Narrative Strategies: A Case Study of Developing Storytelling Skills by a Learner of Spanish Author(s): Judith E.

Liskin-Gasparro Source: The Modern Language Journal, Vol. 80, No. 3 (Autumn, 1996), pp. 271-286 Published by: Blackwell Publishing on behalf of the National Federation of Modern Language Teachers Associations Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/329436 . Accessed: 26/09/2011 05:53
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Narrative Developing of Learner

Strategies:

Case Skills

Study
by
a

of

Storytelling

Spanish

JUDITH E. LISKIN-GASPARRO of Department Spanishand Portuguese 111PhillipsHall Iowa City,IA 52242 Email:judith-liskin-gasparro@uiowa.edu What does it mean to tell a "good story"? What strategies does the storyteller use to set the scene, move the action forward, and make sure the story has a point? For a second language speaker, how do these narrative strategies develop? This essay explores these questions by analyzing the narrative, descriptive, and evaluative structures of two stories about the same event told by the same speaker. The stories are drawn from oral proficiency interviews (OPIs) with the speaker, the first time when she was at the Intermediate High level and the second, when she was at the Advanced level. The discourse analysis revealed that the second story surpasses the first in length, amount of narrative detail, systematic use of descriptive elements, and number and variety of evaluative devices. Rather than departing from the narrative structure of the first story, the second one builds upon the earlier version, using syntactic and lexical means to vary the pace of the action and draw the listener into the story.

WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO "TELL A GOOD story" in one's second language? How do speakers juggle the competing narrative demands of representing a multifaceted experience and the linguistic demands involved in painting a verbal picture of past-time events and feelings? By examining the structure of two stories about the same event told by the same speaker, we can explore the interaction between narrative strategies and the development of oral language skills. In the analysis below, the narrative, descriptive, and evaluative structures of the two stories are described and then compared to illustrate, from the perspective of learner discourse, the development of the ability to tell a good story. Although the speaker produced her two stories in the context of ACTFL oral proficiency interviews (OPIs), the first when she was at the Intermediate High level and the second when her speech was at the Advanced level, this is not
The ModernLanguage Journal, 80, iii (1996) 0026-7902/96/271-286 $1.50/0 ?1996 The ModernLanguage Journal

a study of the OPI or the ACTFL Proficiency Guidelines(ACTFL, 1986) per se. The focus of this analysis is, instead, on the discourse of a particular speaker as her language progressed over time. The fact that the speaker told her second story when her overall proficiency was at the level associated with the ability to "narrate and describe in past time" (ACTFL, 1986) suggests some pedagogical approaches for working with students who are not yet at the Advanced level. These are explored in the concluding section of this study. PREVIOUS STUDIES The analysis undertaken here relies on an understanding of the structure of oral narratives of personal experience. Labov (1972), who studied the stories of African American inner city residents, was the first to define a fully formed oral narrative in terms of its structure. He identified six discrete moments: (a) the abstract, which usually comes at the beginning and summarizes the story that is to follow; (b) the orientation, which sets the action temporally and spatially; (c) the complicating actions, which

272 are the narrative clauses that tell what happened; (d) the result or resolution, which is the culmination of the story line; (e) the evaluation, which draws attention to the most unusual aspect of the story; and (f) the coda, which links the story with the "real world" and thus brings the listener back to the present moment. Labov, who first elaborated the concept of evaluation, located it at the culminating point of the complicating actions, but he also showed that it has a secondary structure of its own and can be found in other parts of a story as well. Researchers in storytelling consider evaluation to be the heart of a narrative. It consists of the devices used by the narrator to engage the listener, to ward off a possible response of "So what?": devicessayto us: this wasterrifying,danEvaluative gerous, weird, wild, crazy; or amusing, hilarious, wonderful;more generally,that it was strange, uncommon, unusual-that is, worth reporting. It was not ordinary,plain, humdrum,everyday, run-ofor the-mill (Labov,1972,p. 371). Later researchers (Polanyi, 1979; Schiffrin, 1984), who worked with oral narratives of personal experience produced by native speakers of English, often in a conversational setting, coalesced Labov's six parts into three interwoven strands of information. Each of the strands serves as context for the other two: the narrative, or event, structure provides the "temporal context," a marking of time as each event takes place; the descriptive structure provides information about setting and characters; and the evaluative structure "acts to tell the audience what the narrator feels is crucial information in the story" (Polanyi, 1979, p. 209). Polanyi incorporated all of Labov's elements into her model, but took a richer, more textured approach to their organization. Not only did she conceive of each element as interacting with the others, but she also viewed evaluation as having a more pervasive role in the entire story, where even such things as intonation, repetition, and stress were seen as contributing to the evaluative force of the story. Thus, it is impossible to understand how a story conveys its full meaning without analyzing how the various levels of discourse work together (Schiffrin, 1984, p. 313). Whereas there is a significant body of research that compares narrative strategies by native speakers across cultures, much less investigation has been done on narratives produced by second language (L2) learners. The few studies that have been carried out indicate that

The ModernLanguage Journal 80 (1996) language learners seem to approach the storytelling task with the same underlying expectations and goals that they have in the native language, but with limitations stemming from their imperfect grasp of the linguistic code. Dechert (1983), for example, found that his subject, a native speaker of German, seemed to rely on metalinguistic processing strategies-as well as on an underlying understanding of how a story should be built-to overcome particular lexical and syntactic difficulties that arose as she was telling a story in English. Similarly, Rintell (1989) found that both learners and native speakers of English seemed to draw from the same set of discourse strategies to convey emotion in narratives, but that learners had a much smaller repertoire of strategies to bring to bear on the narrative task. In a case study of narratives produced by a learner of Moroccan Arabic, Fakhri (1984) found that the speaker put a high priority on evaluation in her stories, although the evaluative strategies she chose were not always sociolinguistically appropriate. The current study continues the line of investigation of the structure of oral narratives through microanalysis of individual stories. The longitudinal approach taken in this study, in contrast to cross-sectional or one-time data collections, enables us to get a closer look at the language acquisition process for this one speaker, particularly the ways in which her increasing mastery of the linguistic code enables her to expand her repertoire of narrative strategies. THE SUBJECT AND HER STORIES BackgroundInformation Kathy (not her real name) was a 21-year-old undergraduate student who was pursuing a double major in Spanish and biology. Prior to the 1989 summer session at the Middlebury College Spanish School, she had studied Spanish for three years in secondary school and five semesters in college, followed by one semester in Madrid in the spring of 1989. Her oral proficiency in Spanish was rated Intermediate High at the beginning of the summer session and Advanced at the end. By coincidence, Kathy recounted the same incident, her "nightmare in Madrid," during both of her oral proficiency interviews. Here, told without embellishment, are the facts of Kathy's experience. On her first night out in the city, Kathy met

