The contribution of storytelling to the development of creative story writing skill

The aim of this study is to investigate the contribution of storytelling techniques to the development of primary school fourth grade students' creative story writing skills. This study, designed with action research, was carried out with 15 fourth grade students in the first semester of the 2019-2020 academic year in a primary school in Uşak city center. Before the implementation, the literature survey was carried out, the objectives and activities in the curriculum for the fourth grade of primary school were examined, and an interview was made with the classroom teachers who were or have been teachers in the fourth grade of primary school about the creative story writing skill. Following the obtained data, storytelling techniques were developed by the researcher in order to improve the creative story writing skill. The implementation process was carried out by the researcher, and the pre-test, post-test and retention test scores were obtained in order to determine the students' development in creative story writing skill. During the implementation the students were observed and they were interviewed after the implementation. So, the process was examined in depth. According to the data obtained, a difference of 60.8 points was found between the students' creative story writing skill pre-test and post-test average scores. According to this finding, it is possible to say that storytelling techniques contribute to students' creative story writing skills. In addition, as a result of the analysis, it was determined that students with high pre-test scores had high post-test scores and students with low pre-test scores had low post-test scores. A difference of 9.68 points was found between the average scores of the post-test and retention test of the study group. These findings show that storytelling techniques including various sub-skills and elements are effective in developing creative story writing skills. In the interview conducted after the implementation, it was determined that the students had a positive attitude towards storytelling techniques and the implementation process. Students think that storytelling techniques which improve their imagination, are fun and include different types of activities make it easier to write a creative story. It was determined that the students mostly liked the techniques that appeal to the senses, including animation and painting. Also working group found the techniques useful because they contributed to exploring the senses better, discovering and using the imagination, evaluating the events in terms of different people, visualizing, creative thinking and using details in the process of writing a creative story, and enriching the story. The observations support the views of the students. It was observed that the students enjoyed the story listening stage during the implementation process; as the number of implementations increased, their motivation to write creative stories increased. It was also observed that the more the implementations were made for the techniques, the more easily the students wrote creative stories. As a result, it can be said that storytelling techniques prepared by considering the developmental characteristics of students are effective in developing creative story writing skills, which is a comprehensive process to develop in writing education.