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The Man from South

Reconsidering Navajo Students' Stories

University of New Mexico

Developmental studies on children's written narratives have focused on tracing the appearance of certain elements at different ages to map out the possible stages of growth in storying. The underlying assumption in many of these studies has been that a unilinear pattern of growth is followed by all children as they learn to write stories. As such, it essentially ignores the effects of culture on story structures and themes. This study challenges this assumption as it analyzes the structural and thematic elements of three stories written by one sixth-grade Navajo girl. By examining various cultural influences, the origins and meanings of certain elements become clear. Furthermore, the complexity and sophistication of these stories can be appreciated. This analysis raises serious questions for those language arts teachers of American Indian children and other school personnel who have failed to appreciate certain kinds of narratives and have sometimes considered the authors of those narratives as less able or less developed.

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