How can storytelling develop kids’ language abilities?

Children have a wacky sense of imagination. This sense of wonder and awe could be advantageous in developing their language acquisition.

Wondering how? Storytelling is the key!

Narrating stories provides a chance to explore their creativity. Every interaction between storytellers and their listeners revolves around language. When children spin their own stories, they develop language skills. You could start developing their skills early by assigning them simple tasks. 

For instance, ask them to create a story starring their favorite toys. The more variations of tales they can spin, the better they will get at it. They could be their story's protagonists or center the story around their siblings or friends, making it quite fascinating.

Storytelling could lead to kids' language development in the following ways:

1) Storytelling helps to practice already learned information

One of the best ways to teach children involves active participation instead of lectures or instructions from only your side. You could teach your child a new set of words and encourage them to use those words in a short story. This way, stories could be used as a medium to practice learned information. It becomes easier for children to remember the newly learned words and enriches their vocabulary, which is fundamental to language learning.

Related: 8 fun spelling activities to help kids learn

2) Stories help children form clear and concrete sentences

When kids are forming a story, they must create a plot with a beginning, middle, and end. Additionally, they will have to knit together the above three parts of the story using logical sentences, further enriching their descriptive language. Their self-confidence increases when they receive positive feedback, which could motivate them further.

3) Stories help kids to become better communicators

Regardless of where we live, stories have always been essential communication elements among people. As adults, we tell stories all the time—stories of friends, experiences at work, traffic, about how work is, and so on. 

Kids also describe their experiences or feelings with stories. In the excitement to share stories, they might try hard to narrate them well, adapting volume, pitch, pause, and even looking for the right words. All these factors could mold them into better communicators, developing their oral language skills. 

Related: Sight words and ways to teach them to kids

Pro Tips

A great way to guide your kids to be good storytellers is to motivate them to write stories or read stories to them. If you read bedtime stories to your children, they might enthusiastically listen to you. When there are challenging words they might not understand, pause and explain to them their meaning. 

Additionally, ask them questions such as "What do you think could happen next?". Let them finish the tale independently; where would they take this story? Teaching them to create stories like this might be the simplest way to have them tell stories. 

Developing their tales and retelling what they've heard before could also aid in their language development. In the next phase, you could ask them to write a story on a particular topic. 

Keep giving them storytelling tasks, ask questions about their characters, and help them add depth to their narratives. Developing a sense for descriptive language and using words to express their feelings effectively is a great skill, and it is never too early to start!     

Head on over to byjuslearning.com to learn more about our Active Learning approach to Math, Language, and Reading for children between Pre-K and Grade 3.  

 Also read:

Raising readers: motivate your little one to read!

Identifying your child's learning style

5 fun ways to teach your child about colors

Source

1. www.jstor.org; Using Storytelling to Promote Language and Literacy Development by Jackie Peck 

2. www.researchgate.net; The Effects of Storytelling and Story Reading on the Oral Language Complexity and Story Comprehension of Young by Rebecca Isbell, Joseph Sobol, Liane Lindauer, April Lowrance