teaching through storytelling

The Importance of Story Telling in Teaching

All human beings have stories to tell, both real and imagined. And all people love to hear stories, no wonder they are beneficial means through which teachers can pass knowledge to their students. Leaders can also use stories to influence their followers, and the religious teachers employ storytelling to drive home some lessons.

Some stories are used to teach etiquette to the community members in a friendly and funny way. Even in organizations, the stories about the organization and those that the leaders tell help solidify relationships more than other means like numbers and tabulations.

Below are some of the importance of storytelling in learning :

Storytelling Works for All Kinds of Learners

story work for all learnersOne aspect of storytelling that makes it work best for learning is that it offers all learners something. In any group of learners, 40% are auditory learners, whose best learning method is through lectures and discussions. Another roughly 40% of the learners comprise visual learners who learn best through videos, illustrations, and diagrams. The rest of the learners, making 20%, are kinesthetic learners, and these depend on feeling, experiencing, and doing to grasp the lessons.

Storytelling appeals to all these groups of learners. Auditory learners will concentrate on the storyteller’s voice and the words; visual learners will be more focused on the mental pictures that the stories invoke. Kinesthetic learners will recall the feelings and emotional linkages from the stories. That way, all learners will gain their lessons from the storytelling.

It Builds Connection Among Learners

Besides creating a sense of connection, good stories develop familiarity and trust and make learners to get into them where they are and become part of them, thus get more open o learning. Moreover, stories have many lessons and convey complicated ideas in simple and easy to understand ways that are far effective than reciting dry data points and discussing theoretical and intangible concepts.

Storytelling Offers Memorable Materials

The most significant aspect of stories is that they are easy to remember making them practical learning tools. According to one organizational psychologist, learning derived from a well-told story remains on the learners’ minds longer than facts and figures and is remembered more accurately. Furthermore, some research findings showed that people are 20 times more likely to recall facts that are part of a story than those that are not.

Stories are powerful learning aids and are perfect for exerting influence; thus, instructors or teachers need to employ storytelling to teach and pass some information.