Investigating the Impact of Using Short Stories on Developing Tertiary Students' Reading and Writing Skills

Abstract

This study aimed at investigating the impact of using short stories on developing tertiary students' reading and writing skills. The researcher has adopted empirical and descriptive methods. Two instruments has been used as maim tools for collecting data relevant to the study, namely questionnaire to teachers of English at some Sudanese Universities and written pre-posttest to students of level one foundation at Arab Open University –Oman Branch. The study sample of questionnaire comprises (104) teachers whereas the written pre-posttest composes (40) students. The researcher applied a Chi-squaredtest to analyze and verify the hypotheses. The results have shown that teaching short stories develop students' positive attitudes towards studying English Language. Moreover, Short stories are authentic materials suitable for both teaching and learning. Teaching short stories develops tertiary students' reading and writing skills. The study has recommended that teachers and learners should adopt more modern communicative approaches to teach short stories. On the other hand, teaching short stories should enhance students' listening and speaking skills. Teachers should be responsible for helping their students overcome the obstacles they might face in language learning process. Some suggestions are also proposed for further studies.