Intérêt d’une intervention de soutien langagier basée sur la narration et menée par l’enseignante auprès d’enfants de grande section de maternelle avec difficultés langagières.

Abstract

Context: Narrative intervention enhances narrative abilities by addressing macrostructural elements within storytelling tasks for instance and can be an effective way of supporting the language development of preschool-aged children. Moreover, language support in educational settings plays a preventive role in addressing potential difficulties in language skills due to a lack of linguistic stimulation. Objectives: This study assesses the implementation fidelity of a tier 2 intervention with a pre-school teacher, measures the effectiveness of this intervention with children with language difficulties, and determines whether these children can catch up the level of narrative skills of the rest of the class, following the intervention Methods: Children with language difficulties were selected by the master student based on an inclusion test determining their linguistic profile, which was administered to all pupils in the class. Narrative skills were assessed for the entire class in a pre-test, considering elements of macrostructure and microstructure elicited during narrative generation and retelling activities. A Rapid Automa-tized Naming (RAN) control task was also included to evaluate the specificity of the intervention. The teacher was trained by the master student for the intervention, according to profession-al development principles. Subsequently, the intervention, lasting 45 minutes once a week for 6 weeks, was delivered by the teacher to five children identified as having language difficulties, aged 5;5 to 5;10. The intervention aimed to improve the number of macrostructural elements in a retelling activity through the use of icons and sequential picture stories. Finally, the RAN task and narrative skills (retelling and narrative generation) of the entire class were reassessed in a post-test. Results: At the end of the intervention, macro- and microstructural improvements were observed in the story generation activity in the experimental group. Moreover, following the teacher's intervention, the experimental group did not differ anymore from the rest of the class in retelling (when considering the trained story) nor in story generation. However, data analysis revealed weaknesses in the implementation of the intervention, both in content and dosage. Conclusion: The results contribute to the existing research supporting the effectiveness of group narrative intervention. Furthermore, they suggest the possibility of replicating a tier 2 indirect narrative intervention conducted by the teacher, by enhancing the professional development framework.