the effect of storytelling on children's learning english...

International Research Journal of Applied and Basic Sciences © 2013 Available online at www.irjabs.com ISSN 2251-838X / Vol, 5 (1): 104-113 Science Explorer Publications

The Effect of Storytelling on Children's Learning English Vocabulary: A Case in Iran

Hassan Soleimani1, Mahkameh Akbari

2

1. Department of Applied Linguistics, Payame Noor University, Iran

2. Payame Noor University, Iran

Corresponding Author email: [email protected]

ABSTRACT: Vocabulary appears to be the heart of language especially by children. The purpose of this study was to examine whether storytelling can affect children's vocabulary learning in English. Thirty one Iranian preschool students from two different preschools with the same language system and the same level of English proficiency participated in this study. All of the students were six years old and had learned English as a foreign language. This study employed a one group pretest posttest quasi-experimental design; the pretest and posttest were the same with 30 vocabulary picture test items related to both students' current course book vocabulary items which were familiar to them and the new items related to the story book. For data analysis, paired t-test was used and it was revealed that storytelling might enhance the achievement of vocabulary items, and consequently it might bring up a positive effect on children's vocabulary learning. Keywords: kindergarten, preschool, storytelling, teaching, vocabulary learning

INTRODUCTION

Storytelling is an ancient verbal art which is defined in various ways. Gere (2002) defines it as “the act of using language and gesture in colorful ways to create scenes in a sequence” (cited in Behmer, 2005, p. 2). According to McDrury and Alterio (2003), storytelling is a unique human experience that enables us to convey, through the language of words, Stories enable us to know real and imagined worlds and our place in them (cited in Behmer, 2005). Taking into account the commonalities of these definitions, storytelling is sharing ideas and experiences through words and actions to communicate. Stories are rich materials for children to learn about the world where they live in. every real situation in life is tangible in the magical world of story; in fact whatever children learn in the story world can be practical in the real world. Stories provide exciting situation for children to experience some problems and dangers which are inevitable in their future life; then they teach children how to cope with such problems. There are so many reasons for storytelling to young learners (YL), it combines all four skills: listening, speaking, reading and writing in a meaningful context. As Glaze, Burk, Jenning and Koisavalia believe, linguistically stories present grammar, vocabulary and speech in a meaningful context which support comprehension (cited in Georgiou & verdugo, 2010 ). It also fosters cultural awareness and offers values and beliefs. It stimulates children's curiosity and encourages them to learn more about the world. Wasik and Bond (2001) and Write (2000) believe that for young learners stories offer an adorable way of contextualizing they also introduce new language and make it comprehensible and memorable (cited in Georgiou & verdugo,2010) . Gibbons (2002) believes that stories involve predicting guessing and linking new information to prior knowledge; they are scaffolding tools for the learning process; they allow learners to progress gradually in their own construction and reconstruction of knowledge(cited in Georgiou & verdugo, 2010). Retelling or remembering the plot of story can foster learners cognitive and social skills; cognitive activities such as identifying characters, comparing their behaviors and reactions during story and defining concepts, lead to develop concrete thinking, and cognitive activities such as: reasoning, finding solution, and creative ending lead to develop abstract thinking. Story provides a fluent stream which enables children to listen to, and then process and reproduce it. Children can understand stories even if they do not know each word, since they can use the predictive power of the text which help them to guess the meaning; they also use the gesture, the posture, and the intonation of storyteller to process and understand the meaning (cited in Setyarini, 2011; Ab Rashid, 2011& Dolakova,2008). Stories can divided according to their content to: classical tales, animal tales or fables, repetitive and cumulative tales, adventures and romantic stories, poem, rhymes, songs and chants (cited in Dolakova, 2008). Children of different cultures are familiar with classical tales, they know the plot, characters and ending of these

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Intl. Res. J. Appl. Basic. Sci. Vol., 5 (1), 104-113, 2013

