Oral-formulaic composition

Imagine you want to tell a story, but you don't have any paper or pens, so you have to remember the story in your head. Oral-formulaic composition is when people use certain patterns and repeated phrases to help them remember long stories or poems that they want to tell without writing them down.

It's like when you sing the "ABC" song to remember the letters of the alphabet. People who use oral-formulaic composition have their own special "ABC" songs for telling stories or poems. These special patterns and phrases help them to remember the story better and make it easier to tell.

Many cultures around the world have used oral-formulaic composition to pass down stories and history from generation to generation. It's like a big game of telephone, where people hear the story from someone else, add their own parts and then pass it on to the next person.

Even today, some people still use oral-formulaic composition to tell stories and poems, even though we have pens and paper and computers to help us remember things. It's a special way of storytelling that has been used for thousands and thousands of years!