Narrative skills are the abilities involved in understanding and producing stories or sequential descriptions of events. This includes organizing information into a coherent structure (with a beginning, middle, end, and relevant details) and using language to convey characters, events, and their relationships clearly. Strong narrative skills are essential for academic success – they support reading comprehension, writing, and the ability to summarize or retell information.
SLPs often target narrative skills in therapy because well-developed storytelling ability is linked to improvements in language complexity, social communication (sharing personal stories), and literacy; for example, children with better narrative structure skills tend to have better reading comprehension and overall academic achievement.
Spencer, Trina D., and Douglas B. Petersen. “Narrative Intervention: Principles to Practice.” Language, Speech, and Hearing Services in Schools 51, no. 4 (2020). Link
Bowles, Ryan P., Laura M. Justice, Kiren S. Khan, Shayne B. Piasta, and Lori E. Skibbe. “Development of the Narrative Assessment Protocol-2: A Tool for Examining Young Children’s Narrative Skill.” Language, Speech, and Hearing Services in Schools 51, no. 2 (2020). Link