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kinds of stories, so they can predict the unknown words. The problems which inhibit teachers from using such stories are: the length of the stories and the large amount of vocabulary (cited in Dolakova, 2008). Animal tales or fables are very popular among children; children like animals especially as the characters that can talk and behave like human being; in fact they identify themselves with them and then imitate their behaviors and actions (cited in Dolakova, 2008). Repetitive and cumulative tales are really helpful for learning language, since these sorts of stories have short plot and repetitive rhythms which enable children to remember the plot and then reproduce words and structures in a short amount of time. These types of stories also answer the repetitive and confusing question of children which always make the parents and the teacher exhausted. For example "uncle why is the sea salty?"(Jan Werich, Fim Farum) answers children's questions on the essence of the world (cited in Dolakova, 2008). Adventures and romantic stories have also many fans among the children, since they contain archetypes such as: heroes and heroines who are good and kind and their enemies who are bad, ugly and nasty, and finally the victory of positive powers over negative ones. Baur believes that the most popular and well known adventurous and romantic story is Cinderella. Poems, rhymes, songs and chants are also great sources for listening because of the repetitive nature of rhymes, their plot and their imaginative nature; they can foster the motivation and language ability of children (cited in Dolakova, 2008). The review of literature Maldelez (2010) asserts that storytelling in EFL is a powerful and effective way to raising the level of vocabulary acquisition. Storytelling can also develop students’ motivation and interests (cited in Moon & Maeng, 2012). Gonzalez (2010) found that stories used for teaching English as a foreign language to children in first, second and third grade develop students' motivation and increase their participation in different activities(cited in Moon& Maeng, 2012) . Isbell, Sobol, Lindaur and Lowrance (2004) investigated the effect of storytelling and story reading in promoting young learners reading comprehension. The results showed that both storytelling and reading stories enhanced reading comprehension skill in children aged three to five. They came to the conclusion that the group who only heard the stories had greater reading comprehension than the group who just read the stories, even though the storytelling and the story reading had the same content (cited in Moon & Maeng, 2012). Cameron (2001) asserts that storytelling is oral activity that is designed not only for listening but also for involvement; then it enhances class participation. He believes intense eye contact between the teacher and the pupils is a unique in storytelling because such behavior is a natural one in communication, then it increases the communication ability in the classroom (cited in Setyarini, 2011). Baker and Greene (1977) suggest that, “telling a story is giving a gift . . . storytelling brings to the listener heightened awareness—a sense of wonder, of mystery, of reverence for life” (cited in Lenox, 2000, p.1). Also, they believe, storytelling is a gift of understanding of self and others, and understanding the story itself. Kaderavek and justice( 2002), Rubin and Wilson( 1995), and snow (1983) believe that It is common for teachers to read story books to children in class; in fact Storybook reading is a valuable activity recommended in educational literature and they find its benefits for children's language learning ( cited in Al-Mansour, 2011). Alna (1999) believes that In addition to its entertainment value, storytelling may have considerable value as an educational tool The role of storytelling in the foreign language classroom has been highlighted for many teachers and scholars( cited in Al-Mansour, 2011). Farrell and Nessel (1982) mentioned classroom storytelling and its reputation among school teachers. The reason for this reputation is the practicality and usefulness of reading story in the classroom(cited in Al-Mansour, 2011). Storytelling to children is so popular in Iran, in fact storytelling is a tradition in Iranian families, children are familiar with lots of archetypes, plot structures, different types of characters and themes, and they also know a large amount of fables and anecdotes which they inherited from their ancestors. In spite of such familiarities with various kinds of stories, unfortunately it is not popular to use them in English class. The materials used in English classes are the commercial course books available in every book stores. Teaching vocabulary is usually based on rout learning method. There are mostly a series of listed words matched with their pictures, which usually remind us picture dictionary. Children actually learn through such pictures, out of text. The other way of teaching vocabulary in Iran is TPR , mostly used to teach action verbs. Singing song is also popular for teaching vocabulary specially among preschool and kindergarten students, but it is not a meaningful way of learning, since children most of the times are not aware of the complete meaning of verses; They usually repeat the rhythms without understanding the correct meaning, since the researcher decides to examine another way of teaching vocabulary to children, which is storytelling. The researcher wants to know whether story telling has positive effects or negative ones on children's vocabulary learning. but the research hypothesis is that the story telling has positive effect on children vocabulary learning.


