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- Title
The child's developing sense of theme as a response to literature.
- Authors
Lehr, Susan
- Abstract
The Purpose of this study was to characterize the nature of the child's sense of theme in narratives as it develops across three age levels, and to determine the role of familiarity with literature in that development. Kindergarten, second-, and fourth-grade students were given a literature inventory. High- and low-exposure groups were then chosen from the 10 highest- and 10 lowest-scoring students in each grade, for a total of 60 subjects. Children listened to a series of three realistic fiction and three folktale books: two of the three books in each genre shared a common theme, as judged by university students. The author then interviewed the children individually, asking them to identify books with similar themes and to state the themes. Interview transcripts were analyzed, and thematic statements were rated for congruence with text and level of abstraction. Ability to identify theme appears to develop early: kindergarten children were able to identify thematically matched books for 80% of the realistic books and 35% of the folktales. Children's ability to generate thematic statements correlated highly with exposure to literature; those in the low-exposure group frequently gave responses that were too concrete or too vague. Kindergarten children most often gave responses that differed from adult choices but were congruent with the text, suggesting that the child's perspective of meaning differs from that of the adult. Kindergarten children were able to summarize stories and to consider the reactions of characters. Second- and fourth-grade children were able to analyze and make generalizations about the stories.
- Subjects
CHILD development; LITERATURE; LISTENING skills; COMPREHENSION; CHILDREN'S language; CHILD psychology; EDUCATION; KINDERGARTEN; CHILD development testing
- Publication
Reading Research Quarterly, 1988, Vol 23, Issue 3, p337
- ISSN
0034-0553
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.2307/748046