Stories At An Early Age

Reading and listening to stories at an early age also affects child behavior and how he/she responds to learning. When asked if it’s important to read and listen to stories at a young age, both Faiz and Carmody have similar opinions. Carmody explains how children need 3-4 years of informal experiences with books (being read to, looking at pictures, talking about the story) before they are ready for a formal program to read. Starting to acquaint them with books at an early age is important to teach children how to make sense of things they don’t quite understand. As I have mentioned earlier, not knowing what something means is the best way to start the process of learning because then a child can give it any meaning his/her’s imagination
But Carmody says that reading isn’t enough on its own. Reading is important because it challenges us to ‘expand our understanding in order to accommodate or assimilate new information’. But reading cannot teach us something that is entirely foreign to our experience according to Carmody. Reading is merely a starting point; a foundation; which helps children relate what they have read to their environment and experiences. It is imperative for children to talk about the stories they read or listen to because that deepens
Oral storytelling is a powerful way to ensure that the information being communicated stays with the listener for a long period of time. I find it extremely hard to recall plenty of moments from my childhood but
I do remember most of the stories which my grandmothers narrated to me. They are so vivid in my memory that if I were asked to write them down, it wouldn’t be too hard to do so. How is it possible, that over all these years I have held onto these stories? It is because oral stories ‘follow a pattern that children quickly realize’. The repetition of key phrases along with how everything happens in threes in a story is one of the reasons why storytelling is an enduring means of communication. In addition to this, Carmody also explains how stories follow a linear sequence in which the events take place following the beginning-middle-ending pattern. In other words, the story unfolds one event after another. This is why it is simpler to recall a story you heard than something you read in the book. For Jamil, it’s the expressive quality of stories that make them so memorable. She says that any story ‘that can find an association within a