Narrative Scoring Scheme (NSS)

The Narrative Scoring Scheme is an assessment tool that provides an index of the student's ability to produce a coherent narrative. It was developed to create a more objective narrative structure scoring system and is based on an earlier version, Rubric for Completing a Story Grammar Analysis, developed by the Madison Metropolitan School District SALT working group, 1998, following the work of Stein and Glenn, 1979; 1982. This scoring procedure combines many of the abstract categories of Story Grammar, adding features of cohesion, connecting events, rationale for characters' behavior and referencing. Each of the scoring categories has explicit examples to establish scoring criteria, reducing the abstractness of the story grammar categories.

View the NSS Scoring Guide, which contains detailing instructions for scoring narratives.

Download the NSS practice transcripts, a self-extracting zip file containing 12 practice transcripts. Run this file and you are prompted to select the folder where you want the transcripts stored. Browse to select this folder and then select Unzip. Practice by scoring these transcripts for NSS, comparing your scores to the scores of our trained coders.

The NSS was written up in the July 15, 2009 edition of the Advance magazine (click here to go to the Advance web site).