Course paper

CHAPTER 2. THE POWER OF STORYTELLING IN TEACHING ENGLISH TO YOUNG LEARNERS

Using stories for educational purposes is an effective teaching strategy especially for teaching young learners. Most young learners enjoy listening to the stories. Stories have power which can bring the young learners into a world of imagination and draw a colourful picture with many interesting characters in the story. Storytelling is one of the most useful techniques to attract young learners in learning process effectively. Telling stories have a good chance for young learners to discover experience of real life and the language learning experience together. Storytelling is a kind of teaching method which can help the young learners to knowledge, literacy, imagination, creation, and critical thinking. Therefore, storytelling would be very useful to teach foreign language for young learners ( Rebecca Isbell, 2002)¹⁰. According to Isbell, storytelling promotes expressive language in the powerful form that insprires children to emulate the model they have experienced. On the other words, storytelling is an important tool for language teaching and learning. Storytelling for young learners is vitally important to create constructive and creative comprehension. Storytelling motivates children to be active participant in the construction of meaning of the story. In this activity, children involved while listening to the story so they can responce the language to gain the comprehension responce. They experienced in different mental process. The first process is they create mental picture where they try to figure out the meaning of what they listen to. Next, they try to imagine the characteristics, the situation, and the theme in the story. So using storytelling can give the experience of language learning in fun situation.

Children are natural language learners. Curtain and Dahlberg stated that children`s natural language learning ability may seem to suggest that the best way to help a child learn a language is simply to place him or her in the target language setting, but, unfortunately, this is not an approach that will be available to most children ( Curtain& Dahlberg, 2009)¹¹. As learners of a foreign language, children have their own psychological characteristics, which are different from those of adults. These characteristics include their way of thinking, their attitude, and their aptitude. Those characteristics will influence the way they are taught. To give them the best quality of English teaching, their teachers need to know and understand the children.

Penny Ur stated that there are three very important sources of interest for children in the classroom; they are pictures, stories and games (Ur, 1996, p.130)¹². Teaching English to young learners is both a difficult and enjoyable experience. It is difficult for teachers, because they always have to find new and interesting methods and approaches in order to stir the learners` interest, but in the same time it is enjoyable becauseteachers are given the chance of becoming child again, of seeing the world through a child`s eyes, when working with children. As far as young learners are concerned they,mostly, find these lessons enjoyable, as they are active parts in the process. They use the language in order to communicate ideas, to play games and later on to tell stories.

Most of children love stories. Stories use an approach to language learning that emphasizes children`s involvement with the use of foreign language. Young learners also learn language unconsciously so teachers should formulate activities that will foster this kind of acquisition. Teachers can use stories to help children practice their reading, writing, speaking and listening skills.

Storytelling becomes an effective technique for teaching English to early foreign language classes. Story time also creates a safe space for young learners and provides listening experiences with funny activity. People in all times and places have told stories. In the oral tradition, storytelling includes the teller and the audience. The story teller creates the experience, while the audience percieves the message and creates personal mental images from the words heard and the gestures seen. Most of the children love stories, and storytelling was regarded as a learning tradition. It plays a very important role in children`s language learning. With meaningful contexts, natural repitition, lovely characters and interesting plots, stories can be used to develop children`s language skills, such as listening, imagination and predicting.

2.1 PREPARING DIFFERENT KINDS OF STORIES IN THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE TEACHING

There are many kinds of stories, such as fables, myths and legends. Teachers should choose stories which relevant to their students. When we use stories in our teaching, the stories will be for our little sisters, we should consider more about children, their interests, their experience and their language level, etc. It is important to choose a story that suits children`s language level. Besides this, we can choose a stories according to their topics, characters and plots.

In choosing stories, teachers should pay attention to topics linking to children`s interests or experience to arouse their interests. Children concern more about what they have experienced or what they are interested in. Also, we need to consider chilresn`s age. Characters of the stories also play important role in a successful teaching and learning process. Students of young children like animal, cartoon and fiction. In addition, choosing stories that have simple and interesting plot or a surpricing ending will be helpful so that children can remember them and enjoy them, and that the language in the stories will be more memorable.

