Педагогические науки/5. Современные методы преподавания

Loshkova I.G.

M.Kh.Dulaty Taraz State Ubiversity, Kazakhstan

Storytelling as an effective tool in teaching foreign languages

Educators have long known that the arts can contribute to student academic success and emotional well being. The ancient art of storytelling is especially well-suited for student exploration.

As a folk art, storytelling is accessible to all ages and abilities. No special equipment beyond the imagination and the power of listening and speaking is needed to create artistic images.

As a learning tool, storytelling can encourage students to explore their unique expressiveness and can heighten a student's ability to communicate thoughts and feelings in an articulate, lucid manner.

As Grant points out, extra materials, such as stories, songs, games, role-plays and puzzles, should be included in a foreign language teaching course to stimulate students’ active assimilation of material and to encourage them to develop self-expression.

According to Phillips, “stories are a feature of all cultures and have a universal appeal. They facilitate both students and adults and they can be used to great effect in the language classroom.” In addition, according to Ellis and Brewster, stories are “motivating and fun and can help develop positive attitudes towards the foreign language and language learning”.

There is strong support for using storytelling in pedagogical theory. Cortazzi points out that storytelling is fundamental to education and specifically to language teaching. Zipes and Morgan and Rinvolucri find stories a basic part of the whole language approach to learning, reaching the “whole person” and appealing to the subconscious. According to Brumfit and Johnson, reading or telling stories in class is a natural way to learn a new language.

To introduce storytelling techniques teacher can use anecdotes in the classroom. It serves as indirect model of storytelling and at the same time provides a discussion.

By listening to anecdotes from the teacher and classmates, asking questions for extra information or clarification, and contributing evaluative feedback as in real life dialogues, the language learners engage in authentic communication. Moreover, by telling an anecdote or reporting to their friends anecdotes, students organize their ideas and contribute to the discussion.

Below are more student-centered storytelling activities.

The activity Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde teaches students story structure and at the same time focuses on adjectives of character and physique.

Learners form small groups of two or three people so that there is an even number of groups. Each group prepares written A-Z adjectives of character and physique, that is they write down the letters of the alphabet and write one adjective beginning with each letter, for example aggressive, brave, clever and so on.

Once the learners have produced ‘internally consistent’ lists, they pass on their lists to another group.

Teacher writes on the board, or dictates, the following headings: Sex, age education, profession, nationality, family status, spent last holiday in, lives in, hobby, pet hate, greatest dream.

Using the lists of adjectives they have received, the groups try to imagine the person described, and complete a ‘curriculum vitae’ for that person.

Teacher pairs off the groups. Each group takes it in turn to describe their character to the second group, who may ask for clarification or elaboration. As they listen, they take notes.

Teacher reminds the learners the story of Dr Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, emphasizing the idea of sudden and complete transformation of character after a particular event:

Previously he was respectable, but when he took the potion, he became a devil.

The groups now work with the new character that is one they have heard described. They think of how this character could change having taken the potion. They prepare oral presentation, including the sentence: But when he /she took the potion… Teacher and learners can introduce an alternative to the potion to explain the transformation in character.

Learners present character’s profile to the class.

The starting point for this exercise is a string of words triggered by the alphabet. Only later does the activity develop into a communicative one. This apparently restrictive technique is a very good way of organizing and eliciting random language which provides the basis for further work such as creative writing or storytelling.

Project work is potentially motivating, stimulating, empowering, and challenging. It usually results in building student confidence, self-esteem, and autonomy as well as improving students’ language skills, content learning, and cognitive abilities.

In our paper we present a short-term project which takes half of the day.

“Papers from the past” is a half-day project. The activity is reconstructing the past.

Teacher prepares newspaper cuttings and puts them to sunlight to fade and look as though it might be a hundred years old. Good sources of suitable newspaper cuttings to put in the suitcase are: local newspapers, particularly not very interesting family and petty crime stories; letters to the newspapers; feature articles about unknown people (but teacher should remove any dates or time references); genuine old newspapers; births, marriages, and death columns.

Then s/he puts them into an old suitcase filled with five or six small objects, articles of clothing, and keepsakes from bygone age, a couple of old photographs. Doing this teacher has got a magic box around which the class can imagine a fantasy world.

Teacher displays the contents of the suitcase and asks each group to come up and examine them carefully.

Once they have done this, each group should spend some time trying to make up a story that relates all the objects and newspaper cuttings. Teacher tries to set this up in such a way as to give the students the sense that what they are doing is reconstructing a real past world rather than merely inventing the story.

Once a group has made up their story, they can work on an improvisation of part of the story that they have invented, or contribute something written of their own to the suitcase – a letter to the future generation or an account of the mystery they think they have solved. They can write a further article that might have been found in the suitcase but was not. At the end of the session, each group shares their work with the class: present a story, role-play or other final product.

Storytelling interests students, lowers affective filters and allows learning to take place more readily and more naturally within a meaningful interactive communication context. Finally, the use of the stories provides opportunities for cross-curricular work, which aids teaching.

Literature

1. Ada, A. F. 2004. Authors in the classroom: A transformative education process. Boston: Pearson.

2. Cortazzi, M. 1994. Narrative analysis. Language Teacher

3. Hines, M. 1995. Story Theater. English Teaching Forum

4. Krashen, S. 1992. Principles and practice in second language acquisition. NY Prentice-Hall.

5. Morgan, J., and M. Rinvolucri. 1992. Once upon a time: Using stories in the language classroom. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.