Teaching vocabulary to young learners from a story book Introduction

Teaching English To Young Learners Using Stories: The Ultimate Guide.

Stories are effective educational tools because they are believable, memorable and entertaining. Children usually enjoy listening to, reading and telling stories so the use of storytelling creates a good learning environment.
The Benefits of Using Stories in Teaching Children. According to (Ellis and Brewster, 1991, p.1) in The Storytelling Handbook :

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  Stories are motivating and fun; they create a deep interest and a desire to continue learning.
  
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  Listening to stories is a shared social experience; it provokes a shared response of laughter, sadness, excitement, and anticipation.
  
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  Stories exercise the imagination; children can become personally involved in a story as they identify with the characters and try to interpret the narrative and illustrations.
  
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  Stories are a useful tool in linking fantasy and imagination with the child’s real-world; they provide a way of enabling children to make sense of their everyday life.
  
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  Listening to stories allows the teacher to introduce or revise new vocabulary and sentence structures by exposing the children to the language.
  
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  Stories help students of all levels to understand literature, they carry ideological massages.
  
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  Storybooks offer universal truths, moral appeals to one generation after another.
  

Advantages of Using Stories in Teaching English to Young Learners (TEYL)

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  Young language learners can easily induce the language elements from the data provided by the stories. For example, spoken language can be developed effectively through storytelling.
  
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  In addition, young language learners become aware of some important cultural aspects through stories.
  
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  Telling stories provides good opportunities for the children to speak, integrate the information they’ve learned and become more confident.
  
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  Reading stories aloud allows children to make connections between the oral language and the print that represents it. So, while reading aloud, you should ask children to point to the word or line read to emphasize those connections.
  
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  Stories help learners to increase their language fluency and to increase their content knowledge.
  

Select the Best Storybooks. In Teaching English to Young Learners (TEYL), storybooks are widely used for a number of purposes, e.g. pleasure, fun, learning how to read, and language learning.
Not all storybooks are good for language learning, so it is imperative that you choose the best storybooks that can offer language learning opportunities and develop other skills along the way.
There should be two things to be done first by the teachers so that they can use stories perfectly within English classes with young learners:

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   Selecting the best storybooks.
   
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   Having an effective story lesson planning.
   

Thus, when storybooks are chosen well, the right strategies applied and effective story-based activities done by the children, the stories will be of special pedagogical value for the foreign language learning, and the learning objectives will be achieved with ease and comfort. Moreover, young learners will enjoy learning the language.
Using stories in teaching English to young learners
According to the above mentioned and my experience, I’ve decided to write in more detail about these two points and create a guide for teachers and parents as well: Using Stories in Teaching English to Young Learners.
This guide includes all the practical information that will guide both teachers and parents to:

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  Selecting the best stories to use with children.
  
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  Applying the right strategies for using stories to teach English to young learners.
  
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  Following the right steps when reading stories aloud to young learners.
  

