There is a general agreement between educators nowadays that successful second language learning is a matter of unconscious acquisition than of conscious systematic study of language and its grammatical rules. Classroom activities should not focus on monotonous drilling but rather on activities that promote communication and expression. Storytelling is one of the most ancient activities that provide an excellent medium for teaching and learning in general and teaching and learning a second language specifically. Wright in his book "Storytelling with Children" wrote "We need stories for our minds as much as we need food for our bodies"(p.5) Ruth Wajuryb in his book “Stories: Narrative Activities in the Classroom “stated, "We live our lives through texts. Stories are everywhere". (p.1) Connelly and Clandinin (1990) described human beings as "storytelling organisms". (p.2) It seems that stories have a universal appeal. Stories told in second language has the same magic of stories told in L1. Children can understand the story and love it even if they don’t understand every word. "Children's hunger for stories is constant. Every time they enter your classroom they enter with a need for stories.”,stresses Wright (p.5).
The benefits of using stories in the language classrooms are uncountable. Stories are motivating and help develop a positive attitude towards language learning. "Once upon a time" are magical words for children. Once they hear them they become all ears and ready to learn. Listening to stories provokes a shared response of laughter, sadness, excitement and anticipation. Children enjoy listening to stories again and again. Through repetition students learn unconsciously vocabulary and language structures. Children may also learn new concepts such as colors, size, shape, time etc. Through stories, teachers can teach learning strategies such as comparing and contrasting, classifying, predicting, problem solving, and guessing from context clues. Through stories teachers can also develop the study skills of students like understanding charts and learning how to use a dictionary. Stories can also be used to integrate teaching English with other subjects such as mathematics, geography, science and art. It is possible to design a whole curriculum around stories. Listening and reading stories and responding to them through speaking, writing, drama, music and art give the students the chance to communicate authentically and to develop their awareness, analysis and expression.
The book I use to teach my third and fourth graders is literature–based. When dealing with stories I follow a three step strategy: before reading, during reading and after reading. Before reading the story, I pre-teach key vocabulary and link them with spelling. I also build up students’ schemata through relating the story to their back- ground knowledge and personal experience. Students then predict what the story will be about from the title and the story pictures. Finally, they set purpose by asking questions they would like to be answered about the story. In the “during reading” stage, students read the story silently, listen to the tape or to me reading it. I stop reading to discuss events. Students answer literal and higher order questions , confirm previous predictions, and predict what will happen next. In the "after reading" stage, students respond to the story through writing. They may fill out charts, compare characters, summarize, or write a different ending. Finally, the story is connected with other subjects such as science, math, geography, art, drama… Students might make a pie-chart, find more about the setting, draw illustrators, or act out the story. Following this three step strategy helps me avoid many problems. In fact, problems related to storytelling are not so many and can be solved easily.
Some of these problems or challenges are the inability to comprehend and losing interest. The inability to comprehend the story can be due to cultural differences or the difficulty of the story. When selecting stories, teachers should be sure that they are appropriate to the linguistic level of their students. Losing interest in the story is another challenge the loss of interest can be due either to students’ inability to understand or boredom. To solve this problem, teachers must be dramatic and liven things up. While reading, they must make bodily gestures, mime, make eye contact with their students, and speak with intonation. They may also stop and rephrase and show pictures. Through involving children, stopping to comment, or inviting students to comment, teachers ensure students interest. Adopting different voices for the different characters is also a useful strategy.
Thus, we can conclude that stories can be easily used as a medium for teaching listening, speaking, reading and writing. Instead of being just a technique, through it we can carry every important thing we want our students to learn about and do with English. Stories play an enormous role in the daily lives of children and in the English lesson.
References:
*Andrew Wright. “Storytelling with Children”. Oxford University Press
*Wajnryb Ruth. “Stories: Narrative Activities in the Language Classroom”. Cambridge University Press 2003
*Clandinin & Conelly. “Stories of Experience and Narrative Inquiry”. Educational Researcher.vol.19
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