Judith E. Liskin-Gasparro with a group of friends and quite late, about 3:00 a.m., took a taxi to the home of the family with whom she was living. When they arrived at Kathy's destination, the cab driver tried to overcharge her. When she objected, he snatched her purse, removed her money, and started to drive off. Kathy grabbed her purse back, jumped out of the moving cab, and made her way to her apartment building. As she was fumbling with the lock on the heavy door to her building, she was surrounded by a group of youths, who harassed her by touching her and speaking threateningly. One of the youths stole the earrings she was wearing. Several cars passed by, and after several minutes one stopped. The driver, who was a woman, got out of her car, made the youths leave, and helped Kathy get into her building. Methodology The analysis of narrative structure in this study used the work of Labov (1972) and Polanyi (1979, 1982, 1985) as a base, with the following goals in mind: (a) identify the narrative, durative-descriptive (or "orientational," using Labov's terminology), and evaluative clauses in each story; (b) classify the evaluative clauses and the devices used to accomplish the evaluation; and (c) draw comparisons between the structures of Kathy's two stories. Following Polanyi (1985, pp. 16-30), the process of analysis began with the physical division of each story into clauses that were independent, subordinate, or elliptical. These clauses were numbered for reference in the analysis. Discourse markers, such as bueno, pero, y, oh (well, but, and, oh) and the like, were incorporated into the clause in which they were used. Although the discourse markers were not subjected to syntactic analysis, they were considered in the study of evaluation strategies. Each clause was then classified as either belonging or not belonging to the storyworld. Nonstoryworld clauses, such as reference to or commentary on the action, are by definition evaluative because they draw the listener's attention to particular moments in the story. The storyworld clauses were then further divided into two categories: those that advanced the story line and those that did not. Native speakers of Spanish convey story line information by the preterit, present perfect, or historical present. Those clauses whose verbs did not fulfill these criteria were categorized as durative-descriptive. Divergent interlanguage verb

273 forms were classified according to the intended target. The next step was the consideration of evaluation in the story, a much less straightforward operation than the identification of narrative and durative-descriptive clauses. According to Polanyi (1985), evaluation is the "process of assigning prominence" (p. 14) of certain moments or aspects of a story over others. It is completely at the discretion of the narrator as to which aspects are highlighted: In telling a story,the narratorhas two tasks:to give enough detail so that interlocutorsunderstandthe nature of the change brought about, and to differentiate among the various events and states which are used to tell the story so that it is clear to the interlocutors precisely which complex of circumstances and eventsshould be used to infer the point being made (p. 14). The analysis of the evaluative elements in each story began with a three-step procedure developed by Polanyi (1985, pp. 19-20) to identify "distinctive encodings" at both the clause of words, and the discourse levels-repetitions phrases, or clauses, redundancy of propositional content, extensive details, delays in giving expected information, and the like. The analysis also identified nonstoryworld clausesthe obvious comments on the action by the narrator. The process of analysis took into account Labov's (1972) examples of syntactic evaluative devices, such as modification, the use of comparators, superlatives, and negative sentences, as well as Polanyi's (1979) and Schiffrin's (1984) examples. The analysis of evaluation in each story then proceeded, based on the master list of evaluative devices derived from the abovementioned sources. An additional word may be in order here about the qualitative nature of the analysis, especially the degree to which the identification of evaluative devices in an oral text can be a cutand-dried procedure that will be identical from one listener to the other. It appears to be far more an interpretive operation dependent on the degree to which the listener and the teller "get into" the story. Polanyi (1979) stated that there are no absolute evaluative devices per se; she was of the opinion that "as a general principle... anything which departs from the norm of the text can act evaluatively by drawing attention to itself, and also to the material which surrounds it" (pp. 209-210). Similarly, "any device available for evaluation can be used nonevaluatively as well or can be so over-used that it becomes a textual norm" (1985, p. 14). This phe-

274 nomenon is often found with the use of profanity: An obscene expression or gesture can have great evaluative impact in a story if used at a key moment, but profanity that is overused ceases to have any impact at all. Thus, the evaluative richness of a text seems to be in part a function of the narrative and linguistic skill of the storyteller, but also in part the result of the interaction between narrator and audience; the more sensitive the listener is to the nuances of the speaker's narrative style, the more evaluative devices the story will appear to have. TranscriptionConventions As described above, the transcriptions break the story into clauses that are either independent, subordinate, or elliptical (e.g., tocandome [touching me] is interpreted as estabantocdandome [they were touching me] and thus counts as a clause). Longer-than-usual pauses, whether filled or unfilled, are indicated by three dots, and words that are represented by the narrator as a direct quotation are contained in quotation marks. Occasional interventions by the OPI interviewer that interrupt Kathy's flow of speech are inserted in brackets; in some cases, large brackets are used to indicate that Kathy goes on to complete her sentence after the interruption. Kathy's Intermediate High Story. The transcribed texts of both stories, including English translations, are printed in Appendixes A and B. For the purposes of identification, they are referred to as the "Intermediate High" story and the "Advanced" story, which correspond to the ratings of the OPI from which they were drawn. The English translation for each story is printed next to the Spanish version. Some notes about particular clauses in the Intermediate High story may be in order here. In clause 4, Kathy used a false cognate; she meant to say "grabbed" but instead used the word for "tape record." In clause 7, she used another false cognate; she meant to say "took" but came up with the word for "touched." The translation of clause 17 reflects Kathy's grammatical self-correction. Instead of the target era por la noche (it was nighttime), she first uses the perfective aspect: fJ por la noche (it happened at night). Although both utterances are grammatically correct, they have different meanings, and Kathy makes it clear that her intention here was to describe the scene, rather than to narrate an event.

TheModernLanguage Journal 80 (1996) Kathy'sAdvanced Story. Kathy's second story, told when her overall proficiency was at the Advanced level, is printed in Appendix B. Note the spacing in the transcription of lines 2-2a, which reflects the overlaps in the speakers' turns. The interviewer's question interrupted Kathy, who went on to complete her sentence. In clause 10 and clause 17, the accent mark on agarro (grabbed) and maquina(machine) indicates the mispronunciation on Kathy's part.

