Many languages, a single story: The development of narrative ability in bilingualism

Narratives are an important part of the children's linguistic development and represent one of the privileged communication modalities in early childhood. They offer a complex communicative model and the assessment of narrative competence provides a great deal of information regarding the different levels of linguistic processing and their integration. For this reason, the analysis of narrative competence in bilingual children is of particular interest in which three issues are essential. The first concerns the comparison of the languages spoken by the child, as analysing differences and similarities in narrative skills can provide valuable insights into how bilingual children acquire and use language in different contexts. The second topic analyses the microstructure and macrostructure of the narratives produced in the languages spoken by bilingual children with the aim of exploring in detail both the linguistic and structural aspects of the narratives. The third topic explores the application of narrative competence in the clinical context. The focus here is on the use of storytelling as an assessment and intervention tool for bilingual children with communication and/or language difficulties, offering valuable insights for practitioners. Research to date seems to suggest that the development of narrative competence in bilingual children follows a similar developmental trajectory to that observed in monolingual peers. In the early stages of second language acquisition, bilingual children show better narrative competence in their dominant language. However, later on, mainly due to the intervention of schooling, especially when this takes place in the second or majority language, narrative competence in this language tends to develop faster than in the native language. This finding suggests the relevance of implementing bilingualism education that includes the improvement of narrative competence in both home and school environments. Finally, the analysis of narrative competence is increasingly part of the clinical assessment of the bilingual child as, through a quick, simple and ecological measurement, it provides multiple and rich information on the communicative development of the bilingual child, allowing the clinician to differentiate typical bilingual profiles from those at risk of experiencing language difficulties.