Storytelling Linked to Early Reading in African-American Children

New research from the Frank Porter Graham Child Development Institute suggests oral storytelling skills might be particularly important for early reading in African-American children.

Researchers know that a preschooler’s ability to tell a story can predict their reading skills later in life. But Frank Porter Graham researcher Nicole Gardner-Neblett wanted to take that connection a step further.

“This link hasn’t been investigated by race and ethnicity and socioeconomic status in the past, and so we wanted to take a look and see, are there differences?” Gardner-Neblett said.

Gardner-Neblett and her co-author studied data from a national survey of more than 6,000 students. They compared the students’ oral narrative skills in preschool to their literacy in kindergarten. For most students, those early storytelling skills were not a predictor of kindergarten literacy. Except for one group.

“Only for African-American children did preschool oral narrative skills play a role in early language and in their later reading outcomes,” Gardner-Neblett said.

Gardner-Neblett says it’s hard to say why the link was present in African-American children but not in other groups. But it may have something to do with African-American culture.

“We can hypothesize that it has something to do with the historical importance of storytelling among African-American communities,” Gardner-Neblett explained. “But there’s not enough research to make a firm conclusion.”

While Gardner-Neblett says the link she found is significant, she’s not ready to use the study to give advice to educators.

“At this point the research is saying that there’s something different in terms of how oral narratives may be operating for African-American children. Or it may [work the same way in other groups] but just at an earlier stage [for African-American children],” Gardner-Neblett said. “But I think we need more research in order to give recommendations to teachers or parents as to what they should do.”

Next, Gardner-Neblett says she wants to look at literacy in students beyond the kindergarten level to see whether early storytelling skills have a long-term impact.