Comparison of the Development of Storytelling in Thai as a Second language of Akha and Lahu Ethnic Children

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to compare storytelling in Thai as the second language of Akha and Lahu ethnic children in Chiang Rai province, Thailand. The data was collected from 20 Akha students at Huai Mae Sai school, Maung district and 20 Lahu students at Ban Sang Kong school, Mae Can district. The participants were divided into five groups of four students each, based on their age of 4, 6, 8, 10, and 12 years old. The hypothesis was based on the assumption that storytelling of 10 pictures would demonstrate the development of complexity of sentence structures and the number of utterances produced by the children. The analysis of the syntactic development in terms of the length of utterances found a large number of five-word and less-than-five-words utterances produced by every age group of children. The quantitative analysis revealed that the number of utterances of both ethnic groups have developed the use of reciprocal structures from simple to complex sentences according to the older age groups. It is also found that 4- and 6-year-old students demonstrated the use of clauses in the storytelling at the highest level while  8-, 10- and 12-year-old groups tended to use simple sentences. The use of complex sentences, conjunctions, and relative clauses were incrementally increased by their age level. The female narrators of both ethnic groups used the larger number of utterances than their male peers. Moreover, more complex sentences were used by the male narrators of all age groups.