According to the above mentioned theory and my experience I will take a story as a suitable resource for teaching and learning a foreign language. A story is something that everybody is familiar with, a majority of people used to listen to stories and like ‘them very much. Children want to enjoy a character’s adventures and like to distinguish between good and evil. Having worked with children’s stories have made my own theory. Although work with children who are involved in learning English very much, it is very important to choose a suitable level for a certain class. They study English as their hobby and this is why they are very involved.
They want to learn and I have freedom to create lessons in my way. Stories give me many opportunities for practicing everything children have learnt. In The Storytelling Handbook state:
•Stories are motivating and fun; they create a deep interest and a desire tocontinue learning.
•Listening to stories is a shared social experience; it provokes a shared response of laughter, sadness, excitement and anticipation.
•Stories exercise the imagination; children can become personally involved in a story as they identify with the characters and try to interpret the narrative and illustrations.
•Stories are a useful tool in linking fantasy and the imagination with the child’s real world; they provide a way of enabling children to make sense of their everyday life.
•Listening to stories allows the teacher to introduce or revise new vocabulary and sentence structures by exposing the children to language.
•Stories help students of all levels to understand literature, they carry ideological massages.
•Children books offer universal truths, moral appeals to one generation after another.
In this context before that listen and do songs are suitable for implemented through the games activities. Some suggested examples follow :
Depending on the number of students, divide the class into two or three groups. Assign a part of the song to each group, then ask the groups to sing along with the CD and at the same time do the actions. Total Physical Response songs in general are suitable for class, group, or individual competitions, so you may wish to turn this song into a competition by assigning points to every correct pronunciation and action. This game is greatly enjoyed by the majority of students.
As an alternative to the above activity, the following game may be played: choose two students and call them to the front. Then give commands randomly related to the song and reward the quickest correct action with applause by the class. The following description illustrates this activity: The teacher says “knees,” and the students are expected to touch or point to their knees. The quickest student to touch or point to his or her knees wins a point and is applauded by the class. The song, and again the student who is quickest to do the appropriate action gets a point. This game becomes even more fun if the teacher lets the students in the class give the commands. Besides, if students “take over” in this way, the activity is not always centered on the teacher, and consequently there is more room for student practice.
The same game may be played as a whole class as well. The teacher randomly gives commands, and any student to do an incorrect action is taken out of the game. The last remaining student is announced as the winner.
To foster students’ writing skills, the teacher sticks a picture, or several pictures, on the board and asks different students to come up and write what the picture shows. For example, put a picture or drawing of a human body on the board for the song “Head, Shoulders, Knees, and Toes” and draw arrows linked to the head, shoulders, knees, toes, eyes, ears, mouth, and nose. Next, I teach the structure “I have _____” and write an example sentence on the board (e.g., “I have brown eyes”). Then I name an item (e.g., ears) and call a student to the board. The student first has to write the word ears in the blank line. Then, the student has to write a sentence using the “I have _____” structure. (“I have two ears.”) It is a good idea at this point to help your students write the sentences and ask the other students both to help and to copy the sentences from the board.
Teaching Listening Through Stories. Stories are very important for children in learning their mother tongue, and they are important in learning any foreign language as well. That is why it is good to start using stories in teaching English as soon as possible. Primary school “children enjoy listening to stories over and over again. This frequent repetition allows certain language items to be acquired while others are being overtly reinforced. Many stories contain natural repetition of key vocabulary and structures. This helps children to remember every detail, so they can gradually learn to anticipate what is about to happen next in the story. Repetition also encourages participation in the narrative”.
Stories are very motivating, challenging and great fun for children. They can help develop positive attitudes towards the foreign language, culture and language learning. By using stories allows the teacher to introduce or revise new vocabulary and sentence structures by exposing the children to language in varied, memorable and familiar contexts, which will enrich their thinking and gradually enter their own speech. “Listening to stories helps children become aware of the rhythm, intonation and pronunciation of language”. Stories also provide opportunities for developing continuity in children’s learning. They can link English with other subject areas across the curriculum.
When children listen to stories in class they share social experience, it “provokes a shared response of laughter, sadness, excitement and anticipation which is not only enjoyable but can help to build up the child’s confidence and encourage social and emotional development”. Stories are a useful tool in linking fantasy and the imagination with the child’s real world. They provide a way of enabling children to make sense of their everyday life and forge links between home and school. Children exercise their imagination through stories. They “can become personally involved in a story as they identify with the characters and try to interpret the narrative and illustrations. This imaginative experience helps students develop their own creative potential.
The activites for Teaching Listening Through Stories :
Pre-storytelling activities are important because they introduce the topic, they motivate the students to read or listen to a story, they provoke initial interest in the topic, students start to think about it, they prepare their minds and show what they know about it. These activities help teacher anticipate problems in terms of language and concepts and give space to pre-teach complicated language. Warming up activities relax students. For example an informal chat can build up and maintain good relation between a teacher and students. Questions that introduce the topic are good to use, but not too many. Or students can guess the title of the topic of the lesson. We can show students a picture or watch a video extract to provoke they interest.
After the pre-storytelling activities, when the teacher has already involved students in the lesson, s/he can start telling or reading the story. “The students must hear everything loudly and clearly. The teacher’s voice should be pleasant, intimate, smooth, low-pitched, varied if possible for different characters since all this will add to the emotional impact of the story. Telling or reading the story the teacher might like to see if the learners understand the language of the story. S/he can just stop for a moment and ask pupils what is going to happen next. This way the teacher checks their understanding and makes them thinking about the narration.
When telling or reading the story has already finished, it’s time for teacher not to relax but to offer the children some very important activities. It was said that one of the most considerable quality of stories in learning process is that they are real fun for young learners. The teacher can ask the children yes/no or wh-questions. The young learners also may be asked to decide if some statements are true or false. Very useful for a comprehension check are the matching activities; for example “matching characters with phrases they have said, things they have done or qualities they possess”
ll these pre, while and post- storytelling activities, mention above (and there are much more others possible to use), help the children to understand the story fully, to gain more confidence in used English vocabulary and grammar structures, to become completely aware with the main points of what was told or read from the teacher and this way to be able to retell it; after precise re-construction in their minds. Students even are encouraged to create their own stories. This way the used in the lesson story really is a bridge, connecting language study and language use and is a source of confidence in understanding and speaking English – something that without doubt will be very useful for the students in their lives outside the classroom.

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