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Picture Story as a creative connection
between reading and writing:
The Nigerian experience
Stella I. Ekpe, Gabriel B. Egbe
Literacy learning opportunities that take into account the social and cultural context of the learner are expected to be more productive than those that do not. Such opportunities not only are less threatening but also tend to reduce the chances of "literacy shocks" for the learner, while enhancing a gradual transformation from the preliterate to literate stage and from reading to writing.
Most African communities (including Nigeria) have a rich oral tradition, which is evident in storytelling, oratory, and oracular pronouncements. In formal as well as in informal education, especially in indigenous communities, storytelling (as opposed to story reading) is employed as a resource for promoting sociocultural integration and learning. This is because many Nigerian languages at present exist only in their oral forms and have not developed standard orthographies, nor have they attained an official status. The oral medium, therefore, is the most extensively used among a large segment of the Nigerian population.
It is evident that the transformation from a speaking culture to a writing culture might not be smooth if resources for such a transition are not carefully selected. In this article we report on how the transition from reading to writing was made through the medium of the Picture Story. The opportunity for oral reading of pictures led to shared reading and then to individual reading and writing. Perhaps it is the recognition that writing is an essential skill in the school curriculum, and that learners encounter many difficulties in acquiring the skill, which informed the call for a writing revolution, as advocated by a report produced by the National Commission on Writing in America's Schools and Colleges entitled The Neglected "R": The Need for a Writing Revolution (see Reading Today, June/July 2003, p. 4).
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Picture Story as a creative connection between reading and writing