ANALYSIS OF THE STORIES Narrative Structure:The Main StoryLine According to Labov (1972), the story line is the basis of a narrative; his minimum requirement for an account to be considered a narrative is that itjoin together two or more narrative clauses that report on events in the order in which they occurred. According to this definition, both of Kathy's accounts are narratives. But the difference in the length of the narratives is striking: 20 clauses in the Intermediate High version versus 56 in the Advanced version. Her story has two episodes: being robbed by a cab driver and then being harassed by a group of youths. Only in the Advanced narrative does Kathy explain clearly that both events occurred on the same night. The narrative clauses form the backbone of the story line. As discussed above, these are clauses that advance the action. In native-like speech, they would be encoded in verbs that are active, affirmative, and completive (Polanyi, 1985). A comparison of the narrative clauses of Kathy's two stories reveals the strikingly greater narrative detail that she brings to the task as an Advanced-level speaker. A comparison of the first episode of each story provides ample illustration. In her earlier story, Kathy produces a skeletal narrative account of the events of the first episode. She expands her abstract (clauses 1-2) with only two additional story line clauses, one of them incomplete, which are followed in clause 8 by a repetition of the summarizing statement in clause 2. The narrative clauses of the first episode are printed below. 1. si tenia, tuve dos experienciasmalas de crimen 2. un taxista me rob6 1. yes, I used to have, I had two bad experiences with crime 2. a cab driver robbed me

Judith E. Liskin-Gasparro 4. grabW ... mi ... mi y bolsa 7. l toco. . . 9. entonces, pues, me robd 4. he grabbed my... my ... purse and 7. he took ... 9. then, well, he robbed me

275 which the interviewer forces her to confront as an inappropriate choice for "to grab," and immediately afterwards with tocar (to touch), which Kathy corrects on her own. But counterevidence is presented by the narrative clauses of the second episode, printed below, which are almost as brief and scarce in detail, even without the lexical difficulties that beset the first. 10. cincoj6venesme rodearon 11. y me molestaron bastante 15. me asustaronbastante 16. despuds unos mide nutos una mujer... uh ... vino para ayudarme 10. five young guys surrounded me 11. and they really bothered me 15. they really scared me 16. after a few minutes a woman ... uh ... came to help me

The narrative structure of the earlier story finds fuller voice in the later version. The narrative clauses are greater in number, providing more details of the story's events, as can be seen in the first episode. 4. regrese mi casa sola, a en un taxi pero 7.fui 8. cogi un taxi 9. y al llegara mi casa RImepidio muchomas dinero 13. y yo preguntipor que 15. perosi 16. y R se enfado 17. y agdrromi bolsa 18. y d tomotodoel dineroalli 19. y empezo conducir a otra vez 21. entonces agarre' yo mi bolsa 22. salti del coche 24. y bueno, me asusto bastante 4. I went home alone, but in a taxi 7. I left 8. I caught a cab 9. and when I got home, he asked for much more money 13. and I asked why 15. but yes 16. and he got mad 17. and he grabbed my purse 18. and he took all the money in it 19. and he started to drive again 21. so then I grabbed my purse 22. I jumped out of the car 24. and well, he really scared me

A marked difference between the narrative structures of the first episode of Kathy's two stories is the amount of detail that is incorporated into the narrative, or event, clauses of the main story line. In her later version, Kathy includes information about what she did, what the cab driver did, and how she reacted. The richness of her lexicon, particularly her verbs, has grown. In the first episode of her earlier narrative, the only semantically appropriate verb she produces is robar(to steal). In the first episode of the Advanced story, in contrast, she produces a variety of verbs signalling physical action (regresar,ir, coger,agarrar,tomar,saltar [to return home, to go, to take (a taxi), to grab, to take, to jump]), verbs of communication (pedir, preguntar [to ask for, to ask a question]), and verbs of emotion (enfadarse,asustar [to get mad, to scare]). One might be tempted to attribute the brevity of Kathy's earlier narrative to her two lexical problems: first with grabar (to tape record),

Less immediately apparent than the difference in the amount of narrative detail is a striking similarity in narrative structure between the first episodes of the two stories-the framing function of the first and last narrative clauses. In the Intermediate High story, clause 8 summarizes, through the device of repetition, the central event of the first episode and, at the same time, brackets the details reported in the intervening clauses. In the Advanced story, Kathy uses the same narrative framing device, but in a far more elaborate form. Clause 4 both foreshadows and summarizes one of the central events of the first episode-that she was alone and that the incident took place in a taxi. The dangers inherent in this situation are hinted at by the word sola (alone), but are countermanded by the phrase pero en un taxi (but in a taxi), indicating her belief, which she states immediately afterwards in clauses 5-6, that going home alone late at night in Madrid is safe if one takes a taxi, as opposed to using the subway or going on foot. At the end of the episode, she summarizes the effect of the events on her: y bueno, me asust6 bastante (and well, he really scared me) (clause 24). The preterit form asusto (scared) here is not the last in a chronology of the events of the episode (fui, cog~pidi6,prese guntM, enfad6,agdrro,... salti [I left, I caught, I asked, he got mad, he grabbed ... I jumped]) because the act of scaring her did not occur after all of the other events she reported. Rather, asust6 represents Kathy's summary of the events. All of the horrible things that hapher expectations of pened to her-having safety totally contradicted, having her purse snatched and her money taken, and having to

276 jump out of a moving vehicle-are summarized (and by the understated y bueno,measust6bastante well, he really scared me). Another parallelism between the two stories is that Kathy's reactions to and feelings about her experience are incorporated into the narrative structure. The expression of a narrator's feelings about the events of his or her story is an evaluative device, and it is significant that Kathy, as both an Intermediate High and Advanced speaker, has the linguistic resources to weave evaluative elements throughout her tale, even within the recounting of the actual events themselves. In the first episode of the Intermediate High version, for example, the two clauses of the second episode that summarize Kathy's encounter with the youths (that they "bothered" her [clause 11] and "scared" her [clause 15]) focus on her feelings about them. In her Advanced narrative, Kathy expresses her emotions not only in the summary statement y bueno, me asusto bastante (and well, he really scared me) (clause 24) at the end of the first episode, but also in her statement at the end of the second episode, y llorabatoda la noche(and I cried all night) (clause 49). DescriptiveStructure:ContextualizingElements Using Polanyi's (1979) model, the descriptive clauses are, like the narrative clauses, part of the storyworld, but they differ from narrative clauses in that they do not advance the action of the story in temporal order. These clauses, termed "orientational" by Labov (1972), comprise the descriptive structure of a narrative. According to Polanyi (1985), the descriptive structure of a story is composed of durativedescriptive clauses. These clauses belong to one of three categories: (a) storyworld main clauses that are not on the main story line; (b) storyworld subordinate clauses, including indirect speech; and (c) all direct speech. Also belonging to the descriptive structure are adverbials of time or manner or other phrases, which may be incorporated into narrative clauses (e.g., regrese a mi casa sola, peroen un taxi [I went home alone, but in a taxi]) (Advanced, clause 4). The adverbial phrase pero en un taxi (but in a taxi), although syntactically part of the narrative main clause, describes the manner of return, and thus fulfills a descriptive, or orientational, function. Given the syntactic variety that characterizes oral narrative, orientational/descriptive material may also appear in stand-alone phrases (e.g., Si, mi primeranochesaliendoa la ciu-

