ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on fictional narratives because of the closer link to the written language register. The structural approach of narrative will be privileged along the chapter because it depicts better the contributions of research to disentangle the relation between narratives and early reading comprehension. Both comprehension and production will be revised as they might imply differential contributions to the development of reading comprehension. Learning how to structure and organize a narrative is important in the transition to literacy and in school settings, fictional narratives are often used to prompt language skills learning. The chapter describes the evidence that supports the link between narrative skills and early reading comprehension, discusses strengths and limitations of those findings, and proposes new alternatives to promote the development of discourse level skills and early reading comprehension. Interactive book reading and the use of questions, showed the importance of establishing rich linguistic interactions with children to promote complex language development.
