The Effect of Teachers’ Storytelling and Reading Story Aloud on the Listening Comprehension of Iranian EFL Learners Fatemeh Hemmati Department of Literature and Foreign Languages, Payame Noor University, P.O.Box 19395-3697, Iran Zeinab Gholamrezapour Payame Noor University, Iran Gholamreza Hessamy Payame Noor University, Iran Abstract—This study was an attempt to compare the effect of reading story aloud (RSA) and storytelling (ST) on intermediate EFL learners’ listening comprehension. The design of the study was quasi experimental with listening pre and post tests. The participants were 99 Iranian EFL learners who were selected based on their performance on a Placement and Evaluation Package. For 6 sessions, the participants of both experimental groups who were 66 students listened to their teacher reading a story aloud in group 1 and telling the story in the second group. At the end of each session, they answered the questions that followed each story. After 6 sessions of treatment, the listening posttest was administered to both groups. Besides, there was a control group in which the students were expected to listen to listening parts of the book taught in their term through a traditional method of teaching without receiving extra treatment like the two mentioned experimental groups. Based on the results of one-way ANOVA test, it was evident that the ST method was more effective in improving the learners’ listening comprehension than the RSA. In order to specify where the difference(s) were, Scheffe post hoc test was applied. The results indicated that the gain in ST group’s listening comprehension was significantly more than that of RSA group. The results could have been due to the influence of the way of telling story with the help of teacher’s body language and continuous eye contact that attracted the students to follow the stories eagerly. The results have some implications for syllabus designers, material developers, and language teachers. Index Terms—listening, storytelling, reading aloud I. INTRODUCTION The ability to understand what others say is the first skill to master in language learning and the success of the rest of the skills to a large extent depends on this skill. The process of understanding what others say includes many aspects such as phonology, grammar, vocabulary, and meaning. Therefore, enhancing the listening skill of students is a crucial part of every language teaching syllabus. According to Lee and Hatesohl (1993, as cited in Nurul Isalm 2012), in spite of the great importance of listening skill in comparison with reading or writing, most people do not posses great listening skills. So, the study of techniques to enhance listening comprehension is nowadays considered as a building block in second language acquisition researches (Dunkel, 1991). It is also believed that when teachers provide students with abundant opportunities for listening practice, the process of developing useful listening strategies will be best achieved. It seems that providing students with a variety of listening opportunities can lead to the enhancement of this important skill. On the one hand, in real life situations, students might listen to people talking or reading something and on the other hand stories have always been attractive to students and successful in getting their attention. Attempting to take advantage of the undeniable fun and enjoyment in stories, teachers try to include stories in different classroom activities. Storytelling is one of the ways of presenting a story and reading aloud is the second form. For different reasons, teachers might prefer one over the other. The results of some studies show that storytelling which, based on Abrahamsen (1998), forms the very foundation of the teaching profession, can be beneficial in improving students’ speaking as well as listening skills. Also, Bendt and Bowe (2000) and Simmons, (2006) found similar influences. The other approach is reading story aloud that has its own followers. For example, Dragan (2001) suggests reading aloud to develop children’s attention span and listening skills. Considering the vital role that listening plays in communication and the limited number of studies in the area of storytelling and reading aloud makes the present study justifiable to investigate and compare the effects of these two strategies on the listening comprehension of students. ISSN 1799-2591 Theory and Practice in Language Studies, Vol. 5, No. 7, pp. 1482-1488, July 2015 DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.17507/tpls.0507.22 © 2015 ACADEMY PUBLICATION