The ModernLanguage Journal 80 (1996) dad [Yes, my first night going out in the city]) (Intermediate High, clause 3). The primary function of durative-descriptive clauses and other orientational/descriptive material is to provide the context in which the action, reported in the narrative clauses, takes place. Labov's (1972) framework stressed the location of orientational material prior to the narration of the episode, whereas Polanyi (1979) demonstrated that orientational/descriptive material can be intercalated between and even within the narrative clauses. Indeed, according to Polanyi (1979), the descriptive structure provides context for both the narrative and evaluative structures. It has been shown above that some of the narrative clauses not only advance the action but also serve an evaluative function by drawing attention to those elements of the story that the narrator believes to be most noteworthy. As with the narrative clauses, Kathy's earlier story has far fewer descriptive clauses than does her later account. For purposes of illustration, the section in the second episode, in which the youths surround her and threaten her, will be compared. In the Intermediate High story, this section is rendered by three descriptive clauses (12-14), which provide details about the "how" and "what" of the harassment Kathy experienced, thus providing context for the main story line. The descriptive material of the second episode is presented in its narrative context. 10. cincoj6venesme rodearon 11. y me molestaron bastante 12. tocandome 13. y gritando cosas... 14. "rubia,ique tal?" 15. me asustaronbastante 10. five young guys surrounded me 11. and they really bothered me 12. touching me 13. and yelling things 14. "blondie, how're ya doing?" 15. they really scared me

In contrast to the generic molestar(bother), the specific lexical items tocar(touch) and gritar (yell) paint a vivid verbal picture of what actually happened. The direct speech in clause, "rubia,ique'tal?" (blondie, how're ya doing?), is even more graphic, providing context for the summary statement me asustaron bastante (they really scared me) (clause 15) immediately following. In addition to standing out semantically from the rest of Kathy's story, clauses 12-14 are also

Judith E. Liskin-Gasparro syntactically distinctive. For the first time Kathy uses participles (tocdndome,gritando [touching me, yelling]), which can be interpreted as elliptical forms of progressive constructions: estaban tocdndome (they were touching me) and estaban cosas (they were yelling things). Clause gritando 14 is the only example of direct speech in the narrative. These syntactic anomalies have an evaluative function, which will be discussed below in the section on evaluation. In her later narrative, Kathy uses progressive constructions to slow down the action, inviting the listener to focus not on what happened, as is the case with narrative clauses in the perfective aspect, but on what was going on at particular moments in time. Kathy expresses what the youths did to her not as completed events but as actions in progress. The durative-descriptive clauses of the second episode of the Advanced narrative follow. Clause 31, a narrative clause, is included to indicate the narrative context in which Kathy places her descriptive material. 31. y unosj6venes de 16, 18 arios, cinco ... cinco me acercaron 31. and some young guys about 16, 18 years old, five ... five surrounded me 33. saying things 34. "hey, blondie, come with us, dadadada" 35. touching me 36. and grabbing my earrings 40. putting their hands all over my body 41. and scaring me more than the cab driver

277 expression of fear in the Intermediate High narrative, where she uses a summarizing preterit form. In the Advanced story, her fear is not perceived as completed, but rather as coexisting with the frightening events being recounted. In both of Kathy's stories, the descriptive material contextualizes and supports the narrative structure, even while serving an orientational function. In addition, it provides abundant evaluation of the main points of the narratives, thus confirming Polanyi's (1979) contention that the descriptive structure is tightly connected to the evaluative structure. Evaluative Structure:Highlighting the Point of the Story The function of evaluation in a narrative is to get the point of the story across to the listeners. A narrator has numerous ways to draw attention to particular aspects of the story. Evaluative devices fall into two main categories: (a) external evaluation, in which the narrator points to something in the story from an outside perspective; and (b) internal evaluation, in which the highlighting of crucial events is integrated into the story itself (Labov, 1972; Polanyi, 1979). In Kathy's Advanced narrative, for example, her comment no si por qui [robaronmis pendientes](I don't know why [they stole my earrings]) (clause 39) is an external evaluation device because it expresses astonishment from the narrator's current deictic center about something that happened in another time and space. In contrast, the repetition of a single event in three consecutive or closely spaced clauses is an internal evaluation device; it expresses the narrator's shock through clauses belonging to the storyworld. 36. y agarrandomis pendientes 37. agar6n mispendientes 38. robaron penmis dientes 36. and grabbing my earrings 37. they grabbed my earrings 38. they stole my earrings

33. diciendocosas 34. "oye, rubia, ven con dadadada" nosotros, 35. tocdndome 36. y agarrandomis pendientes 40. poniendosus manos por todaspartesen mi cuerpo 41. y asustdndome mds que el taxista

The contextualizing function of the descriptive elements in this segment is enhanced by the participles, which can be interpreted as elliptical forms of the imperfect progressive. SilvaCorvalan (1983) has pointed out that "progressive constructions occur in restricted clauses as part of the complicating action" (p. 765) and can be used to paint verbal pictures of actions co-occurring in the past. Such is the case in the descriptive segment quoted above. All of the actions Kathy mentions-the group of youths threatening her verbally, touching her, grabbing her earrings-are seen as happening at the same time. Her fear is also expressed in the progressive (clause 41). This contrasts with Kathy's

Table 1 presents the repertoire of evaluative devices in Kathy's two stories. An example of each is given, as well as the location of the devices. Although the overall frequency of clauses in the Intermediate High and Advanced stories that contain evaluative devices is comparable (35% and 37% of the clauses, respectively), Kathy has a wider evaluative repertoire as an Advanced-level speaker. As Table 1 shows, she

278

The Modern Language Journal 80 (1996)

TABLE 1 Evaluation Devices Used in Kathy's Narratives Evaluation device External/ Internal Example Location: Location: IH story Adv.
story

Comment on action:
brief comment Comment on action: longer reflection

External measustaron bastante (IH:15)

External they really scared me perofue por la noche, era por la noche .. . y estaba en una . .. un calle muy ... muy oscuro

15
17-20

24, 39, 50
51-55, 57

(IH:17-20)
but it happened at night, it was nighttime .. . and I was on a... a
Reference to External very ... very dark street y asustdndomemdisque el taxista (A:41) none 5-6, 14

previous action Ironic aside Retarding narrative actions: gerunds (progressive constructions
Retarding narrative

and scaring me more than the cab driver none 12-13 41 30, 33, 3536, 40-41

hecho[laughs] esto(A:14) External y no debei'a haber and I shouldn't have done this Internal tocdndome gritandocosas(IH:12-13) /y touching me/and yelling things

Internal

salti del coche/ que estaba en marcha (A:22-

2/3

19/20,

action: juxtaposition of narrative and descriptive clauses Direct speech

Repetiton: lexical and/or syntactic Contrast

23) I jumped out of the car/that was moving Internal "oye, rubia,ique tal?"(IH:14)
Internal Internal "blondie, how're ya doing?" . . . cinco, yo creo, cinco me acercaron(A:31) . . . five, I think, five surrounded me

