Vocabulary Enhancement through Short Stories
Short stories are also considered to be very powerful teaching tools
especially for vocabulary enhancement. According to Pesola (1991),
storytelling gives more fruitful results with young language learners
than anyone else. Isbell (2002) further elaborates it by saying that
children enjoy only those stories which include repetitive phrases and
unique words. Meyer (2000) is also of the view that stories contain
cultural values which indicate the way of integrating culture and
language relevant to cultural knowledge which is meant to know meanings
in order to contribute in activities. Students should know not only the
words but also cultural background and they should learn the vocabulary
in context.
Short stories also help children to recall or reread the story to build
their conceptual knowledge. Stories help learners to improve
understanding regarding new words, handouts and books too evaluating
learners’ present language stages (Morrow, 2001). Students’ language
proficiency is also developed with the help of such practices. Richgels
(2000) is of the view that story repetition gives a chance to the
students to organize the order of events, to utilize word items present
in the story and to improve learners’ understanding of the world too.
Story revision is not only a research tool for the researchers as it
gives a lot of data to gain insight into learner’s understanding
processes (Goodman, 1982) but also a guiding strategy that has potential
to improve many literary skills.