"Once Upon a Time..." Literary Narrative Connectedness Progresses with Grade Level: Potential Impact on Reading Fluency and Literacy Skills

TL;DR

This study analyzes how the narrative complexity of children's books increases with grade level, revealing exponential growth in connectedness that parallels oral narrative development, with implications for literacy education.

Contribution

It introduces Word-Recurrence Graph Analysis to quantify narrative connectedness in a large dataset of school texts across 13 years.

Findings

Narrative connectedness grows exponentially in early grades.

Literary texts' complexity mirrors children's oral narrative development.

Findings suggest using progressively complex texts to enhance literacy skills.

Abstract

Selecting an appropriate book is crucial for fostering reading habits in children. While children exhibit varying levels of complexity when generating oral narratives, the question arises: do children's books also differ in narrative complexity? This study explores the narrative dynamics of literary texts used in schools, focusing on how their complexity evolves across different grade levels. Using Word-Recurrence Graph Analysis, we examined a dataset of 1,627 literary texts spanning 13 years of education. The findings reveal significant exponential growth in connectedness, particularly during the first three years of schooling, mirroring patterns observed in children's oral narratives. These results highlight the potential of literary texts as a tool to support the development of literacy skills.