Language socialization of the child through caretaker-child personal narratives : a comparison of Thai and English

The present study reports preliminary findings on the elicitation strategies used by Thai and English caretakers when eliciting past event narratives from preschoolers. Ten Thai and ten English-speaking caretaker-child dyads were recruited from Bangkok, Thailand and from Sydney, Australia. Caretakers were asked to elicit past event narratives from their children and the three best narratives were selected for analysis. Elicitation strategies used by caretakers were coded into various categories based on McCabe and Peterson (1991), Minami (2002) and Chang (2003). Results revealed common and culture-specific strategies. English-speaking caretakers in general provided more information, requested more evaluation, expressed more agreement and approval, revised and corrected children, whereas Thai caretakers used more contextual, temporal information. Results are discussed in terms of educational implications and future research directions.