Retelling as a Means of Story Structure and Story Content Understanding

This study examined whether particular practices in story retelling improve children's comprehension of story structure and enables them to further comment on the story content. Eighty-three (83) kindergarten children (M = 5.4) years old composed the experimental (N = 43) and the control (N = 40) groups. For 6 weeks, one time per week, six well-structured books were read to the experimental group as follows: Before reading there was a brief discussion, while after reading children were trained in story retelling. The intervention programme in retelling consisted of five levels, which began from total teacher assistance to the point where children were able to retell the story freely and completely. The same six books were simply read to the control group and after the reading the children discussed the interesting parts and made drawings based on the story. Children's retellings were taped and analysed by a series of measures. Results confirmed the experimental group children's achievements in almost all measurements indicating that the multilevel training programme in retelling enhanced children's ability for deeper comprehension and further commentary.