The Multilingual Assessment Instrument for Narratives (MAIN): Adding Kam to MAIN

Abstract

This paper introduces the Kam version of the Multilingual Assessment Instrument for Narratives (LITMUS-MAIN). Kam is a minority language in southern China which belongs to the Kam-Tai language family and is spoken by the Kam ethnic minority people. Adding Kam to MAIN not only enriches the typological diversity of MAIN but also allows researchers to study children’s narrative development in a sociocultural context vastly distinctly different from the frequently examined WEIRD (Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic) societies. Moreover, many Kam- speaking children are bilingual ethnic minority children who are “left-behind” children living in Mainland China, growing up in a unique socio-communicative environment.