Chapter one: nature of the study Introduction Research focused on the assessment of using storytelling for the development of speaking skills to children of five years at Acturus Primary school. The details in the research will focus on chapters one up to five. In chapter one the researcher is going to look at the background to the study, theoretical framework, research questions, sub-research questions, justification, limitations and delimitations, definitions of key terms. Background to the study The researcher observed that pupils aged four to five years were not able to speak confidently in the classroom when they were expressing themselves. Most of the pupils were not able to speak clearly enough for adults to understand. Parents and other teachers were not encouraging pupils to be involved in activities that promote speaking like circle time because they regarded it as waste of time hence the pupils were not able to speak in expanded sentences or even take part in conversations amongst themselves. The researcher also observed that the ECD “B” pupils were not able to ask questions with proper word order. Therefore the researcher decided to introduce the story telling time for pupils to have much time whilst speaking to others. Although pupils were engaged in other activities which helped them develop their speaking skills storytelling could p[[lay a large part in the development of speaking skills. The researcher also observed that these pupils had difficulties in speaking fluently and did not have effective communication skills to interact with each other. The researcher was of the view that pupils would recall easily concepts taught by the use of songs. The researcher’s observations during teaching practice was that some ECD teachers at school regarded story telling as marginal activity filling in odd moments when the teacher and the class had nothing better to do so the researcher wanted to find out whether story telling was effective in the teaching of speaking and listening skills. Views of the teachers at the school were that many parents around the school by sending their children to school the children would be taught how to write and read yet the pupils would need to learn through play during this time and having time for storytelling and other activities such as singing songs and rhymes lays a strong foundation for speaking skils. 1