La macrostruttura narrativa nei bambini bilingui nel contesto scolastico italiano

This study investigates macrostructure in narrative production by 30 bilingual children aged 4-8, with different language pairs (Italian-Chinese, Italian-Spanish, Italian-Arabic). The children were administered a picture-based narrative task. Two measures of macrostructure competence and three measures of linguistic proficiency were extracted from the stories. Only the Arabic-speaking group showed significant differences between their narrative competence in Italian and in their family language. The macrostructural components that primarily accounted for this difference were the production of psychological terms and of the outcome of the action. The Italian-Arabic group also showed significant differences between their proficiency in Italian and their family language, with this group being dominant in Italian. Significant correlations arose between linguistic measures and macrostructural measures for the family language. No effect of linguistic proficiency was observed for macrostructure in Italian. These results suggest that minimal language skills are needed for expressing macrostructure.