There is a substantial body of research showing that children who are good storytellers are better in language, in inferential abilities, have better literacy skills and greater school achievements (e.g., Cooper et al., 1992; Dobson, 2005; Snow et al., 1998). It is thus important to understand the conditions leading children to develop and/or to better use the competences required to produce good stories. The papers of this symposium focus on activities and specific interventions likely to promote narrative abilities or, alternatively, use narrative-based interventions to promote other language skills and discuss the processes involved in the different kinds of narrative-promoting activities focused upon. The first paper presents results of a study of 41 low-income African American preschoolers aged 3 to 5 yrs showing that parent-child reading significantly predicts the length of narratives. The second paper combines analyses of spontaneous interaction of three monolingual, Dutch-speaking children followed between the ages of 1;9 and 3;9 with experimental data obtained at age 7;0 and shows that displaced talk at the earlier ages relates to later narrative abilities. The third paper shows that a story-based conversation focusing on the causes of the story events lead children to improve the inferential and evaluative content of their narratives. It also changes the linguistic expression of their stories, that become more "packed" and contain more complex structures and explicit markers of causality and temporality. Finally, the fourth paper shows that story-based conversations carried out in the nursery school by trained educators improves 2-3 years old socio-emotional understanding and their reference to psychological states. References Cooper, P.J.; Collins, R. & Saxby, M. (1992). The Power of Story. Melbourne: MacMillan. Dobson, S. (2005). Narrative competence and the enhancement of literacy. Some theoretical reflections. International Journal of Media, Technology and Lifelong Learning, 1 (2), 1-14. Snow, C.E., Burns, S., & Griffin, P. (Eds.) (1998). Preventing Reading Difficulties in Young Children. Washington, DC: National Academy Press