The purpose of this study was to examine how an activity to make a picture storybook affected the language and drawing expression abilities of young children.
The research questions were posed as follows:
1. What influence does picture storybook maki...
The purpose of this study was to examine how an activity to make a picture storybook affected the language and drawing expression abilities of young children.
The research questions were posed as follows:
1. What influence does picture storybook making activity on the language ability of young children?
2. What influence does picture storybook making activity on the drawing expression ability of young children?
The subjects in this study were 40 young children who were at classes of two different kindergartens attached to K and N elementary schools respectively in Gochang-gun, Cheon-Buk. They were five years old in American age, and the two classes were randomly selected as an experimental group and a control group, which included 10 boy children and 10 girl children each. The experimental group was engaged in picture storybook making after listening to an illustrated story book, and the control group had a discussion after they listened to an illustrated story book. The experiment was conducted 15 times for five weeks, three times a week.
The instrument used to evaluate the language ability of the young children in pretest and posttest was Korean-Wechsler Preschool and Primary Scale of Intelligence K-WPPSI. And Chi Sung-Ae(2001)'s Drawing Representation Scale was utilized to assess their drawing expression abilities.
When pretest was conducted to see if the two groups were equivalent, they were considered equivalent since there appeared no significant intergroup gaps in language and drawing expression abilities. To determine the effect of picture storybook making on their language and drawing expression abilities, the collected data were analyzed with SPSS program, and t-test was used.
The brief findings of the study were as below:
First, the experimental group that was engaged in picture storybook making made significantly higher progress in language ability than the control group that wasn't. By subarea, the experimental group showed a significantly higher improvement than the control group in common sense and vocabulary. The former scored better than the latter in understanding, common characteristics and sentence, but the gap between the two was statistically insignificant.
Second, the experimental group that participated in the picture storybook making activity made significantly better strides than the control group. By subarea, the former got significantly better scores than the latter in diverse colors, detailed description, harmony of construction, perfection of drawing and connection between representation and language. The experimental group scored better than the control group in combination of basic diagram and line, theme-related representation and creative representation, but their gap was statistically insignificant.
In conclusion, the activity of making a picture storybook provided an opportunity for the young children to express the given story in writing and drawing in the presented order, and that experience allowed them to foster their language ability such as common sense and vocabulary. And that was effective in improving their drawing expression abilities as well, which referred to understanding the visual images of the picture storybook, expressing their ideas and feelings in diverse ways, and drawing what they intended to do. The findings of the study showed that picture storybook making was one of the appropriate and meaningful teaching methods to further the language and drawing expression abilities of young children, and that it could be applicable to preschool education.