ABSTRACT
Personal experience narratives are about events that occurred at some time other than the present, and generally some other place. Instead of talk about the here- and-now, these narratives talk about the there-and-then. According to Brown (1973), this represents a major shift in children’s language, and this ability to decontextualize one’s language from the physical context within which it is situated is an extremely important skill for children to master (Bruner, 1986; Cazden, 1985; Snow, 1983).
