A study of the effects of two modes of literature presentation on the oral language development of four- and five-year-old children

The purpose of this study was to determine the effects of two modes of literary presentation, storyreading and storytelling, on the oral language development of four- and five-year-old children as measured by syntactic maturity, vocabulary diversity and the complexity of story retelling. The two experimental programs were designed to contrast the different modes of presentation using the same twenty-one books as the literary base. In the Read-Aloud Program the literature was read to the children in the exact vocabulary and phrasing of the author. In the Storytelling Program the literature was interpreted by a storyteller who varied the vocabulary and pace of the story to the interest and developmental level of the children in the program. Both programs posed the same questions and follow-up activities. The treatment period lasted eight weeks with three contacts per week.

The twelve subjects were randomly selected from the total enrollment of children attending a preschool program. The subjects were white, middle class, and within the chronological age of 4.9 to 5.1l. Three boys and three girls were selected for each program.

Oral language samples were obtained in individual interviews conducted at the beginning and conclusion of the programs. The two narrative samples were compared to determine if growth in oral language had occurred using the measures of syntactic maturity and vocabulary diversity. Additional language samples were obtained by asking the subjects to retell a story they had been read or told. These two retellings were compared to determine any change in the complexity of the story iii

iv retelling (as measured by number of words and mean length of T-unit) or change in the use of formal elements (as measured by beginning, ending, unity, incidents and conversational quotations).

Differences were found between the narrative language samples of the subjects in the two programs in the measures of mean number of words used, number of T-units, mean length of T-unit and vocabulary. The subjects in the Storytelling Program made the largest gains in all four measures. In the retelling sample the subjects in the Storytelling Program used longer T-units, and more words, number of incidents, endings, and conversational quotations than those subjects in the Read-Aloud Program.

Girls in the Storytelling Program made larger gains than boys in either program in the measurements of length of T-unit, vocabulary diversity in the narrative sample, and length of retelling. No sex differences were found in mean length of T-unit, number of characters, unity of story, or incidents included in the retelling samples.