Abstract
This study investigates the use of storytelling and dramatization in university teaching of Alash figures and works of early twentieth-century Kazakh literature. The aim was to assess whether these methods contribute to students’ historical-literary comprehension, interpretive analysis, creative writing, and motivational-emotional engagement. The research followed a quasi-experimental pretest–post-test design involving 48 second-year philology students at Kazakh National Women’s Teacher Training University. Two intact academic groups were designated as the experimental group (n = 24) and the control group (n = 24). Over eight weeks, students attended sixteen 50-minute sessions. Both groups studied the same literary texts and worked toward the same learning objectives; however, the experimental group completed structured storytelling and dramatization tasks, while the control group was taught through lectures, teacher-guided discussion, and conventional textual analysis. Data were collected using a 20-item historical-literary comprehension test, analytic rubrics for interpretive and creative writing, and a ten-item five-point questionnaire. Descriptive results showed that the groups were comparable at the pretest stage across all four indicators. At the post-test stage, the experimental group obtained higher mean scores in historical-literary comprehension (16.8 ± 1.7 versus 14.6 ± 1.9), interpretive analysis (9.4 ± 1.2 versus 7.8 ± 1.3), creative writing (9.7 ± 1.1 versus 8.5 ± 1.2), and engagement (4.31 ± 0.46 versus 3.58 ± 0.51). In addition, 22 students in the experimental group (91.7%) reported that narrative presentation helped them remember historical information. The findings suggest that the combined use of storytelling and dramatization may support contextual understanding, evidence-based interpretation, creative involvement, and emotional engagement. Given the limited sample, single-institution setting, and absence of inferential statistical testing, the results should be regarded as preliminary.