Global TALES Network

Global TALES: Talking About Lived Experiences in Stories 

The Global TALES Network is an initiative of the Child Language Committee of the International Association for Communication Sciences and Disorders (IALP). In this project, an international team of researchers  set out to investigate methods for eliciting and analyzing children’s personal event narratives, with the ultimate aim of developing FREELY AVAILABLE global tools and approaches to support assessment and interventions for this important skill in children with significant challenges in their learning, including those with language disorders.  During 2018/2019, we developed an elicitation protocol (the Global TALES protocol) and conducted a pilot study, in which we used the protocol to elicit personal narratives from 10-year-old children from a range of countries.  Since 2018, the project team has attracted members from  more than 40 countries, speaking > 30 languages.
The protocol has been registered on the Open Science Framework and interested parties are kindly asked to contact the project leader (Prof Marleen Westerveld) for permission to use the protocol for research purposes. The protocol is freely available for clinical use 
I have created a brief 7 minute overview (2020). To keep up to date, follow us on Instagram: @global_tales_network
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Overview of translated protocols

All protocols are freely available from our  Open Science Framework  site or simply click on the link below.
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Overview of publications that have used the Global TALES protocol (in order of publication)

  1. Westerveld, M. F., Lyons, R., Nelson, N. W., Chen, K. M., Claessen, M., Ferman, S., . . . on behalf the Global Tales Consortium. (2022). Global TALES feasibility study: Personal narratives in 10-year-old children around the world. PLoS ONE, 17(8), e0273114. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0273114 - Free Access
  2. Westerveld, M. F., & Nelson, N. (2023). Editorial: Evaluating children’s personal narrative skills using the Global TALES protocol: Implications for practice. Folia Phoniatrica Et Logopaedica, 367-371. doi:10.1159/000534510
  3. Westby, C. E., Chen, K.-M., Lee, J. P., & Wong, A. M.-Y. (2023). Topic and content of personal narratives of children from three East Asian cultures and three English-speaking cultures. Folia Phoniatrica Et Logopaedica, 431-446. doi:10.1159/000533559
  4. Srivastava, V., Chan, A., & Westerveld, M. F. (2023). What do children in India talk about: Personal narratives of typically developing Hindi-speaking children. Folia Phoniatrica Et Logopaedica, 447-455. doi:10.1159/000534298
  5. Van Vreckem, C., Desoete, A., Simoens, D., Van de Vyver, A., Pauwels, J., Van Laethem, C., & Van Lierde, K. (2023). Vocabulary diversity in personal narratives produced in response to the Global TALES protocol in Dutch-speaking students with and without dyslexia. Folia Phoniatrica Et Logopaedica, 470-479. doi:10.1159/000532024
  6. Maviş, İ., & Yaşar-Gündüz, E. (2023). Evaluating the personal narrative skills of monolingual turkish speaking 7- and 10-year-old children with typical development through Global TALES: A pilot study. Folia Phoniatrica Et Logopaedica, 382-392. doi:10.1159/000533292
  7. Theodorou, E., Vogindroukas, I., Giannakou, E., Tsouti, L., & Phinikettos, I. (2023). Telling personal narratives: Comparing stories told by 10-year-old speakers of Cypriot Greek Dialect and of Standard Modern Greek. Folia Phoniatrica Et Logopaedica, 401-411. doi:10.1159/000533400
  8. Einarsdóttir, J. T., & Þráinsdóttir, E. (2023). Personal narratives of 10-year-old children in Iceland– verbal productivity, word diversity, and topics. Folia Phoniatrica Et Logopaedica, 75, 372-381. doi:10.1159/000533134
  9. Lyons, R., Antonijevic-Elliott, S., Barbotin, S., Molloy, M., O’Malley-Keighran, M. P., Spelman, J., & Westerveld, M. F. (2023). Feasibility of using the Global TALES protocol to elicit personal narratives in 10 year-old children in Ireland. Folia Phoniatrica Et Logopaedica, 393-400. doi:10.1159/000533140
  10. Ferman, S., & Kawar, K. (2023). Tele-assessment of oral personal narratives in Arabic- and Hebrew-speaking children using the Global TALES protocol. Folia Phoniatrica Et Logopaedica, 456-469.
  11. Westerveld, M. F., Nelson, N. W., Claessen, M., & Westby, C. (2023). Children’s use of evaluative devices in response to the global TALES protocol. Folia Phoniatrica Et Logopaedica, 480-494. doi:10.1159/000533138
  12. Kuvač Kraljević, J., Matić Škorić, A., & Gabaj, M. (2023). Personal narratives of school-age children: A cross-sectional developmental study. Folia Phoniatrica Et Logopaedica, 412-430. doi:10.1159/000533399
  13. Gabaj, M., Kuvač Kraljević, J., & Westerveld, M. F. (2024). Linguistic organisation and coherence in personal narratives of 10-year-old children with developmental language disorder. First Language, 45(2), 128-151. doi:10.1177/01427237241298163
  14. Gabaj, M., Kraljević, J. K., & Westerveld, M. F. (2025). The personal narratives of Croatian-speaking children with developmental language disorder: Investigating the influence of emotional valence at linguistic, propositional, and macrostructure levels. Language, Speech, and Hearing Services in Schools, 56(3), 617-632. doi:10.1044/2025_LSHSS-24-00111
  15. Gabaj, M., Kraljević, J. K., & Westerveld, M. F. (2025). Contribution of memory mechanisms and socio-emotional functioning to the production of personal narratives in children with and without developmental language disorder. Journal of Speech, Language & Hearing Research, 68, 4845-4864. doi:10.1044/2025_JSLHR-25-0004
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