22/23

14
11/15, 20 none

34
1, 31, 36/37/38 4

I returned home alone, but in a taxi

regresea mi casa sola, pero en un taxi (A:4)

phonology Expressive
Lexical choice

Internal y oof(A:48) and oof

Internal y unosj6venes . .. me acercaron/ y empezoa gritar a los hombres(A:31/46)

none
none

48
31/46, 35/40

and some young guys ... surrounded me/and she started to yell at the men

used 6 different evaluation devices in her Intermediate High story and 11 in her Advanced story. This expansion of her repertoire can be seen in Table 2. Kathy's story appears to have two main points: (a) What happened to her was very frightening; and (b) She was an innocent victim, vulnerable to attack because she was new in Madrid and did not know how to take care of herself. Kathy uses all her evaluative devices to highlight these two points, following a pattern that is described below. Externalevaluation.The external evaluation devices in Kathy's stories conform to a pattern: When they occur at the end of an episode or sequence of events within an episode, they highlight

Kathy's fear; but in mid-episode, their function is to emphasize her role as the innocent victim. The most frequent external evaluation device on in both of Kathy's narratives, comments the action, can be either brief comments or longer reflections. In the Intermediate High narrative, these comments mark the end of an episode (clauses 17-20) or the end of a sequence of actions within an episode (clause 15). The comments use almost identical words, and they highlight the fear she was experiencing.
15. they really scared 15. me asustaron basme tante 17. pero fue por la noche, 17. but it happened at night, it was era por la noche

nighttime,

Judith E. Liskin-Gasparro TABLE 2 Frequency of Internal and External Evaluative Devices Intermediate High narrative Occurrences of external evaluation Occurrences of internal evaluation Frequency of evaluation Repertoire: number of different evaluation devices used 2 5 35% (7 clauses of 20 in story) 6 Advanced narrative 8 13

279

37% (21 clauses of 57 in story) 11

18. entoncesme asustaron bastanteantes 19. porqueno habia nadie 20. y estabaen una . . . un calle muy ... muy oscuro(laugh)

18. so they really scared me before 19. because there was nobody around 20. and I was in a ... a very ... very dark street (laugh)

6 que en un taxi es bastante seguro(laugh)

6. that in a cab you're really safe (laugh) 13. and I asked why 14. I shouldn't have done (laugh) this

13. y yo preguntipor que 14. no deberiahaber hecho(laugh) esto

This evaluative strategy is preserved in the Advanced narrative: the brief comments in clause 24 and clause 50, which mark the end of the first and second episodes, respectively. In the first case, Kathy highlights the fear she experienced, whereas in the second case, she evaluates the whole story by commenting on her global reaction to the entire sequence of events. 24. y bueno, me asust6 bastante 50. era horrible 24. and well, he really scared me 50. it was horrible

The ironicasideis a variation on the comment on the action. In the first episode of her Advanced narrative, Kathy comments twice on the action as it is unfolding, laughing ruefully at her own innocence, first in thinking that taking a taxi would guarantee her safety (clauses 5-6) and, later, in questioning a cab driver who was, in retrospect, obviously out to take advantage of her (clause 14). It is noteworthy that the location of these external evaluation devices matches their function: Mid-episode evaluation highlights Kathy's role as the innocent victim. This can be seen in the excerpt that follows. Note that clause 13 is included to provide the context for the ironic aside in clause 14. 5. alguien me habia dicho 5. someone had told me

Another mid-episode comment in the Advanced narrative that highlights Kathy's role as innocent victim is clause 39: no seporque (I don't know why). She is commenting here on the fact that the youths stole her earrings. Her astonishment that they would do such a senseless thing (the listener infers that the earrings were not at all valuable) is communicated through both the repetition of the fact that they stole her earrings (clauses 36-38) and her comment of bewilderment in clause 39. The device of reference a previous action has to evaluative force when the narrator is highlighting the connection between the two events. While Kathy's Intermediate High story is lacking in cohesive devices-such that it is not even apparent that her two encounters with crime took place on the same night-her Advanced version ties the two incidents together in numerous ways. One strategy is the evaluative device of referring to a previous action: At the end of a sequence of actions in the second episode where she is being harassed by the youths, Kathy explicitly compares the fear she is experiencing with how she felt when she was at the mercy of the cab driver. Once again, an external evaluation device inserted at the end of a sequence of events highlights Kathy's fear: y asustdndome mds que el taxista (and scaring me more than the cab driver) (clause 41).

280 Internalevaluation.The overwhelming majority of the internal evaluation devices are located, as one would expect, in mid-episode. Unlike the mid-episode external evaluation devices, most of the internal evaluations highlight Kathy's fear, rather than her role as the innocent victim. They do so by either slowing down the action through syntactic means or by intensifying particular moments in the narrative stream through lexical means. Some examples of each device are explained below. The device of slowing down the action enables the narrator to highlight certain aspects of a story. The analysis of the narrative and descriptive structures of Kathy's stories has already touched on the crucial role played by tense and aspect in distinguishing between events and states and, at a far more subtle level, in communicating nuances of meaning. As Fleischman (1990, p. 199) pointed out, and as the discussion of the structure of Kathy's oral narratives has confirmed, it is not a simple matter to convert a personal experience, especially one rife with emotion, into a linear narrative. Neither is it in the interest of the narrator to construct her story as a linear sequence of events, because to do so would almost certainly reduce her mixed emotions of extreme fear and innocent indignation-the point of the story-to the least common denominator among the events that are being recounted. The inherently flat, unmarked narrative line at the base of Kathy's story is frequently interrupted and enriched by comments departures from it-descriptive about the setting or the characters and evaluative devices that mark some events as highly important or unusual in comparison to the rest. Among the decisions that a narrator must make is how to select among the available syntactic options to re-create an experience in the form of an oral narrative. According to Fleischman (1990), tense and aspect are "boundary markings [that establish] the 'space' of the text" (p. 199). Students of another language, who are constrained by their imperfect grasp of the linguistic code, including its morphosyntactic rules, have the double task of remembering the rules for constructing sentences in the past and then manipulating the rules to paint a verbal picture-establish the sequence of events, make some events more salient than others, express some events as punctual and others as durative, and the like. Kathy's Intermediate High story departs little from the linear recounting of events. In the first episode, only clause 5, which places the story in

TheModernLanguage Journal 80 (1996) its chronological context, moves the story off its narrative line. In the second episode, Kathy interrupts the narrative line with direct speech (clause 14) and with elliptical progressive constructions (clauses 12-13). The following excerpt shows how the choice of the progressive highlights Kathy's fear by depicting the actions of touching and yelling as happening repeatedly over time. 10. cincojcvenesme rodearon 11. y me molestaron bastante 12. tocadndome 13 y gritandocosas 10. five young guys surrounded me 11. and they really bothered me 12. touching me 13. and yelling things

