, previously learned organizational framework, they use the framework to comprehend and encode the information in a particular text.

 

 

A later study conducted by Domino, Gersten, Carnine and Blake (1990) examined an interactive Comprehension strategy based on Schema Theory and story grammar. This approach focused on identifying the important story grammar elements such as problem/conflict, main character, attempts, resolution, twist, character information, reactions, and theme. The purpose was to determine the extent to which the instructional methods improved the students’ ability to answer a wide range of comprehension questions independently. The results of this study indicate that story grammar instruction significantly improved low-performing students’ responses to basal, story grammar, and theme questions based on short stories and their written focused retells of them. Story grammar instruction provided a framework that assisted students in assimilating and retaining story information. They were taught to build a foundation from which inferences could be drawn and themes determined. Providing the students with a story grammar scaffold seems to provide students with a means for retrieving relevant information and discerning relevant from unimportant information. Based on the study's finding, it was determined that explicit story grammar instruction clarifies, expands, and helps students organize ideas they intuitively have.

 

 

Canonical Story Grammar Model

As education embraces technology, computer usage in the classroom is increasing and a number of computer series are now available for use in the teaching of reading. Consequently, there is a growing need for techniques to evaluate these materials. Anderson and Evans (1996) developed a canonical story grammar model (CSGM) for beginning reader computer stories. They synthesized the original research studies of Rumelhart, Stein and Glenn, Mandler and Johnson, and Thorndyke to develop a single model and process for analyzing story grammar elements.

 

Canoncial Story Grammar Model (CSGM)
ElementDefinition
SettingIntroduction of the main character and description of the time, location, and/or social context of the story.
Beginning EventA cause which initiates a reaction or response of the main character.
Internal ReactionAn emotional response by the character which leads to the creation of a goal.
AttemptAn action of the character to achieve the goal.
EndingAttainment or nonattainment of the goal by the character and/or the character’s reaction to the outcome and/or a moral.

 

 

Using the CSGM Model, the researchers evaluated each of the beginning reader stories from the Tapestry I am a Builder series for canonical story grammar. The results of the study found evidence that the computer stories analyzed did not contain adequate story grammar. Of the 15 stories evaluated, only 3 (20%) had canonical story grammar. This finding is disturbing since research has indicated that stories that have incomplete story grammar may result in lower comprehension and less recall.

 

As computer reading programs replace or enhance the current teaching of reading, teachers and administrators should be aware of techniques to evaluate the effectiveness of the claims made about the computer reading programs. Just as the basal series are assessed by committees, reading specialists, classroom teachers, and others, computer reading programs should be evaluated on whether or not they match the objectives stated by the company. Finally, the classroom teacher needs to be made aware of the elements involved in canonical story grammar, the effects of canonical story grammar on comprehension and retelling, and the skills needed to promote the development of students’ understanding of story grammar.

 

 

Conclusion

Story grammar is a framework of elements that helps to organize oral and written works of literature so that information may be stored and easily retrieved. Although noted by anthropologists in the early 1900s, it was the work of Mandler & Johnson and Stein & Glenn in the late 1970s that created the rules and models used today to analyze, assess, and teach narrative works.

 


Internal Links

ComprehensionSchema Theorysyntaxstory elements
semanticsPhonological Awarenessstory structure

 

 


External Links

 

Getting Here: A short history of speech pathology in America: Narrative. http://www.acsu.buffalo.edu/~duchan/1975-2000.html

 

A website about scaffolding. http://www.ncrel.org/sdrs/areas/issues/students/learning/lr1scaf.htm


 

 

References

 

Anderson, K., Evans, C. (1996). The development of the canonical story grammar model and its use in the analysis of beginning reading computer stories. Reading Improvement. 33, 2-15.

 

Dimino, J., Gersten, R., Carnine, D., Blake, G. (1990). Story grammar: An approach for promoting at-risk secondary students' comprehension of literature. The Elementary School Journal. 91(1), 19-32.

 

Duchan, J. (2001-2006). Getting here: A short history of Speech Pathology in America. Retrieved on April 7, 2007 from http://www.acsu.buffalo.edu/~duchan/1975-2000.html

 

Mandler, J. & Goodman, M. (1982). On the psychological validity of story structure. Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior. 21, 507-523.

 

Mandler, J. & Johnson, N. (1977). Remembrance of things parsed: Story structure and recall. Cognitive Psychology. 9, 111-151.

 

Spivey, N.N. (1989). Construing constructivism: Reading research in the united states. Occasional Paper No. 12., Carnegie Mellon.

 

Stein, N. & Glenn, C. (1979). An analysis of story comprehension in elementary school children. In R. D. Freedle (Ed.), Advances in discourse processes: Vol. 2. New directions in discourse processing (pp. 53-119). Norwood, NJ: Albex.

 

Thorndyke, P.W. (1977). Cognitive structures in comprehension and memory of narrative disourse. Cognitive Psychology. 9, 77-110.

 

Commentary By: Crystal Wise

I think that you're paper was well written. Although, I was interested to see what type of picture you included in your Wiki and I couldn't find one. Also, in the introduction, you have brackets around a few words. I didn't exactly know what it meant. You have a lot of great information in your wiki, you may want to add a little more information to your conclusion.

Comments (1)

Anonymous said

at 9:57 pm on Apr 26, 2007

Hi Suzanne and Cynthia,

I thought your wiki flowed smoothly from one section to another. It was reader friendly. The tables were presented well and were informative.
The information in the Story elements Defined by Stein and Glenn ( 1979) is a great resource for teachers. Have you taken LAE 4568, Literature for Children and Young Adults? In our textbook they referred to the story elements as literature elements. The textbook that we used was Literature For Children, authored by Russell. This would be another resource.
Overall I thought you did a great job on the wiki.
June

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