PURPOSE: to analyze composing aspects of verbal narratives of 5 and 6-year-old children. METHODS: 50 children took part in this research. There were 23 boys and 27 girls in pre-school classes of four private schools in Praia do Canto, an upper class neighborhood of Vitoria, Espirito Santo. The sample is composed of a verbal narrative of a story and personal account in a formal interaction in which the child was asked to tell the story Little Red Riding Hood, as it is a well-known story, and make a personal narrative. The analysis criteria were based on Perroni (1992) and Brandão & Spinillo (2001). RESULTS: the analyzed group displayed knowledge of narrative structures; satisfactory domain of temporal relations in narrated events; use of clauses which express temporal dependence with action verbs in past tenses; use of connectors with the predominance of "'aí" (a colloquial form similar to then) and "depois" (after that); proper use of time and space reference points; well-organized space-time relations and causative relations being developed. The study also pointed out the importance of the participation of an interlocutor in structuring the narratives. CONCLUSION: the children showed more ease in structuring the story rather than the personal narrative; they answered all kinds of eliciting questions; most of them needed mediation only in the personal narrative; they followed the time sequence not only in the story, using correctly the story-related flashcards, as for the personal narrative, they use "aí" as the main connector for causative and temporal cohesion.
Narratives; Story; Language; Child