The discussion of the descriptive structure of the Advanced narrative showed how Kathy uses the imperfective aspect to slow down the action, lingering on those moments of the story that either set the stage for the action or highlight her fear. The choice of imperfective aspect and progressive constructions thus enriches the narrative overall by departing from the strict linear recounting of events. Schiffrin (1981) has made the point that "in a story about fear, a cluster of progressive verbs occurs at the high point of the account.. ." (p. 59). The two-clause sequence of progressives in the Intermediate High story is significantly expanded in the Advanced narrative. 33. diciendocosas 35. tocadndome 36. y agarrandomis pendientes 40. poniendosus manos por todaspartes en mi cuerpo 41. y asusttdndome mds que el taxista 33. saying things 35. touching me 36. and grabbing my earrings 40. putting their hands all over my body 41. and scaring me more than the cab driver

The use of the progressive aspect here paints a picture of these events occurring iteratively; the implied imperfective aspect-[estaban] diciendo (they were saying), [estaban] tocandome the (they were touching me, etc.)-augments effect by depicting the events as also occurring simultaneously. Another way in which Kathy exploits the aspectual richness of the Spanish language is by juxtaposing perfective and imperfective utterances. Like the use of progressive constructions, this juxtaposition of perfective and imperfective also slows down the pace of the action. As a speaker at the Advanced level, she

Judith E. Liskin-Gasparro has gained sufficient control of the verbal system to be able to set narrative (N) and descriptive (D) clauses next to each other, thus heightening the frightening aspects of the situation. This can be seen in two instances in the first episode of the Advanced narrative. N 19. y empezo condu- N 19. and he started a cir otra vez to drive again D 20. y yo todavia estaba D 20. and I was still [alli] ... [there] ... N 22. salti del coche N 22. I jumped out of the car D 23. que estabaen D 23. that was movmarcha ing She does not even need the external evaluative comment that follows y bueno, me asust6 bastante (and well, he/that really scared me) (clause 24) because the point that she was in a terrifying situation has already been made through the juxtaposition of perfective and imperfective verbs in the preceding clauses. In summary, Kathy's Advanced narrative shows much greater ability to manipulate the aspectual system than does her Intermediate High narrative. Through the aspectual manipulation she is able to change the tempo of her narrative, to suspend temporarily the passage of time, and to highlight both her emotions and the importance of some of the events. In spite of the fact that Kathy's overall oral proficiency is at the Intermediate High and Advanced levels, respectively, when she tells her two stories, accuracy in choice of tense and aspect is not a distinguishing feature between the two narratives. In her Intermediate High story Kathy twice catches herself in an aspect error (clauses 1, 17) and makes the correction as she produces the sentence. In her Advanced narrative, Kathy makes one incorrect tense/aspect selection (clause 49) and fails to correct it. The major difference between the two stories with respect to tense and aspect is not the incidence of error, but rather the ability of the speaker to exploit the aspectual richness of the language to re-create personal experience more vividly. Whereas the use of progressive constructions and the juxtaposition of narrative and descriptive clauses evaluate particular events of the narrative by slowing down the action, other internal evaluation devices intensify particular moments in the action or in the surroundings. For example, repetition a device that evaluates is the immediate context in which it occurs by intensifying the impact of a particular word or phrase. Kathy has two repetitions in her Inter-

281 mediate High narrative and three in her Advanced version. The discussion of the narrative structure of the earlier story has shown that the event clauses (11, 15) bracket the descriptive material between them. The syntactic and lexical parallelism between those two clauses is an evaluative device that intensifies the frightening and unpleasant impact of the experience. Kathy's Intermediate High narrative has one repetition of a single lexical item. It occurs in the coda, where Kathy is reflecting on her fear. The repetition of muy (very) drives the point home. 19. porqueno habia nadie 20. y estabaen una . . . un calle muy ... muy oscuro 19. because there was nobody around 20. and I was in a ... a very ... very dark street

There are two repetitions of a single lexical item in Kathy's Advanced story (clauses 1, 31) and one that is extended over three clauses (36-38). The astonishment and bewilderment that Kathy states directly in the external evaluation in clause 39 with her no si por qud (I don't know why) have already been expressed via repetition in the preceding clauses. 36. y agarrandomis pendientes 37. agaron mispendienths 38. robaron penmis dientes 36. and grabbing my earrings 37. they grabbed my earrings 38. they stole my earrings

The repetition of the key words agarrar (to grab) and pendientes (earrings) over three clauses highlights both the violence of the act and Kathy's shock that the youths would go to such lengths to steal a pair of earrings. Thus, this particular device evaluates both Kathy's fear of the potential violence of the situation and her stance as shocked innocent victim. Another internal evaluation device that is found in both narratives is directspeech.Indeed, Kathy chooses the same context and almost the same words: rubia, gque tal? (blondie, how're ya doing?) (clause 14) in the Intermediate High dadadada narrative, and Oye,rubia,ven con nosotros, blondie, come with us, dadadada) (clause (hey, 34) in the Advanced narrative. This is the only instance of direct speech in each narrative; as such, it takes on evaluative significance just by its contrast with Kathy's narrative style in general. The fact that she reports the exact words the youths spoke communicates that this terri-

282 ble moment has been indelibly imprinted in her memory. Brief mention should be made of three other evaluative devices found only in the Advanced story. There is one instance of expressive phonology, the oof in clause 48 that sums up both Kathy's building tension and its release once she was finally safe inside her house. There are two instances of lexical choice:the switch from j6venes (young guys, youths) (clause 31) to hombres(men) (clause 41), which reflects and intensifies her fear; and the selection of particularly vivid or graphic vocabulary (i.e., the pairing of tocandome [touching me] (clause 35) and poniendosus manospor todaspartesen mi cuerpo[putting their hands all over my body]) (clause 40). Finally, Kathy's one instance of contrastis regresea mi casa sola, pero en un taxi (I went home alone, but in a taxi) (clause 4). The contrast implicit in sola, pero en un taxi (alone, but in a taxi) indicates that although Kathy was doing something potentially risky (travelling alone at night), she was really not putting herself in danger because she had chosen a safe mode of transportation. This contrast is immediately followed in clauses 5-6 by the ironic aside discussed above: alguien mehabiadicho/queen un taxi es bastante seguro(someone had told me/that in a cab you're really safe). Because the ride home in the taxi turned out to be extremely dangerous and frightening, it is appropriate that Kathy's mistaken notion that cabs were safe be heavily evaluated. Summary The major findings from the analysis of Kathy's two stories can be summarized as follows: 1. Both narratives can properly be called stories, according to the criteria established by Polanyi (1982). 2. In both narratives, the events that form the main story line are contextualized by means of durative-descriptive clauses and shorter phrases that provide information about temporal and spatial setting, characters, or other events that the narrator appears to consider subordinate to the main story line. The contextualization in the Intermediate High narrative occurs primarily through mid-episode durative-descriptive clauses that enable Kathy to convey the simultaneity of actions, words, and feelings that comprise the experience she is recounting. In the Advanced narrative, on the other hand, the contextualization is more complex and systematic: Each episode is preceded by an orientation that

