“Storyline” or “Associations Pyramid”? A Relationship Between the Difficulty of Educational Methods and Their Effectiveness in Developing Language Creativity Among Pre-School Children

Abstract

This article presents the results of a comparison of two educational methods – the “Storyline” and the “Associations Pyramid” – in developing language creativity among children. The methods were compared in terms of effectiveness with two post-tests, directly after the end of the experiment and after the next three months. Moreover, the initial level of operational thinking (from the pre-test) was used in a regression model as an independent variable to observe whether it predicts results in the language creativity of children in both groups, in post-test 1. Eighty-three preschoolers took part in the experimental study. The two methods do not differ significantly from each other in effectiveness. Also, the level of operational thinking does not predict an overall level of language creativity either in the “Storyline” group or in the “Associations Pyramid” group. The results are discussed in the light of pedagogical practice.

Keywords

• educational methods
• five-year-old children
• operational thinking
• language creativity
• effectiveness