Reading stories to your children and using techniques to discuss them is a very effective way to improve your child knowledge and understanding. Reading is an extremely useful skill which once learnt can have multiple benefits. Reading stories is a simple and easy way for you as a parent to make a contribution to your child's learning.

Why is story telling so effective?

Response - Children respond well to stories. They hold children's interest and capture their imagination. Children do not feel they are being dictated to but part of an interactive learning process that you and your child engage in together.

Relaxation - Listening to a story is a calm and relaxing exercise. The child is able to soak up what they are hearing because there is no pressure. They are in an open and responsive state.

Experience - Children can relate to the experiences they hear about in the stories and can put them into a context. This has the advantage of making understanding very accessible for the child. They can identify with the characters and you can discuss this with them.

Memory - Children are much more likely to remember something if they can relate and identify with it. Stories are very memorable to children.

Intelligence - Stories promote critical thinking which can advance a child's intelligence. You can ask them questions that will provoke intelligent thought and lead to discursive thinking that will help enable the child to think for themselves.

Vocabulary - Stories are a great way for children to pick up new words and expand their vocabulary. As your child advances you can increase the level of difficulty of the stories you read them so they are always being challenged and progressing.

Behaviour - Stories offer an excellent opportunity to teach a child the correct way to behave in a given event or situation. Stories can offer positive role models and give good examples of how one should behave.

Ed likes writing articles about many different topics. You are welcome to visit his new website at http://eslenglish.org which offers people useful information about ESL English and teaching.