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METHOD Design This study is a quasi experimental design with one experimental group and no control group; the sampling is cluster random sampling. The pre-test and the post-test are the same. The research hypotheses were formulated as: H0: Story telling has no effect on children's vocabulary learning. H1: Story telling has a positive effect on children's vocabulary learning. Participants Thirty one preschool students participate in this research; 13 of them were girls and18 of them were boys; 15 students were from Nininaz preschool and kindergartens and 16 students were from Dadafarin preschool and kindergarten both located in Tehran. The average age of the students was six. Although these students were from two different preschools, they have the same English teacher and the same English books at the same level (basic).

MATERIALS In this study The Three Bears story book was taught; this story book is known as Godzilac story book. A vocabulary test was designed for both pre-test and post-test. A series of flash cards was designed for teaching. And finally some stickers were prepared as gifts for motivating the students. Procedure First of all, a vocabulary test was designed based on the students both known and unknown vocabulary; the known or familiar vocabulary item list consisted of the vocabulary taught in the class based on the kindergarten curriculum; the unknown words or unfamiliar items consisted of the new vocabularies of the story book. In this stage, we consulted the English teacher about the level of the student's vocabulary and the less familiar and more familiar lexical items. It is important to mention that the test was multiple choices with pictures since the students couldn't read or write the teacher read the vocabularies one by one and students circled the correct answers. Then the pre-test was administrated, the teacher read the vocabularies one by one and the students circled their answers on the answer sheet. Next, one of the researchers taught the English teacher to teach the story book in three stages: pre-storytelling stage, while-storytelling stage, after-storytelling stage. Pre-storytelling for the Three Bears story lasted 2 sessions, each session was an hour. The pre-storytelling stage prepares the students so that they could better comprehend the story. It raises their interest and motivation to hear the story. Then in this stage The teacher introduced the new vocabularies by using the flashcards and asked the students to draw some pictures of the new vocabularies, for example the students drew the bears family at the first session and they drew forest at the second session. The next stage was while-storytelling stage, this stage lasted 2 session; each session was an hour, In the first session of while-storytelling stage, the teacher read half of the story for children, and during the storytelling the teacher showed the pictures and asked student some questions To keep them active and motivated, in the second session of while-storytelling stage the teacher read the rest of the book and like the first session asked some questions to keep the students active. The last stage was the after-storytelling stage it lasted only one session (about an hour) which was the generalization of the new knowledge to the student's real life. In this stage teacher used student's new knowledge to ask them some questions about their own life for example the teacher asked "do you like porridge?" and the students answer. Finally, the post test was administrated; the post test and pre test were the same, teacher read the new vocabularies one by one and the students circle their answers.

RESULT In this research 31 pre-school students participated to investigate the effects of storytelling on children vocabulary learning. Just one experimental group was chosen randomly and a vocabulary test was designed for both pretest and posttest.Table 1 illustrates the frequency statistics of pretest. Here the Skewness value is ‒ .383 and the Standard Error of Skewness is .421, the two times value of Standard Error of Skewness is more than the skewness value ;then, we might infer that the data were distributed normally(.421×2 = ‒ .383).


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Table1. Descriptive statistics of the Pretest of the exprimenta goupl Mean 20.10 Std. Error of Mean .704 Median 20.00 Mode 20

a

Std. Deviation 3.919 Variance 15.357 Skewness -.383 Std. Error of Skewness .421 Kurtosis -.331 Std. Error of Kurtosis .821 Range 16 Minimum 12 Maximum 28 Sum 623

Table 2 illustrates the frequency statistics of posttest. Here the Skewness value is _.530 and the Standard Error of Skewness is .421, the two times value of Standard error of skewness is mor than skweness value then normal distribution exists.

