Reading Stories to Enhance English Grammar Intake: Correlational Analysis

Today, stories are recommended by many scholars in the area of ELT as good vehicles for presenting grammar items contextually. The roles they play increase as they become appropriate to students’ level, experience and interest. Students get the opportunity to see grammar points functioning within real contexts when they get exposed to stories, and they learn the varied ways of expressing a single thought through different structural formations in stories. In this respect, this paper is a part of the project which was designed to investigate whether association exists between reading stories for longer hours and grammar intake in the elementary levels in the Ethiopian context or not. After attending reading sessions for a specified number of hours, participants (from the total) were randomly selected (to reduce the effects of any extraneous variables) and were given grammar test, and then their scores were analyzed. Accordingly, the correlation coefficient was found to be (r) = 0.668, which indicated a strong positive relationship. The significance value was recorded as (p) < 0.001, indicating that a significant correlation exists between number of hours spent on reading stories and grammar intake. Based on the results and findings, the paper also recommends that material developers, in general, and classroom practitioners, specifically, should consider the contribution of carefully selected stories to the enhancement of students’ grammar intake and should use them as a technique of grammar presentation.