Storytelling as a Strategy to Improve Reading Comprehension

Abstract

The research addresses the issue of poor reading comprehension among students in an intensive incomplete high school modality, with a particular focus on inferential and critical levels. The objective was to determine how storytelling contributes to improving these skills. A mixed approach was used, with a descriptive and field-based level, involving a population of 14 second-year intensive high school students from an Educational Institution in Quito, Ecuador. The methodology was quasi-experimental, applying a pre-test based on the story "A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings", and a subsequent evaluation (post-test) to establish causal relationships. In the pre-test, 71.4% of participants had overall low performance, while in the post-test, 86.7% achieved a high level. The analysis by reading levels showed that storytelling was effective, reducing low performance to 0% in literal, inferential, and critical levels. This demonstrates that integrating narratives and multimedia elements transforms passive reading comprehension into an active and deep process. Therefore, it is concluded that storytelling represents an innovative and effective pedagogical strategy for developing reading comprehension in educational environments with similar challenges.