Effects of Storytelling on Reading Comprehension Among Primary School Learners: A Mixed-Methods Study of Four Primary Schools in Lusaka District, Zambia
Abstract
This study investigated the effects of storytelling on reading comprehension among Grade 4 learners in four public primary schools in Lusaka District, Zambia: Mutambe, New Mandevu, Kasamba, and Emmasdale. Reading comprehension remains a persistent challenge in Zambia's primary education system, compounded by the transition from local-language to English-medium instruction in Grade 4. A convergent parallel mixed-methods design was employed, combining a quasi-experimental pre-test/post-test comparison of an experimental (storytelling) group and a control (traditional-instruction) group with semi-structured teacher interviews and classroom observations. The study involved 70 participants: 60 Grade 4 learners and 10 English teachers. Quantitative results showed marked gains following the storytelling intervention: literal recall improved by 45%, sequencing by 65%, and inferential reasoning rose from a pre-test mean of 15% to a post-test mean of 65%. Vocabulary comprehension scores rose from 28% to 72% (a net gain of 44%), and 82% of learners achieved mastery of newly introduced vocabulary. Overall, 83% of respondents agreed that storytelling improves reading comprehension, and 81.5% of respondents reported that storytelling was already used at least weekly in their classrooms. Qualitative data corroborated these findings, with teachers describing storytelling as creating a "mental map" that lowers reading anxiety and scaffolds comprehension for multilingual learners. The study concludes that storytelling is a culturally congruent, low-cost, and cognitively effective pedagogy consistent with Constructivist, Sociocultural, and Dual Coding theories of learning, but that it remains an informal enrichment activity rather than a systemically integrated instructional strategy. The study recommends that Zambia's Ministry of General Education formally incorporate storytelling into the National Literacy Framework, backed by structured teacher training and curated storytelling resources.