MAIN (Multilingual Assessment Instrument for Narratives)

Storytelling is fundamental to effective social functioning; it influences social well-being and is the cornerstone of human interaction. Oral narratives build a bridge between spoken and written language, aiding in the early identification of children at risk for reading difficulties. Assessing children’s narration can be achieved through various methods tailored to factors such as age, resources, and assessment objectives.

This tutorial offers a comprehensive examination of different strategies for eliciting children’s narratives. It introduces a visual-based tool for evaluating narrative production and comprehension, grounded in the multidimensional theory of narrative structure and known as the Multilingual Assessment Instrument for Narratives (MAIN). This tool enables the assessment of narrative skills in monolingual and multilingual children aged 3 to 12 years and is also used with adolescents and adults across three elicitation modes: Model story, Retelling, and Telling.

In the tutorial, various ways of using MAIN offline and online with different populations will be presented and practiced.

See also main.leibniz-zas.de.