A student with well-developed written communication skills can demonstrate knowledge, express thoughts, ideas, and emotions, and later achieve success both at work and in building relationships. Written communication develops in connection with three other communication activities: speaking, reading, and listening. The latter also includes listening to stories that are read aloud or told orally. The purpose of this master's thesis was to determine whether storytelling, compared to reading stories aloud to students, has a more effective impact on the development of their written communication skills.
The study employed a quasi-experimental comparative approach. Two fourth-grade classes from a primary school participated in the research, with a total of 43 students. For four weeks, one group received an intervention consisting of storytelling involving Slovenian folk tales, while the other group participated in a story reading intervention using the same tales. Before and after the four-week intervention, the students wrote a retelling of a tale they had heard. The retellings were analysed in terms of the total number of words written, the number of different words used, the number of sentences, the average number of words and clauses per sentence, and the inclusion of essential story elements. We also examined students’ attention during story listening and their preferences regarding the two methods of story presentation.
Due to the initial inequality between the groups, the results could not be interpreted as direct evidence of the greater effectiveness of either intervention. The findings indicate that both reading aloud and storytelling are associated with progress in certain aspects of written communication. In both groups, students wrote, on average, more words, used a greater variety of words, and produced longer sentences after the intervention. In the reading intervention group, a statistically significant improvement was observed in the number of different words used, while the average number of words per sentence increased significantly in both groups. Students more frequently identified storytelling as their preferred method of story presentation. The results also showed fewer inattentive behaviours during reading aloud and greater student engagement during storytelling.
Through the findings of this study and the existing literature, we aim to raise teachers’ and parents’ awareness of the many positive effects that listening to both read and told stories can have on students. We also hope to encourage them to include not only reading but also storytelling more frequently in their educational practice for the benefit of students.
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