Teacher and child recipient designed supports for storytelling; four-year-old twin co-tellings

This presentation gives analytical attention to recipient designed turns that encourage the flow of storytelling for a twin child with language delay, actioned by both the teacher and also their typically developing twin. Here, we explore how children are socialised into language practices that ‘cultivate social competence in and through…storytelling’ (Ochs & Schieffelin, 2011, p.7) in recipient designed ways. The analysis demonstrates how the teacher and typically developing twin calibrate recipient designed prompts, that demonstrate their sensitive reading of semiotic signs when trouble appears and offering a resource to help support him.


The activity analysed in this study involves a small group of six four-year-old children, including twins - one typically developing (transcribed RAH) and one with speech and language delay (transcribed ATA) and one teacher (KAI – ‘kaiako’ NZ term for teacher). They are all gathered around storytelling shells, which are seashells with small pictures stuck onto them (Figure 1). The oral storytelling activity was chosen as an activity for supporting early language development (Reese et al., 2010).

Figure 1



To begin the storytelling episode, the teacher recruits ATA to tell a story. However, ATA responds by declining this invitation with gesture, as he shakes his head and points to his twin, RAH to take his place:



The kaiako initiates the invitation by offering ATA a preference formulation ‘would you like to..’ often seen in teachers’ offerings to children. (Anon, 2024). ATA responds through gesture as he declines by shaking his head, deferring his participation (Goodwin & Goodwin, 2004) and self-selecting his twin sister RAH, making observable his reluctance to engage in oral storytelling. Rather than pressure ATA into joining the activity by treating his gestured decline as problematic, the kaiako shows sensitivity to his response and follows his lead by recruiting his twin sister. The kaiako models language when doing this (line 04) demonstrating language socialisation (Ochs & Schieffelin, 2011) through offering an alternative mode through which to articulate selecting RAH. Later, when ATA does engage in the storytelling activity, there are marked issues with the fluency of the telling:



ATA demonstrates difficulty in his telling (lines 436-437), responded to by his twin, RAH through gesture as she offers him a shell to add to his telling (line 445). The support is packaged in both gesture, as she hands him the shell whist articulating verbally the picture on the shell ‘a sword’, marking RAH’s recipient designed support as ATA accepts the shell and talks the ‘sword’ into his telling (line 446). RAM’s action is also picked up by the kaiako who affirms that this is an acceptable action, with her thumbs up approval and smile talk.

The broader analysis offers insight into recipient designed actions of twins in co-producing stories, and teachers in supporting children with orally formulate stories when they have language and speech delay.


References

Anon (2024)
Goodwin, M.H., and Goodwin, C. (2004). Participation. In A. Duranti (ed.), A Companion to Linguistic Anthropology (pp. 222–243). Oxford: Blackwell.
Ochs, E. and Schieffelin, B. B. (2011) ‘Language Socialisation’. In Alessandro Duranti (Ed.) The Handbook of Language Socialization, First Edition. Pp 1-21. Blackwel Publishing Ltd
Reese, E., Suggate, S., Long, L., & Schaughency, E. (2010). Children’s oral narrative and reading skills in the first 3 years of reading instruction. Reading and Writing, 23, 627–644.