Story Telling

Stories are told in many different ways. The art of story telling is not confined to one culture - but traditionally stories have been passed on through the generations. An author will tell a story using words to draw pictures in our minds. We sometimes do not need an illustrator’s interpretation. We can allow our individual experience and imagination to personalise a word picture.

We can cope quite easily with a question asking us to find the best ending for a sentence:

A river always has:

(tributary : rocks : a waterfall : water : bridge)

We can imagine the rivers we know and try to get a picture in our mind of a river. By definition a river does not have to have rocks, waterfall or bridges. So that leaves us with the words `tributary’ and `water‘.

To complete this sentence in a similar manner may be a little more difficult.

A tributary always has:

(a branch : delta : army : weeds)

The answer is branch - because by definition is a tributary is branch that flows into the main stream. If we think immediately of a branch as being part of a tree - we may miss a different interpretation of the word.

So if you child does not want to read story books - why not try to encourage them to listen to the spoken word? Try reading selections of books, try taped books or even radio stories. We have to stimulate and develop the use the words.

Why not tell the story of the family? After all generations of families have passed on the oral history of their families through the use of stories.