TheModernLanguage Journal 80 (1996) sets the stage for the events that are to follow and contains mid-episode clauses that enhance the impact of the action as it unfolds. 3. Both stories contain evaluation of key propositions. 4. There are identifiable differences between the narrative, descriptive, and evaluative structures of Kathy's two stories. Kathy's Advanced story is considerably longer than her Intermediate High story and treats the same events in far greater narrative detail. Kathy's Advanced story has a richer descriptive structure than does her Intermediate High story: The earlier narrative is almost completely devoid of orientational material that would set the stage for the narration of the main story line, whereas in her later narrative, she uses a variety of linguistic resources to provide context for her story. Finally, the Advanced narrative has almost twice the number of evaluative devices as the Intermediate High story and uses them in a more elaborate and systematic way. DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSIONS As we have seen, the differences between Kathy's Intermediate High and Advanced stories are differences of degree, rather than of kind. Rather than departing from the narrative structure of the Intermediate High story, the Advanced story builds upon the Intermediate High version. These findings are in consonance with those of Tomlin (1984), who found that when native speakers (NSs) and non-native speakers (NNSs) told their versions of a silent film about a goldfish, the NNSs incorporated fewer narrative details into their main story lines than did the NSs. Tomlin's conclusion, that the same cognitive processes may well be at work in the recasting of experience into narrative, but that the linguistic limitations of the NNS result in a more skeletal re-living of that experience, seems also to hold, in the case of Kathy, for the less- proficient NNSs. Even as an Intermediate High speaker, Kathy uses her limited linguistic resources to evaluate the key points of her story. The prominent presence of evaluative devices in her brief narrative is an indication of the importance of evaluation as a distinguishing feature between stories and other kinds of past-time discourse. Rintell (1989) and Fakhri (1984) also found that their NNS subjects evaluated the key points of their stories, even when these subjects had a limited grasp of the linguistic code.

Judith E. Liskin-Gasparro The differences between Kathy's two stories might be summarized under the general rubric of the elements of of integration-integration the story and integration of the speaker with her audience. For example, Kathy as an Advanced speaker is able to maintain a substantial descriptive component to her story while also elaborating a detailed narrative line. Her earlier story tends to separate the narrative and descriptive elements; it is only in her later narrative that she is able to join them together by juxtaposing narrative and descriptive clauses. Another indication of integration in the stories, which is reflected in both the descriptive and evaluative structures, is the greater degree of audience awareness that Kathy enjoys as an Advanced-level speaker. Her considerably more extensive evaluative repertoire has already been discussed above. In addition, Kathy's inclusion of orientation and coda sections in her later story is another manifestation of this awareness; through them she sets the stage for the action at the beginning and makes a bridge between the storyworld and present time at the end. These are narrative strategies that engage the listener more fully in the story and create a context in which the listener is more likely to grasp and appreciate the story's point. PedagogicalImplications Although it is not the focus of this paper to suggest pedagogical applications, one might ask whether the storytelling skills manifested by Kathy, particularly in her Advanced story, can be taught in a language class. It may well be that students can progress more rapidly to a storytelling style that is rich in narrative detail, descriptive contextualization, and evaluative devices, such as Kathy's later narrative, with an approach that helps them discover the structural, rhetorical frames that underlie the narrative genre. With the structural frameworks brought to their conscious awareness, it is possible that students would be more able to focus on the mechanics of production in the L2. Advanced conversation courses in L2 (Koike, personal communication, March, 1993) and public speaking courses in first language (L1) (Spencer, personal communication, January, 1987) both lend themselves to a discourse-based approach to oral skills development. An approach to teaching storytelling skills might include analyses of the oral narratives embedded in short stories or novels, as well as an emphasis on having students build their own stories from

283 the bottom up: first plotting the narrative line, then pinpointing where contextualizing detail would be effective, and, finally, inserting both internal and external evaluative devices at appropriate points. Another approach that might bear fruit on both the research and pedagogical fronts would be to have students analyze their own oral narratives of personal experience in their native language. Using their transcribed texts, they could be led to discover their own repertoires of evaluative devices, for example, as a prelude to using them in L2 narratives. Future Research The analysis of two stories about the same event by one individual suggests some interesting directions for future research on learner narratives. The urge to tell stories is universal, and it would appear from the analysis of Kathy's two narratives that the ability to tell a good story is comprised of one's personal narrative style in combination with one's overall level of linguistic skill. Kathy's rather skeletal earlier narrative still contained all of the elements of a good story, albeit in a severely reduced form. With the development of her overall language skill, her narrative blossomed on all fronts, demonstrating expansion in length, breadth, and variety of rhetorical devices. Future studies of learner narratives might well include comparisons between L2 and L1 stories about the same event told by the same individual. Both cross-sectional and longitundinal designs could shed light on the process of transfer of discourse strategies from L1 to L2. Larger-scale studies, such as those undertaken by Bardovi-Harlig and Reynolds (1995) and Bardovi-Harlig and Bergstr6m (1996) for written narratives, could elucidate the relationship between oral narrative discourse and grammatical competence.

ACKNOWLEDGMENT I am gratefulto mycolleague KathrynHenry of the University of Iowa and to the anonymous MLJreviewersfor their comments on earlierversionsof this article.

284

The Modern Language Journal 80 (1996) Labov, W. (1972). Language in the inner city. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. Polanyi, L. (1979). So what's the point? Semiotica,25, 207-241. Polanyi, L. (1982). Linguistic and social constraints on storytelling. Journal ofPragmatics,6, 509-524. Polanyi, L. (1985). TellingtheAmericanstory:A structural and cultural analysis of conversationalstorytelling. Norwood, NJ: Ablex. Rintell, E. (1989). That reminds me of a story: The use of language to express emotion by secondlanguage learners and native speakers. In M. Eisenstein (Ed.), The dynamic interlanguage: Empirical studies in second language variation (pp. 237-257). New York: Plenum. Schiffrin, D. (1981). Tense variation in narrative. Language, 57, 45-62. Schiffrin, D. (1984). How a story says what it means and does. Text,4, 313-346. Silva-Corvalan, C. (1983). Tense and aspect in oral Spanish narrative: Context and meaning. Language, 59, 760-780. Tomlin, R. (1984). The treatment of foregroundin the on-line information background descriptive discourse of second language learners. Studiesin SecondLanguageAcquisition,6, 115-142.

