Early Childhood is very important period in language development. As a number of infants who attend in child-care centers are increased, a role of educational practices to develop young children’s language skills is enlarged. Most of teaches in child-care centers use picture books to improve infants’ language development, but it is difficult to provide effective instruction to infant who show very short attention span. Studies about young children’s language development are concentrated on preschoolers, so more studies are required in the area of infants’ language development. Thus, this study is purposed to examine the effects of story-telling on improving language skills for infants by conducting story-telling using picture books and related activities.
The research questions for the purpose are as follows:
1. Do the story-telling activities using picture books show effects on infants’ receptive and expressive language development?
2. Do the story-telling activities using picture books show effects on infants’ vocabulary skill development?
3. Do the story-telling activities using picture books show effects on infants’ communication development?
Participants for this study are 2-year-old infants who attend child-care centers located in B city. Among 14 infants, 7 infants were grouped as experimental group with conducting story-telling activities using picture books, and the other half of children were classed as control group by receiving regular story reading time. The experiment was conducted from May. 16th to July. 6th as a total of 16 sessions.
To measure infants language development, three kinds of assessment tools were used. For infants’ receptive and expressive language development, Preschool Exceptive-Expressive Language Scale(PRES) was used and for the vocabulary skills, Receptive & Expressive Vocabulary Test(REVT) was used. For the communicative ability, social-communication Area in 1,2 Years Old Infants Development Assessment was used.
A total of 8 picture books for story-telling activities were selected by the review of two specialists in the area and those books were adapted for the purpose of story-telling. The adapted stories were utilized for story-telling by using proper media. Story-telling activities were consisted of integrating with activities in diverse areas by reflecting planned language skills. For one picture book, 2 sessions were conducted and the book was placed in reading area for infants to read whenever they want in a classroom. For the data analysis, Mann-Whitney U test was utilized to check the homogeneity in the pre-test. and Ranked Analysis of Covariance(ANCOVA) was used to analyze the data obtained from the post-test.
Results for this study are as follows. First, story-telling activities using picture books showed positive effects on developing infants’ receptive and expressive language skills. This implies that story-telling activities are effective on improving infants’ language skills overall. Second, story-telling activities using picture books showed positive effects partially on developing infants’ vocabulary skills. Story-telling activities showed meaningful effect on receptive vocabulary development, but showed no effect on expressive vocabulary development. Third, story-telling activities using picture books showed no meaningful effect on developing infants’ communicative ability. Fourth, story-telling activities using picture books brought positive changes in infants’ attitudes participating in activities. Based on results, discussion and implication are suggested in terms of providing story-telling activities using picture books to develop infants’ language skills as a valuable educational method in a classroom setting.