EFFECT OF INSTRUCTIONAL METHODS ON PUPILS' LANGUAGE LITERACY SKILLS IN PUBLIC PRIMARY SCHOOLS IN RIVERS STATE, NIGERIA

This study determined the influence of instructional methods and pupils' language literacy skills in public primary schools in Rivers State. Specifically, the study examined the effects of storytelling and expository strategies on pupils’ speaking, reading and writing skills. Three research questions were answered, and three null hypotheses were tested at the 0.05 level of significance. The study adopted a quasi-experimental, non-equivalent pretest-posttest control group design. A sample of 330 pupils was selected using purposive sampling techniques from the population. The experimental group was taught using the storytelling method, while the control group was taught using the expository method. Data were collected using a researcher-developed instrument titled “Pupils' Language Literacy Skills Test (PLLST)”, which was face and content validated. The reliability of the instrument was established using the inter-rater reliability method, yielding a reliability coefficient of 0.75. Mean and standard deviation were used to answer the research questions, while Analysis of Covariance (ANCOVA) was used to test the hypotheses with pretest scores serving as the covariate. The findings revealed that pupils taught using the storytelling strategy performed significantly better than those taught using the expository method in speaking and reading skills, while the expository method performed significantly better than those taught using the writing skills. Based on the findings of this study, it was concluded that no single instructional method is necessarily superior for all language skills; rather, the effectiveness of a method depends partly on the specific skill being taught. It was recommended that the government and relevant educational agencies should provide appropriate instructional resources, including storybooks, picture cards, audio-visual materials and locally relevant stories, to facilitate effective storytelling instruction.