REFERENCES

American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages. (1986). ACTFL proficiency guidelines. Hastings-on-Hudson, NY: ACTFL. Bardovi-Harlig, K., & Bergstr6m, A. (1996). Acquisition of tense and aspect in second language and foreign language learning: Learners narratives in ESL and FFL. CanadianModernLanguage Review,52, 308-330. Bardovi-Harlig, K., & Reynolds, D. W. (1995). The role of lexical aspect in the acqusition of tense and 29, aspect. TESOLQuarterly, 107-131. Dechert, H. (1983). How a story is done in a second language. In C. Faerch & G. Kasper (Eds.), in communication (pp. 175Strategies interlanguage 195). London: Longman. Fahkri, A. (1984). The use of communicative strategies in narrative discourse: A case study of a learner of Moroccan Arabic as a second language. LanguageLearning,34, 15-37. FrommediFleischman, S. (1990). Tenseand narrativity: to modernfiction. Austin, TX: Unievalperformance versity of Texas Press.

APPENDIX A Kathy's Intermediate High Story 1. si, tenia, tuve dos experiencias malas de crimen 2. un taxista me rob6 [I: ?de veras?] 3. si, mi primera noche saliendo a la ciudad [I: ?y c6mo pudo robarte?] 4. grab6 mi ... mi ... bolsa y [Interruption from Interviewer (I) to focus attention on Kathy's lexical error] 5. grabar? no es grabar 6. ya se que estamos grabando 7. 61 toc6 ... 8. ?c6mo se dice? 9. entonces, pues, me rob6 1. yes, I used to have, I had two bad experiences with crime 2. a cab driver robbed me [I: really?] 3. yes, my first night going out in the city [I: and how did he rob you?] 4. he grabbed my... my... purse and [Interruption from Interviewer (I) to focus attention on Kathy's lexical error] 5. tape record? no, it is not tape record 6. I know that we are recording 7. he took... 8. how do you say? 9. well, then, he robbed me [I: esta es una experiencia interesante ?y la otra?] 10. cinco j6venes me rodearon 11. y me molestaron bastante 12. tocaindome 13. y gritando cosas... [I: this is an interesting experience and the other one?] 10. five young guys surrounded me 11. and they really bothered me 12. touching me 13. and yelling things. .. 14. "blondie, how're ya doing?" 15. they really scared me 16. after a few minutes a woman ... uh... came to help me 17. but it happened at night, it was nighttime, 18. so they really scared me before 19. because there was nobody around

14. "rubia?que tal?"

15. me asustaron bastante 16. despues de unos minutos una mujer ... uh... vino para ayudarme 17. pero fue por la noche, era por la noche 18. entonces me asustaron bastante antes 19. porque no habia nadie

Judith E. Liskin-Gasparro

285

APPENDIX A continued Kathy's Intermediate High Story 20. y estaba en una ... un calle muy... muy oscuro (laugh) 20. and I was in a... a very ... very dark street (laugh)

APPENDIX B Kathy's Advanced Story 1. mi primer fin de semana, fue el primer fin de semana 2. y habia estado en un bar, bueno, a las tres, muy tarde [I: sola?] 2a. con unos amigos 3. no se? 4. regrese a mi casa sola, pero en un taxi 5. alguien me habia dicho 6. que en un taxi es bastante seguro (laugh) 7. fui 8. cogi un taxi 9. y al llegar a mi casa 61 me pidi6 mucho mis dinero 10. que habia puesto en la maquina 11. ?c6mo se llama? 12. que cuenta el dinero 13. y yo pregunte por que 14. no deberia haber hecho (laugh) esto 15. pero si 16. y 61 se enfad6 17. y agirro mi bolsa 18. y 61 tom6 todo el dinero alli 19. y empez6 a conducir otra vez 20. y yo estaba todavia [I: alli] 21. entones yo agarre mi bolsa 22. salte del coche 1. my first weekend, it was the first weekend 2. and I had been in a bar, well, at 3:00, very late [I: alone?] 2a. with friends 3. I don't know 4. I went home alone, but in a taxi 5. someone had told me 6. that in a cab you're really safe (laugh) 7. I left 8. I caught a cab 9. and when I got home, he asked for much more money 10. than what was on the machine 11. how do you say it? 12. that counts the money 13. and I asked why 14. I shouldn't have done (laugh) this 15. but yes 16. and he got mad 17. and he grabbed my purse 18. and he took all the money in it 19. and he started to drive again 20. and I was still [I: there] 21. so then I grabbed my purse 22. I jumped out of the car 23. que estaba en marcha 24. y bueno, me asust6 bastante 25. y no podia entrar en mi casa 26. porque hay una puerta grande abajo 27. y hay que entrar 28. y la cerradura es muy dificil en abrir 29. alli estaba 30. intentando abrir la puerta 31. y unos j6venes de 16, 18 afios, cinco
... cinco me acer-

23. that was moving 24. and well, he really scared me 25. and I couldn't get into my house 26. because there is a big door downstairs 27. and you have to go through it 28. and the lock is very hard to open 29. there I was 30. trying to open the door 31. and some young guys about 16, 18 years old, five ... five surrounded me 32. I think 33. saying things 34. "hey, blondie, come with us, dadadada" 35. touching me 36. and grabbing my earrings 37. they grabbed my earrings 38. they stole my earrings 39. I don't know why 40. putting their hands all over my body 41. and scaring me more than the cab driver 42. and ... two or three cars had passed by 43. they didn't do anything 44. I don't know

caron 32. yo creo 33. diciendo cosas 34. "oye, rubia, ven con nosotros, dadadada" 35. tocindome 36. y agarrando mis pendientes 37. agar6n mis pendientes 38. robaron mis pendientes 39. no s6 por que 40. poniendo sus manos por todas partes en mi cuerpo 41. y asustindome mas que el taxista 42. y habia pasado ... dos o tres coches 43. no hicieron nada 44. no se6

286
APPENDIX B continued Kathy's Advanced Story 45. pero por fin una mujer sali6 de su coche 46. y empez6 a gritar a los hombres 47. y me ayud6 entrar en la casa 48. y oof... 49. y Iloraba toda la noche y 50. seguro 51. que habian pasado unos hombres antes 45. but finally a woman got out of her car 46. and she started to yell at the men 47. and she helped me get into the house 48. and oof... 49. and I cried the whole night and 50. surely 51. some men had passed by before

TheModernLanguage Journal 80 (1996)

52. que podrian ayudarme 53. me impresion6 bastante 54. que hay una mujer 55. que me ayud6 56. luego, pues, no se 57. tenia un poco de miedo por algunas semanas despues

52. who could help me 53. it really impressed me 54. that there is a woman 55. who helped me 56. well, then, I don't know 57. I was a little afraid for a few weeks afterwards

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