Construction and Validation of a Narrative Writing Intelligence Scale (NWIS)

Document Type : Research Article

Authors

• Sima Ziaei
• Behzad Ghonsooly
• Zargham Ghabanchi
• Hesamoddin Shahriari

Department of English, Ferdowsi University of Mashhad, Mashhad, Iran

https://doi.org/10.22067/lts.v51i4.62005

Abstract

The major aim of this study was to construct a Narrative Writing Intelligence Scale (NWIS). To this end, the scale was designed by picking up the narrative intelligence factors proposed by Randall (1999). The designed NWIS, composed of 13 items, was used to score 200 pieces of writing of FCE students. These students were asked to watch a short animation and narrate it in written form, while they were not allowed to consult their teachers, classmates, or any English resources for vocabulary or grammar. They were not allowed to take any notes while the movie was being played either, since the power of memory and the range of vocabulary and grammar are constituents of narrative intelligence. Then, the writings were scored by the newly-developed 5-point Likert type scale. The scores were transferred to SPSS 18 and Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA) was employed to determine the underlying factors in the designed scale. At the end, three items were removed and the final scale came out to be a 10-item scale. The results revealed that the scale can be explained by a 3-factor solution with a good level of reliability. The three-factor model accounted for 57.47% of the variance and the factors were named as Unity of the plot, Identification (of characters, objects and ideas), and Voice and Rhetoric. The variables which comprise the three factors, based on Randall (1999)’s definition are related to emplotment, characterization, narration, Genre-ation, and thematization.
 

Keywords

• Exploratory Factor Analysis
• Narrative Writing Intelligence
• Narrative Writing Intelligence Scale

20.1001.1.22285202.1397.51.4.5.7

References

حیدری، ف.، خوش سلیقه، م.، و هاشمی، م. (۱۳۹۴). هوش روایی و کیفیت ترجمه. فصلنامه مطالعات زبان و ترجمه، ۴۸(۲)، ۱۱۳-۱۳۰.

 

Amoah, J. (2013). Narrative: The road to black feminist theory. Berkeley Women’s Low Journal,12,1, 84-102.

Bamberg, M., & Damrad-Frye, R. (1991). On the ability to provide evaluative comments: Further explorations of children’s narrative competences. Journal of Child Language, 18, 689-710.

Bliss, L. S., McCabe, M., & Miranda, A. E. (1998). Narrative assessment profile: Discourse analysis for school-age children. Journal of Communication Disorders, 31, 347-363.

Brown, H. D. (5th Ed.). (2007). Principles of language learning and teaching. New York, NY: Pearson Education.

Bruner, J. (1991). The narrative construction of realit. Critical Inquiry, 18(1), 1-21.

Bruner, J. & Feldman, C. (1993). Theories of mind and the problem of autism. In S. Baron- Cohen et al. (Eds.), Understanding other minds: Perspectives from autism. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press.

Dautenhahn, K. (2001). The narrative intelligence hypothesis: In search of the transactional format of narratives in humans and other social animals. In Cognitive Technology: Instruments of mind (Vol. 2117, pp. 248-266). Berlin: Springer Berlin Heidelberg.

Fahim, M., & Pishghadam, R. (2007). On the role of emotional, psychometric, and verbal intelligences in the academic achievement of university students majoring in English language. Asian EFL Journal, 9, 240-253.

Gardner, H. (1983). Frames of mind: The theory of multiple intelligences. New York, NY: Basic Books.

Gardner, H. (1999). Intelligence reframed. New York, NY: Basic Books.

Labov, W. (1972). The transformation of experience in narrative syntax. Language in the inner city (394-396). Philadelphia: The University of Pennsylvania Press.

Labov, W., Waletzky, J. (1967). Narrative analysis: Oral versions of personal experience. Journal of Narrative and Life History, 7(1), 3-38.

McAdams, D. P. (1994). The stories we live by: Personal myths and the making of the self. New York, NY: William Morrow.

Morgan, K. A. (2000). Myth and philosophy from the preSocratics to Plato. UK: Cambridge University Press.

Pishghadam, R., & Shams, M. A. (2012). Hybrid modeling of intelligence and linguistic factors as predictors of L2 writing quality: A SEM approach. Language Testing in Asia, 2(3), 53-76.

Pishghadam, R., & Shams, M. A. (2013). Pinpointing the classifiers of English language writing ability: A discriminant function analysis approach. Applied Research on English Language, 2(1), 45-60.

Pishghadam, R., Baghaei, P., Shams, M. A., & Shamsaee, S. (2011). Construction and validation of a narrative intelligence scale with the Rasch rating scale model. The International Journal of Educational and Psychological Assessment, 8(1), 75-90.

Randall, W. L. (1995). The stories we are: An essay on self-creation. Toronto, Canada: University of Toronto Press.

Randall, W. L. (1999). Narrative intelligence and the novelty of our lives. Journal of Aging Studies, 13, 11-28.

Royaei, N. & Evazzade, N. (2012). Narrative intelligence and learning strategies. Retrieved November 20, 2015 from http:// confnews. um. ac. ir/ images/ 41/ conferences/llt/cd42.pdf

Sah, W. H. (2011). Emotion expressions and knowledge of story structure: A study of Mandarin-speaking children’s narrative development. Taiwan Journal of Linguistics, 9(2), 67-110.

Sah, W. H. (2013). Global and local connections in Mandarin-speaking children’s narratives: A PACLIC-27 178 developmental study based on the frog story. In A. McCabe & C. J. Chang (Eds.), Chinese language narration: Culture, cognition, and emotion. John Benjamins (in press).

Sarani, A., Keshavarz, A., & Zamanpour, E. (2012). The relevance of multiple intelligence theory to narrative performance: A study of Iranian undergraduates of English. English Language and Literature Studies, 2(3), 50-55.

Shams, M. (2012). An investigation into the role of Iranian EFL learners’ narrative intelligence, verbal intelligence, grammatical knowledge, and depth and breadth of vocabulary knowledge in their speaking and writing skills: A SEM approach, (Unpublished doctoral dissertation(. Ferdowsi University of Mashhad, Mashhad.

Shiro, M. (2003). Genre and evaluation in narrative development. Child Language, 30, 165-195.

Shokouhi, H., & Shirali, F. (2011). Rhetorical structure analysis of EFLs’ written narratives of a picture story. The Journal of Teaching Language Skills (JTLS) 3(2), 179-208.

Trahar, Sh. (2009). Beyond the story itself: Narrative inquiry and autoethnography in intercultural research in higher education. Forum: Qualitative Social Research, 10(1).