Indigenous Storytelling and Pupils’ Early Comprehension Skill in South-Western Nigeria

Comprehension is the ability to read text, process it and understand its meaning. However, in Nigeria, achievement of pupils continue to be low and many researchers have pinpointed teachers’ use of inappropriate teaching strategies as well as insufficient and inadequate teaching materials among others as reasons for pupils poor academic achievement. This study therefore investigated indigenous storytelling and pupils’ comprehension skill in south-western Nigeria. The pretest-posttest control group quasi-experimental research design was used. The research also adopted a 2 x 2 x 2 factorial matrix design which consisted of instructional strategy at two levels (indigenous storytelling group and one control group), moderator variable of gender (male and female) and home language (yoruba and other languages). Participants were selected from Two (2) Local Government Areas that were purposively selected in Ibadan, Nigeria. Also, basic I Class was purposively selected. This is because primary one pupils are still at the formative period of their comprehension skills. Indigenous story instructional guide, conventional method guide, comprehension skills scale were the research instruments used. Treatment lasted for 6 weeks. Analysis of Covariance (ANCOVA) was used to test null hypotheses 1 to 7 formulated. These hypotheses were tested at 0.05 as the p-value. In addition, estimated marginal means was used to reveal the difference in the mean scores across groups. The study found out that there is a significant main effect of treatment on pupils comprehension skills (F1,34)= 178.90;P<0.05; Partial ?2=0.84). The effect size accounted for 84%.The table also reveals that pupils exposed to indigenous storytelling intervention had the highest mean (34.35) in terms of comprehension skills while those in the conventional method had the least mean score (16.75). There is also a significant interaction effect of treatment, gender and home language on pupils comprehension skills (F(1,34)=5.000;P<0.05;?2=0.12). The effect size accounted for 12%. Male pupils exposed to indigenous storytelling intervention who speak yoruba language at home had the highest mean (36.28) than those who speak other languages at home (34.26). Indigenous storytelling was effective in improving the comprehension skills of pupils in Ibadan Nigeria. The study recommends that, the mother tongue should be priotised in educating year one pupils.