Table2. Descriptive statistics of the posttest of the experimenta groupl

Mean 24.74 Std. Error of Mean .601 Median 25.00 Mode 23 Std. Deviation 3.346 Variance 11.198 Skewness -.530 Std. Error of Skewness .421 Kurtosis -.184 Std. Error of Kurtosis .821 Range 13 Minimum 17 Maximum 30 Sum 767

Table3 . One-Sample Kolmogorov-Smirnov Test

pretest experimental post experimental

N 31 31

Normal Parametersa,,b

Mean 20.10 24.74

Std. Deviation 3.919 3.346

Most Extreme Differences Absolute .168 .130

Positive .100 .086

Negative -.168 -.130

Kolmogorov-Smirnov Z .933 .726

Asymp. Sig. (2-tailed) .349 .668

Table 3 shows One sample Kolmogorov-smirnove test results, according to the last row, the Asymp. Sig.(2 tailed) of both pretest and post test are more than the p. value 0.05, as a result a normal

distribution exist (0.349>0.05, 0.668>0.05)


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Figure 1. normal Q-Q plot of pretest experimental

Figure 2. normal Q-Q plot of posttest experimental

Figure 1 and Figure 2 show the Q-Q Plot of pre test and post test, the plots in both figure are on the hypothetical lines or near them as a result the normal distribution exist.

Table4. Dependent Variable:pretest experimental

Source Type III Sum of Squares df

Mean Square F Sig.

Partial Eta Squared

Noncent. Parameter

Observed Power

b

Corrected Model .000a 0 . . . .000 .000 .

Intercept 12520.290 1 12520.290 815.283 .000 .965 815.283 1.000

Error 460.710 30 15.357

Total 12981.000 31

Corrected Total 460.710 30

CONCLUSION

From the analysis it is revealed that storytelling is a method that is suitable to increase English vocabulary learning among children. The result of the learning shows that student’ vocabulary mastery increases accordingly. In Iran, children’s stories are still not widely used in kindergartens, preschools, and schools perhaps since there are still not enough studies that relate children’s stories to young adult learners. This research allows one to see the potential and the effectiveness of children’s stories in enhancing vocabulary learning. More importantly, it reveals that storytelling improve vocabulary learning and let students


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learn vocabulary in context. However, further research is needed to investigate the best way to use children’s stories for learning English.

Table5 . Dependent Variable: posttest experimental

Source Type III Sum of Squares df

Mean Square F Sig.

Partial Eta Squared

Noncent. Parameter

Observed Power

b

Corrected Model .000a 0 . . . .000 .000 .

Intercept 18977.065 1 18977.065 1694.706 .000 .983 1694.706 1.000

Error 335.935 30 11.198

Total 19313.000 31

Corrected Total 335.935 30

Table 4 and Table 5 illustrate the univariate analysis of the variance, the observed power of both the pretest and posttest are 1 then the null hypothesis is rejected. According to the previous data and analysis, the assumptions of parametric test are met; it means that: the data are normally distributed, the data are interval and the independence of observations-scores on one measure do not influence scores on another measure. Among parametric statistic, paired t-test is chosen, since there is no independent group and the focus is within a group. Indeed each student is paired with him or herself on the pretest and posttest. Table 6 indicates the paired t-test statistics, according to the table the significant (2tailed) equals 0, it is less than 0.05 then there is a significant difference; as a result the null hypothesis is rejected.

Table6. Paired Samples Test Results

Paired Differences t df Sig. (2-tailed)