On the other hand, stories can be used to introduce children to a new language, improve students` skills especially practice listening skill and to revise learned language or vocabulary. Storytelling csn slso be used to stimulate children`s imagination, to expose children to varied language, to enrich children`s language and to access children.Steps of the storytelling strategy:

• Pre-storytelling stage: Before telling the story, the following pre-activities were conducted: pictures and asking learners warm-up questions related to the story.

• During storytelling stage: In this stage, the teacher uses different voice pitches in order to tell the story, as well as various stress and intonation patterns. Sometimes, s/he may be able to imitate certain voices in the story. The story bag can be used successfully in this stage. Sometimes, the teacher can pause and ask learners about their predictions and expectations of the coming events in the story. In addition, the teacher asks some stimulating questions and asks the learners to participate in some activities such as role-playing, writing and drawing. Finally, the teacher expects that the learners do some homework.

• Post-storytelling stage: In this stage, the teacher uses consolidation activities such as: evaluation of writing activities.several themes were . Using pictures during storytelling may help learners to imagine the story’s events and changes the information included into the mental pictures created by them. In addition, the researcher noticed

that learners often spent time just thinking about the story pictures. Some learners imagined quite different pictures and were given leave to do so. When writing stories, learners can voice their ideas, express their opinions and take their imagination for a ride. Writing a story is not always just to entertain others; it can be fun for the writer as well. Thus, stories of any kind may appeal to learners.

2.2 USING STORIES IN ENGLISH CLASSES

English plays an important role in every part of the world. English is omnipresent in every sector and every walk of life. The young learners should be shown the importance and the interest of learning English for their better future. In schools teachers give much importance to vocabulary, grammar, pronunciation and try to cover their portions for the examination. Young learners are fond of listening to tales and stories and this researcher firmly believe that stories help young learners to learn the language successfully. This paper will focus on the importance of using stories by conducting various activities among young learners in the language learning process.

Stories guide us through our whole life from the moment we were born and it does not change when we become teenagers or adults. When we are children, our grandparents tell us or read us stories and tales . when we grow up we read stories ourselves and sometimes we play drama in schools or we hear stories in radio or watching a film on TV.Stories are for all of us, not just for children. I chose the topic using stories in teaching English because I believe that stories are important not only in our mother tongue. Children enjoy listening to stories, they are familiar with narrative conventions, and they can make elaborationand predictions about what will happen next. Stories are a suitable introduction to English language as they present language in a familiar and enjoyable context. Stories could help us in learning and it could be more fun because students never forget stories.Aims of using stories:

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  To develop students ability to reconstruct a grammatically and textually coherent piece of writing.
  
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  To provide practice in prediction skills in order to ease the understanding of a new text.
  
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  To provide practice in gist listening in order to encourage students to not focus on difficult vocabulary and thus make authentic listening texts more accessible.
  
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  To provide practice in scanning a text for information.
  
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  To by the end of this lesson the students will be able to successfully form past simple object questions in writing.
  

"Psychologists believe that children need stories, legends and fairy tales when they grow up. They are a part of children’s intellectual life. They provoke their fantasy and give them answers to important questions of a child’s life. They are meaningful and effective item of their socialization. Myths and legends give material of which children make their concept of origin and purpose of the world and of ideals, which they may follow." ( Krashen, 1983)

"Stories are useful in language learning for young learners. Young learners acquire language unconsciously. The activities you do in class should help this kind of acquisition. Stories are the most valuable resource you have. They offer children a world of supported meaning that they can relate to. Later on you can use stories to help children practice listening, speaking, reading, and writing."(Slatterly & Willis, 2001).

"Story telling can be effective for teaching English to young learners for the following reasons.

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  The purpose of telling a story is genuinely communicative.
  
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  Storytelling is linguistically honest (It is oral language, meant to be heard).
  
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  Storytelling is real (people do it all the time).
  
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  Storytelling appeals to the affective domain.
  
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  Storytelling caters to the individual while forging a community in the classroom.
  
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  Storytelling provides listening experiences with reduced anxiety." (Curtain & Dahlberg, 2004)
  

Assessment in the Short Stories module will focus on learners demonstration of their ability to:

a) understand concepts and techniques of short story writing.

b) apply this understanding to create short examples.

c) produce a written short story.

d) comment helpfully on the work of others.

e) tell or perform stories orally.

f)read and comment on a number of short stories.” Caldwell, J,2002))