Oral discourse skills: Dimensionality of comprehension and retell of narrative and expository texts, and the relations of language and cognitive skills to identified dimensions

Abstract

We examined the dimensionality of oral discourse skills (comprehension and retell of texts) and the relations of language and cognitive skills to the identified dimensions. Data were from 529 English-speaking second graders (Mage = 7.42; 46% female; 52.6% Whites, 33.8% African Americans, 4.9% Hispanics, 4.7% two or more races,.8% Asian Americans,.6% American Indians,.2% Native Hawaiians, 2.5% unknown; data from 2014–2015 to 2016–2017). Confirmatory factor analysis revealed that oral discourse skills are best described as four related but dissociable dimensions of narrative comprehension, narrative retell, expository comprehension, and expository retell (rs =.59–.84). Language and cognitive skills had different patterns of relations to the identified dimensions and explained larger amounts of variance in comprehension than in retell.