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In this issue of the journal, we present the international experience in the study of narratives in preschool children. The authors of the articles live and work in different European countries (Bulgaria, Poland, Finland, Sweden and Russia). All publications are grouped around the same topic of the story of children in a monolingual or bilingual situation.

Relevance. Research on the narratives of bilingual children is extremely important, as it shows the child’s full linguistic competence, which in turn will allow teachers and educators to choose the appropriate program.

The purpose of this article is to analyze the narratives of Russian-Swedish billing children. The author examines both mistakes (or “innovations”) and strategies that are used by children with a lack of lexical and / or grammatical means. An attempt will also be made to explain the cause of the observed phenomena.

Description of the research progress. The study involved 25 Russian-Swedish bilingual’s children aged from 4.5 years to 9.2 years. The material for this study was collected using a specially developed tool for collecting narratives Litmus MAIN (The Multilingual Assessment Instrument for Narratives). In addition to storytelling from pictures, spontaneous speech data and ethnolinguistic observations were collected.

Results. The study showed that many children were unfamiliar with the Russian equivalent of Swedish words and often used gestures when they did not know the word. Swedish was often used for metalinguistic comments and questions. Children were prone to lexical innovation and changing the meaning of words. They often mixed synonyms or lexical units close in meaning or sound. Children with weak Russian language had cases of transfer, as well as the following grammatical errors: incorrect case endings, mistakes in choosing the verb gender, the use of an incorrect preposition and case form, errors in using an accusative instead of a locative and errors in the form of a verb.

Conclusion. Considering the features of children’s narratives, the author shows how the lack of input and dominant language affects their stories. Since language acquisition in Sweden takes place in a specific context, the input is often limited to situations that the child encounters in daily life. In this regard, parents and teachers of their native language need to find more opportunities to practice the Russian language. It is necessary to create language situations in which children will want to talk about what happened to them. It is important for parents and teachers to try to motivate the child to tell it in Russian, to find time to play together, listen to the child, engage in joint activities and help find lexical means to express their thoughts.

Background. Storytelling skills are essential for people in general and for analyzing the formation of child speech in particular. Oration, coherent speech, monologue, narrative, storytelling are all special names for the ability to generate oral texts, which precedes the written skills both in phylogenesis and in ontogenesis. Without analyzing the dynamics of storytelling, it is difficult to analyze the course of linguistic development in children, specifically in bilinguals.

The purpose of the study is to show on specific examples of mini-longitudinal research how the ability to create a narrative in Russian develops among bilingual preschoolers aged 5–7 years, whether this process has features that distinguish it from a similar process in monolingual children; to summarize the experience of narration training methods used abroad and to offer important didactic techniques for teaching how to create a coherent story.

Design. The features of monologue speech, methods of eliciting and evaluating narratives, their significance in pedagogy, linguistics, and psychology are highlighted. In the experimental part, Russian language stories of two bilingual Russian-Finnish bilinguals collected between the ages of five and seven years with an average time interval of six months are compared. Methods of teaching storytelling offered by foreign teachers are analyzed.

Results. It is demonstrated that the reference material is created for specific research purposes and can reflect more or less accurately the search for a solution to a certain linguistic, psychological, cultural, etc. problem. Adults do not expect logic from a small child but try to extract from what they hear the scheme of ideas that she/he has formed about the relationship of events in reality (if she / he says so, then she/he thinks so). The criteria for evaluating narratives are considered. As a result, it is reported that it is difficult to evaluate stories as an indicator of the verbal ability development. The techniques of storytelling supporting the development of coherent speech, and the dynamics of narrative ability are discussed. The article systematizes teaching methods of storytelling and suggests ways to support the development of the verbal ability.

Conclusion. At the end, it is concluded that in order to be able to tell stories, children need to be at a sufficient level of cognitive development, find relationships between the elements of a fragment of reality, know how the environment is arranged (they must have, to some extent, an established picture of the world), be equipped with sufficient phonetic, lexical and grammatical means, possess a suitable narrative genre and its components, select the right type of narration for the listener.

Goal-setting. The paper focuses on narrative abilities of preschool children as a resource for their cognitive development. Considering the speech and language development by children applies Lev Vygotsky’s cultural-historical approach. The development is viewed as a dialectical process: development is considered not as a gradual growth, but as a series of qualitative transformations. The study emphasizes two statements from Lev Vygotsky’s analysis: first, the idea of the genetic connection of telling (and drawing) stories with the future learning of reading and writing; second, the idea of connection between figurative and verbal means of creating narratives at the preschool age. Lev Vygotsky’s ideas were considered in relation with current studies on children’s narrative abilities.

