The Effects of Storytelling and Story Reading on the Oral Language Complexity

and Story Comprehension of Young Children

EFFECTS OF STORYTELLING AND STORY READING

Purpose

LiteratureReview

Method

Result

Conclusion

ParticipantsMeasure-

mentProcedure

Further Study

The influence onthe language development and story comprehension of young children

Purpose

The development of oral language is one of children’s most massive accom-

plishments that occur during the first five years of life

(Genishi, 1988)

LiteratureReview

Influence of Story Reading on Language Development

LiteratureReview

Wells (1986) states that the number of hours a child is read to during their preschool years is the best predictor of the child's later reading achievement in school.

Not only do children acquire language and literacy skills, but they also ex-perience vocabulary growth, knowledge of handling books, and many other skills (Snow, 1983).

Story reading can foster communication opportunities for young children, as they discuss the text and illustrations (Kaderavek & Justice).

LiteratureReview

Influence of Storytelling on Language Development

LiteratureReview

Imaginative development is a key benefit of stories being told (Ellis, 1997).He also suggested that storytelling is the most effective way to develop listening skills.

Both can enhance children's imaginations as well as encourage them to create mental pictures (Aina, 1999). Storytelling, however, seems to require more visual imagination than story reading, because there are no book illustrations to preempt ( 선수치다 )the listeners' attention.

Trostle and Hicks (1998) conducted a study to determine whether children who heard stories told performed better on comprehension and vocabulary tests as com-pared to children who heard stories read.

LiteratureReview

24 22Method

Group A(Telling)

Group B(Read-ing)

38 Participants(3 year old + 4 year old children)

Participants

Oral language samples

*Language complexity(development)

-Mean length of utterance (MLU): a measure of linguistic productiv-ity-Fluency (total number of words)-Vocabulary diversity (number of different words)

Measure-ment

Program for Analysis: SALT (Systematic Analysis of Language Transcripts)

Oral language samples*Story Elements & Comprehension-the use of beginnings and ending -theme-setting (time and place) -moral of the story (resolution)-narrative (dialog)-characters-sequence

Measure-ment

2 QuestionsRead/Tell Follow-up Qs

Activities

Read aloud

Post-test(Retelling + Telling)

Pre-test(Retelling)

Procedure

Retelling

Test(Retelling + Telling)

Telling

Literal ques-tions

Result

Beginning

Ending

ThemeSetting

Moral

0

0.2

0.4

Mean score comparisons of story conventions and comprehension.

Reading Pre Reading Post

Beginning

Ending

ThemeSetting

Moral

0

0.5

1

Telling Pre Telling Post

MLU Fluency Diversity0

10

20

30

40

50

60

70

80

90

100

Mean score comparisons of language complexity.

Telling Pre Telling Post Reading Pre Reading Post

Reading Group

Better on creating the wordless picture

book story(heavily relied on the illustrations to retell

the story)

Telling Group

Better on the retelling(Created their own di-verse images when

retelling)

1) Storytelling particularly helped the children's imaginative recollection of the story.

2) storytelling and story reading are both beneficialto the development of oral language complexity and story comprehension in young children.

3) Combining these approaches could provide powerful literature ex-periences to influence the oral language development and story comprehension of young children – critical factors in their literacy development.

Conclusion

Difference in attention levels between the groups

While presenting stories, the researchers commented that

they “felt sorry for the children in the story reading group,” because they were not being given the same quality of experience as the children in the storytelling group.

Telling group: less easily distracted from the storymore engaged as demonstrated by facial expressions and anticipation displayed

Further Study