Abstract

This study was done with private primary schools children in Orerokpe Educational Zone of Delta State, Nigeria in 2018. A quasi experimental design was adopted. Two research questions and two hypotheses guided the study. The population of the study was 28,172. The sample comprised 63 primary four pupils. Purposive and cluster sampling techniques were used to sample 32 pupils in the experimental group one and thirty-one in the experimental group two (control group). Cluster sampling technique was further employed to draw out the two intact classes for the experiment. Data collected were analysed using mean and standard deviation, while Analysis of Covariance (ANCOVA) was used to test the hypotheses at 0.05 level of significance. Findings show that exposing children to literature is effective and significant in both the improvement of their ability to resolve conflicts and their communication skill. The implication of the study is that schools should emphasize on conflict resolution and development of communication skill of the students when recommending literature texts for them because such skills will help them to resolve challenging issues, ward-off inferiority complex and stage fright.

Key words: Literature, children’s literature, school library, social development, conflict resolution, communication kill.