Procedure and Methods. The paper describes the study on connection between the structure of children’s narratives and the dialectical thinking of preschoolers.

Applied methods: “What can be at the same time?” (N.Veraksa); “What can be the other way round?)” (A. Belolutskaya); “Children’s test of cyclic representations” (N. Veraksa, S. Senyukova), “Tell a story” (A. Mak Keib). The study involved 34 children aged from five years to six years and eleven months. Each child was studied individually to avoid the influence of other children on the content of the story. A study on the method “Compilation of history using a dialectical pattern” (I. B. Shiyan) involving 44 senior preschool children (5 – 6.5 years of age) has been conducted. Children were asked to invent their own story (based on imagination or describing real events that happened to the child) using a dialectical pattern (beginning, middle, end) or without using one.

Results and Conclusion. The connection with the success of dialectical approach was detected only for stories based on the pattern. The study came to conclusion that using the “beginning, end, middle” storytelling pattern encourages children to create a more complex narrative, including operating with opposites. The creation of narratives can be used as a resource of cognitive development, in particular development of dialectical thinking in senior preschool children.

Background. Storytelling and play with an imaginary situation are important components of a high-quality preschool education, but in the scientific field there are very few studies that analyze the nature of their relationship in preschool age.

Objective: to analyze the interrelation between pretend play of preschoolers and the key features of individual storytelling.

Methods. The study involved 56 children aged 6-7 years. To study the features of the development of play in preschoolers, we used the play diagnostic tool of E.O. Smirnova and the “challenge-response” parameter of L.I. Elkoninova. To study the characteristics of children’s narratives (stories invented based on their own drawings) – the method by O.A. Shiyan «Three Stories».

Results. The sample included children with both high and low levels of development of pretend play (mean= 19.55, sd= 5.34, min=6, max=30), 26.7% of children were found to have “challenge-response” play. Most often, when creating narratives, children used normative (mean=3.86, sd=2.21) and symbolic means (mean=1.48, sd=1.9). A significant interrelation was found between the level of development of play and symbolic and normative means in children’s narratives (p<0.01).

Conclusion. Overall score according to the method of E.O. Smirnova, as well as such parameters of play as play substitution and play idea, turned out to be associated with both symbolic and normative means in children’s narratives. The ability to create a symbolic character in storytelling and action from a role in play, spatial and subject substitution have a similar mechanism and imply the ability not only to create, but to deploy and maintain one’s image. The interrelation indicates a similarity in the use of normative means when constructing play plots and creating individual stories. The results can be used in developing a strategy for complex play support in preschool organizations, as well as in professional development programs for preschool teachers.

Background. The development of creative thinking is one of the important tasks of early childhood education. It is important to understand the role children’s activities, particularly story-telling, can play in this development. Of particular interest are narrative practices that create a social situation that supports children’s writing.

Objective: to analyze the influence of the narrative practice of “fairy tales with provocations” on the development of creative (dialectical) thinking of older preschoolers and individual parameters of fairy tale stories that children create.

Methods. The study involved 60 children aged 6-7 years. To diagnose creative (dialectical) thinking, the “What can happen at the same time?” (Veraksa N.E.) technique was used; to diagnose creative thinking and the ability to create symbolic images, the “Fire” subtest was used (the “Three Stories” method by Shiyan O.A.). We proposed the narrative practice “Fairy Tales with Provocations” as a way to activate children’s creative thinking.

Results. According to the results of the initial diagnostics, no significant differences were found; the results of the children in the experimental and control groups did not have any of the study parameters. The final diagnostics showed that in the control group no significant positive changes were found compared to the initial diagnosis in any of the studied parameters, while in the experimental group significant positive changes were found at a significant level in everyone according to all measurable parameters: creative (dialectical) thinking, creative transformations and artistic (symbolic) image in narratives, as well as the structure of narratives.

Conclusion. The study showed that the narrative practice “Fairy Tales with Provocations” is an adequate way to develop creative (dialectical) thinking, and also has a positive effect on the stories that children create: they become more complex and structured, they contain more creative transformations and artistic (symbolic) images. All this suggests that such symbolic activities as writing fairy tales are an important space for the development of children’s creativity. The results can be used to build educational work with children based on the resource of children’s activities.