Under the assumption that a child as a reader participates in literature activities with his or her own previous knowledge and background, this study was conducted to compare the story-making abilities of Christian children who grew up having been rea...
Under the assumption that a child as a reader participates in literature activities with his or her own previous knowledge and background, this study was conducted to compare the story-making abilities of Christian children who grew up having been reading the Bible and non-Christian children who did not. The difference in their story-making abilities was tested.
For this purpose, the research questions were set up as follows:
1. Were there any differences in story-making abilities with wordless Bible picture books between Christian and non-Christian children?
1-1. Were there any differences in spontaneous story-making abilities between Christian and non-Christian children?
1-2. Were there any differences in prompted story-making abilities between Christian and non-Christian children?
1-3. Were there any differences in the length of the spontaneous story-making abilities between Christian and non-Christian children?
2. Were there any differences in story-making abilities of Christian and non-Christian children between the stories of two books?
2-1. Were there any differences in spontaneous story-making abilities of Christian and non-Christian children between the stories of the books?
2-2. Were there any differences in prompted story-making abilities of Christian and non-Christian children between the stories of the two books?
2-3. Were there any differences in the length of the spontaneous story-making abilities of Christian and non-Christian children between the stories of the two books?
The subjects of this study comprised of as many as 60 children at the age of 5 years who lived in Seoul, all of whom were divided into two groups with the equal number: Thirty children who were Christian and 30 non-Christian. Christian children were the ones whose parents were regular church goers and those who themselves attended church school.
Story-making abilities of those children were measured by the Story-Making Ability Test which was consisted mainly of two stages, including not only spontaneous but also prompted story-making ability stages. Two books that did not have any words or texts were selected as the instrument for this study, including Noah's Ark, and The Easter Story, both of which were written by Betty Root in 1998.
Other instruments for measuring children's story-making abilities were as follows:
First, in order to analyze spontaneous story-making abilities of the children, this study used a revised version of the Evaluation of Semantic Construction through Picture Book developed by Kraayenoord and Paris (1996), which was then used by Koh (1998).
Second, in order to analyze prompted story-making abilities of the children, this study utilized a modified version of the Verbal Response Patterns developed by Stephanie (1995), which was used by Woo (2004).
Third, the length of the spontaneous story-making was classified according to the vocabulary and the types of the sentences, all of which were also based on the grammar used at high school level (Korean Ministry of Education and Human Resources, 1991).
The data were analyzed using SPSS 10.0 program in order to calculate the means and standard deviations of the variables, which were then used to account for the results of t-test.
The study findings were as follows:
First, there were significant differences found in the spontaneous as well as prompted story-making abilities, and the length of the spontaneous story-making between Christian and non-Christian children.
Second, there was little difference found in the spontaneous story-making abilities and the length of the spontaneous story-making abilities of the children between the two books, indicating that difference in books did not influence children's story-making abilities. Furthermore, there were differences found in prompted story-making abilities in terms of prediction, inference, inquiry, and imagination between the two books.