Mean Std. Deviation Std. Error Mean

95% Confidence Interval of the Difference

Lower Upper

Pair 1 pretest experimental - post experimental

-4.645 2.882 .518 -5.702 -3.588 -8.975 30 .000

DISCUSSION

The analysis of the data from the vocabulary tests shows that the use of children’s stories to develop vocabulary among preschool students was effective and was perceived positively by the students. As mentioned before, just one experimental group was randomly chosen among six-year- old preschool students and the same vocabulary test for pretest and posttest was designed; comparing the results of the pretest and the posttest, most of the students involved in this study scored higher marks in the post-test. It also should be considered that the mean of posttest was higher than the mean of the pretest which indicates that the stories may have had a positive influence. To some extent, this result reflects the effectiveness of storytelling to develop preschool student's vocabulary which is claimed to be the most important element in second language learning. Among parametric statistics, paired t-test was chosen, since there was no independent group and the focus was within a group. Indeed each student was paired with him or herself on the pretest and posttest. The results of univariate analysis of the variance (Tables 4 and Table 5) indicate the observed power value which is 1 for both pretest and posttest and the paired t-test statistic (table6) shows the significant (2 tailed) which is 0; these results rejected the null hypothesis and confirmed the positive effects of storytelling on children's vocabulary learning. The finding is also consistent with an earlier discovery by Ab Rashid (2011) which reported that children's storytelling had positive effect on the vocabulary learning of less proficient young adults; and also Mohamed Rafik (2005) who investigated the effects of storytelling on elementary students, and as a result the researcher reported that storytelling enhance the vocabulary learning of elementary students. Joyce (2011) studied the effects of song picture books on the vocabulary acquisition of kindergarten children and as a result mentioned that using song picture books which most of times narrate a story increase the vocabulary acquisition of kindergarten students. This study had several limitations, it is limited by its sample size; the sample size was small with 31 students participated in this study; as a result, it could be expanded to a larger group of preschool students.


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The other limitations are the treatment time which was short (five sessions) and the amount of material which only consisted of one short story. So, it appears that further research with larger groups and in longer period treatment time with greater amount of materials might shed more light on the process of learning vocabulary by preschool children learning English.

REFERENCES Abrashid R. 2012 . Vocabulary learning among less proficient young adults using children's Stories. Mextesol

Journal,35(1).Retrievedfromhttp://www.mextesol.net/journal/public/./e1eaf5f05509eb706ba4719503e952f9.pd. Al-Mansour N. 2011. The effect of storytelling aloud on the reading comprehension Of Saudi elementary stage. Collage of Applied

linguistics, King Saud University, Riyadh, Saud Arabia. Retreived from http:// www.sciencedirect.com/science /article/pii/S22108319110002

Literature Review, digital storytelling: examining the process with.Behmer s . 2005Middle school students. Iowa State University. Retrieved from www. http:// edhd.bgsu.edu /~sbanist/6320/pdfs/LitReviewdigistor.pdf

Dolokova S. 2008. Storytime activities in primary classes and kindergartens (Master thesis) . Masary University of Brono, Faculty of Education. Retreived from: http:// is.muni.cz/th/104598/pedf_m/?lang=en

Georgious S, Dolores R.2010. Stories as a tool for teaching and learning in CLIL, (pp.137-155), Nicosia Cyprus Pedagogical Institute. Joyce M. 2011. Vocabulary acquisition with kindergarten children using song picture book (Doctoral dissertation), Norttheastern

University,Boston,Massachusetts.Retrievedfromhttp:// www. dl.handle.net/2047/d20002365 Lenox M. 2000. Storytelling for young children in a multicultural world.early childhood Educational journal, 28(2). Retrieved from http://

www.olc.edu /~khecrow/webfolder /Research/Lenox.pdf Mohamad Rafik F. 2005. Storytelling and vocabulary acquisition at the elementary level (Master thesis). Mentouri University, Contantin

Faculty of Letters and Languages, Democratic and Popular Republic of Algeria. Retrieved from http://www.bu.umc.edu.dz/theses/anglais/FAD10043.pdf

Moon J, Maeng U. 2012. A comparison study of the effect of reading instruction using storytelling and storysinging. Proceeding of 17th

conference of Pan-Pacific Association of Applied Linguistic. School of Education, Ajou University. Retrieved from http://www. aaljapan.org/conference2012/proc_PAAL2012/pdf/.../P-14.pdf

Setyarini S. 2012. Storytelling: An innovative language learning for English young learners. Joint Conference UPI-UITM, Indonesia University of Education. Retrieved from www. http:// repository.upi.edu/.../pros_ui-uitm_2011_ setyarini _ innovative _language.

Appendix 1.elephant 2. jacket 3. jumping

4.zebra 5.strawberry 6. cow

http://www/

http://www.olc.edu/

http://www/


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7.ears 8.hat 9.laughing

10.watermelon 11.nurse 12.cooking

13.notebook 14. scissors 15.policeman

16. ma ma bear 17.papa bear

18.baby bear


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19.middle sized chair 20.great bi g chair 21. bowl

22.forest 23. porridge 24.pot

25.laying down 26.washing the dishes 27. ice cream


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28.farmer 29.bread 30.eating

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