Effect of Storytelling on Listening Skills and Vocabulary of Preschool Children

Abstract

Storytelling has been used as the oldest form of learning. Even though foryears, storytellers shared stories with children, up till now very fewresearches have been conducted on impact of storytelling on children’slearning. The current research was an effort to explore the effect ofstorytelling on listening skills and vocabulary of preschool children. Thisstudy was a quasi-experimental design. The total sample comprised of 14participants of preschool children aged 5 years divided in 2: control (n=7)and experimental (n=7) groups through non-random sampling. The datawas collected and assessed by means of globally recognized scalesMorrow’s Retelling 10 Point Scale for listening skills and VocabularyKnowledge Scale (VKS) for vocabulary. Six stories were selected forstorytelling; first story for pre-test, four stories for interventions and sixthstory for post-test story telling. The statistical analysis was done byconducting independent samples t-test and paired samples t-test tocompare scores among control and experimental groups. The post-testresults and the researcher observations affirmed that preschool childrenwho were exposed to storytelling with props were highly engaged in storyretelling; incorporating minute details which verified listening attentivelyand carefully maturing their listening skills and revealed better,meaningful, and deeper understanding of vocabulary.