Psycholinguistic Ambiance of Short Stories in Enhancing Students’ Reading Comprehension and Vocabulary Power

Abstract The present study was carried out to investigate the effect of short stories on students’ reading comprehension, vocabulary power and attitude towards the skill and the new instructional materials. The participants of the study were 120 grade 9 students of Dilla Secondary and preparatory school. In order to gather data for the study, pre- and posttest of reading comprehension, pre and post test for vocabulary power and questionnaire were used. The students were placed in experimental and control conditions for the purpose of comparing the mean difference between the two groups. The study followed a quasi experimental design, i.e. pretest/posttest control group experimental design. The study employed statistical techniques to analyze the data obtained from reading comprehension tests and vocabulary tests. To this effect, a 2-tailed independent samples t-test and repeated measures t-test were used respectively to examine if the reading tests and vocabulary tests mean differences between and within groups were statistically significant. The findings revealed that teaching reading skills through short stories is more effective than teaching through the passages prepared at the Ministry, and has a positive impact on students’ academic achievement in reading and vocabulary power.