Language on Teaching

        The regular and distinguishable characteristics of story language, its uses and quality of engagement, suggest storybook reading aloud is part of another literacy ability in co-emergence with reading and writing. Stories are part of children's narrative literacy. This is not to suggest print literacy and narrative literacy are mutually exclusive, neither are they "rival modes." Rather, "they seem to answer different questions" (Taylor,1987: 220).
            Narrative literacy, described only partially in this paper in relation to storybook reading aloud, is a growing facility to enter a story materialized by one's own imagination. It is an ability to orchestrate story meaning of images, events and plot lines. It is metaphoric fluency. It demands a particular logic and meaning making ability. It is a growing ability to cross and connect the interior and exterior worlds of the reader-listener.(11) It is growing competence in a language that describes and identifies a self in relationship with other than self (Ricoeur 1992). It is an ability to recognize social patterns and relate them to one's self. It is growing mastery to negotiate common social values with personal dilemmas. In each of these, narrative literacy is an oral, social and personal facility with story.
          At the present time two literacies do overlap to mutual benefit. The successful use of stories for teaching print literacy demonstrates a vital complement-arity. Two text-approaches nourish shared needs for growing abilities and knowledge. Narrative and print literacies are most often mutually supportive and interdependent. Storybook reading aloud continues to be a fine strategy when it is part of a complex of approaches to teach print literacy. "It is clear that when a teacher provides more routes to the goal of literacy, more children will find a route to take them there" (Cunningham & Allington, 1999: 16). Storybook reading aloud, as I've already pointed out, nourishes print literacy learning through social interactions around reading-listening. These develop language abilities that include vocabulary growth. Reading together develops understandings of print awareness and book functions. Stories exercise imagination and creative thinking. Storybook reading aloud is a highly motivational activity for print literacy learning. However, teachers and caregivers must realize, as did Mrs. Gardner, uses of a story diverts attention from phonemic awareness, alphabetic and word recognition.
          At this time I note two aspects of print and narrative literacy to acknowledge two other important and related contingencies for story and print engagements. Cultural resonance and reading abilities affect engagements. A story, as a social language interaction is a cultural expression. As Anderson and Matthews (1999) point out, storybook reading bears many of the signs of a culturally specific strategy:
Many educators, while attempting to help all children acquire literacy, have adopted ethnocentric view of literacy development which reflect a western, middle-class bias... The results of the present study suggest that we need to examine some of the assumptions that have been made in this regard. Katt (1995) maintains that the applicability and appropriateness of the concept of emergent literacy across socio-cultural contexts require reexamination. (Anderson & Matthews, 1999: 297)
          And secondly, a significant difference exists between a story in the air or in imagination and its trace on a page. An oral story engagement is available to nearly anyone, while a print story demands a high-level of specialized print-literacy ability. In fact, reading engagement with a story demands such skill that a reader must be able to see the story through the screen of text, as through window. Non-readers will find themselves short of stories after grade three in most classrooms. But neither of these aspects mitigates the different qualities of engagement of a story from other language interaction.
Present practices in school direct children's emerging narrative literacy into text-attentive strategies and approaches to print.(12) Anxiety over reading abilities has exacerbated this in recent years. But failure to recognize narrative literacy as a distinguishable learning ability and type of knowledge in the classroom is consequential to education. Egan, (1997) who describes storytelling as part of "mythic understanding," wonders:
           If some degree of metaphoric fluency and imaginative vivacity is necessarily to be sacrificed for literacy what should be done?... We will always want to preserve as much as possible and lose as little as possible, but the current bland and comfortable belief that any skill gain comes at not cost, at no potential loss, just cannot any longer be sustained. If we fail to recognize potential or actual intellectual losses we will certainly do nothing to minimize them (1997: 57-58).
          As Egan notes, there is a cost. Confusing two kinds of reading abilities, text-attentive and text-inattentive, and using stories persistently to facilitate text-attentive kinds of reading, suggests a range troubling consequences. I put forward five possible costs to learning. First, imaginative experience, the listener's deep private engagement with the story is not adequately valued, developed or exercised. Imagination is a critical faculty in learning work. Its need is felt in every discipline where it is necessary for problem solving, developing empathy, or conceptual thinking. Currently, although imaginative capacity is recognized as important, its practice is weakly developed. Secondly, as already mentioned, educators teach literal reading habits. Abilities for story-meaning-making are undernourished while attention is paid to words on the page. Children learn to study a story as a text. Such an approach to text is similar to communications like a report, description, evidence or information. This weakens ability to "read" metaphor, orchestrate images, or make wide-ranging connections. Thirdly, story experience is trivialized. Strong personal experiences, emotional dilemmas, ambivalences are turned into print literacy exercises. Meaningful encounters on the "busy bridge" become material for learning to read and write. Stories are turned into (mere) exercises, assignments and illustrations. Fourthly, static expressions are valued over dynamic interaction with a subject. Written text is the stated or felt purpose of story engagement. It is the culmination of every story activity. Conversation and story engagements prepare participants for a higher, more valued engagement: print. The high value given to text can be contrasted with the lower value assigned to oral and social engagements. The ramifications of this frame are far reaching. Finally, storytelling and listening as oral, aesthetic, social language learning abilities are not deliberately attended in teaching. This is as true for teacher training practices as it is with children in the classroom.