The effectiveness of Storytelling module to improve daycare educators' confidence and proficiency in storytelling in English

• Main Author: Wan Jumani, Fauzi
• Format: Conference or Workshop Item
• Language: English
• Published: 2017
• Subjects: PE English; RJ101 Child Health. Child health services
• Online Access: http://umpir.ump.edu.my/id/eprint/20577/1/1.%20The%20effectiveness%20of%20Storytelling%20module%20to%20improve%20daycare%20educators%27%20confidence%20and%20proficiency%20in%20storytelling%20in%20English.pdf; http://umpir.ump.edu.my/id/eprint/20577/

Reports show that poor English proficiency in oral and written communication is one of the factors hindering as many as 58.8% of local graduates from not getting employment despite being highly qualified. As a step to improve this situation, it is believed that English should be exposed to children as early as 0-3 years, and not introduced at the kindergarten ages of 4-6 which is the current practice in the Malaysian education curriculum. However, at daycare level, where children of working parents spend at least an average of 8 hours a day, many of the daycare providers are secondary school leavers with basic English language proficiency. In order for the children to acquire a new language, the daycare educators themselves have to first be fluent, proficient and confident in using the target language. Hence, a knowledge transfer programme with 30 daycare educators under Persatuan Pengasuh Negeri Pahang or Pahang Daycare Providers Association was kickstarted with the aim to develop and harness English communication skills through two modules: Communication English and Effective Storytelling Techniques. This paper focuses on the storytelling module, its approaches to enhance daycare educators' confidence and proficiency and discusses the effectiveness of this module based on the perceptions of the daycare educators who participated in the knowledge transfer programme.