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.