Using storytelling to develop oral skiils for the 8th graders in speaking lessons

MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING
VINH UNIVERSITY

LE THI HUONG

USING STORYTELLING TO DEVELOP
ORAL SKIILS FOR THE 8TH GRADERS
IN SPEAKING LESSONS

MASTER THESIS IN EDUCATION

Nghe An, 2013


MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING
VINH UNIVERSITY

LE THI HUONG

USING STORYTELLING TO DEVELOP
ORAL SKIILS FOR THE 8TH GRADERS
IN SPEAKING LESSONS

FIELD:
CODE:

THEORY AND METHODOLOGY OF ENGLISH
LANGUAGE TEACHING
60.14.10

MASTER THESIS IN EDUCATION

SUPERVISOR: NGUYEN THI KIM ANH, MA.

Nghe An, 2013

2


ACKNOWLEGDEMENTS
During the process of conducting this thesis, I have been fortunate to receive
supports and assistance from a variety of people.
First and foremost, I wish to express my deepest gratitude to my supervisor,
MA Nguyen Thi Kim Anh, who allows me to draw fully on her wisdom and
experience in implementing this study. Her guidance, encouragement and
invaluable detailed critical feedback have been most generous.
I would like to convey my thanks to all my teachers of the Post graduate
course 19 whose fundamental knowledge about language teaching and
learning is of great importance to the achievement of my academic study.
I would also like to take this opportunity to express my deepnest thanks to all
the teachers and colleagues, especially Ms Vu Kim Ngan at Hoa Hieu lower
secondary school for their help in completing the survey questionnaires, for
their constructive suggestions to this research, and for their willingness to
share their relevant problems with me.
I am most thankful to the students of classes 8A and 8C whose cooperation is
great significance to the completion of the study.
Finally, I owe a great debt of gratitude to my parents, my husband, my
children whose loving support has been encouraging me to fulfill this thesis
successfully.

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ABSTRACT
It is the fact that speaking is an important language skill. However, in
the reality, the teaching and learning English speaking are still far from
satisfactory.
The study focuses on the teachers’ and students’ attitudes towards
speaking skill as well as the analysis of the present teaching and learning to
speak English. Once, problems have been identified, suggestions for teachers
to improve the situation of teaching and learning speaking English by using
storytelling to the 8th graders would be made.

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CHAPTER 1. INTRODUCTION
1.1. Rationale of the study
English, which has long proved its significant role as the international
language, becomes more and more important in the context of globalization.
Therefore, in some recent years, the focus of teaching has been promoting
oral skills in order to respond to students’ needs for effective communication.
However, due to some objective and subjective reasons, teaching and
learning English in general and teaching and learning speaking skills in
particular have not come up to the expectations despite teachers’ efforts to
provide students with opportunities to develop their communicative skills,
teaching and learning speaking effectively is quite a problem to both teachers
and students at many schools in Vietnam.
At Hoa Hieu lower secondary school, the situation is the same. For
most students, they find speaking especially important yet most challenging
one. It has been proved that some students get into a habit of learning “mute
English”, which is obviously harmful to a language learner. It also seems to

the writer that the techniques exploited during a speaking activity such as:
role plays, simulations, discussions, etc are not always really effective.
Therefore, it is necessary to find a supplementary technique used in teaching
speaking.
In language teaching, storytelling has proved itself not merely as
“relaxing activity” but as an important factor which can create more chances
and interest to motivate students to speak. Nevertheless, storytelling has not
successfully been applied to speaking classes at Hoa Hieu lower secondary
school.

5


All the above-mentione is hot topic today, so I will talk about it in my
presentation today. d reasons and factors have inspired the writer to conduct a
research entitled “using storytelling to develop oral skills for the 8th graders
in speaking lessons”.
1.2. Aims of the study
The study is aimed at:
• Investigating the situation of teaching and learning speaking to the 8 th
graders at Hoa Hieu lower secondary school.
• Investigating the effectiveness of using storytelling in teaching
speaking to the 8th graders at Hoa Hieu lower secondary school.
• Providing some suggestions and implications for the improvement of
speaking teaching at Hoa Hieu lower secondary school by using
storytelling in addition to other techniques.
1.3. Scope of the study
The study focuses specifically on using storytelling in improving oral
skills to the 8th graders at Hoa Hieu lower secondary school. Therefore, the
study limits itself to the teaching and learning speaking only, and the subjects

of the study are six teachers and seventy students from two classes studying
“English 8” textbook at Hoa Hieu lower secondary school.
1.4. Significance of the study
•

Theoretical significance of the study: The study supplies the

English language teachers with the understanding of speaking skill and
storytelling in terms of types, advantages when employing them. The study
also suggests some ways to exploit storytelling successfully during all stages
in teaching speaking.

6


•

Practical significance of the study: The research provides the

language teachers and learners a variety of stories used in all stages in
speaking classes based on new “Tieng Anh 8” textbook.
1.5. Methods of the study
This study employed both quantitative and qualitative methods
including

survey

questionnaire,

informal

interview

and

classroom

observation.
Firstly, for its versality and straightforward data processing, the survey
questionnaire was employed to quickly collect data from a large number of
participants. The survey questionnaire used to collect data for this study
consists of pre-task survey questionnaire (for teachers and students) and post
task survey questionnaire (for only students)
Secondly, informal interview was carried out among teachers and
students to get more reliable data and intensive understanding about the
matter raised in research questions.
Lastly, classroom observation was used as the indispensable method
since it offered a double-checking scheme of participants’ responses, helping
the researcher to investigate the issue in practice with an objective view
1.6. Organization of the study
This paper is divided into five main chapters:
Chapter 1 is the Introduction. In this part, the rationale, the aims, the
scope, the significance and the methods of the study, and also its organization
are presented.
Chapter 2 is the Literature Review. In this part, theoretical
background related to the study: speaking skills and storytelling are discussed.

7

Chapter 3 is the Methodology. This part investigates the situation of
teaching and learning speaking and the feasibility of using storytelling in
teaching speaking to the 8th graders at Hoa Hieu lower secondary school
through the analysis of collected data.
Chapter 4 are Findings and Suggestions. This chapter is by far the
most dominant one in which some suggestions on using storytelling are made
and some sample lessons are provided.
Chapter 5 is the Conclusion which includes the summary of the study,
limitations of the study and suggestions for further study.
References and Appendices are presented in the last pages of the study.

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CHAPTER 2. LITERATURE REVIEW
2.1. Overview of oral skill or speaking skill
The terms “oral skill” and “speaking skill” are basically similar. Oral
skills are skills or abilities in oral speech. In other words, oral skills are
abilities of speech, fluency in speaking. And speaking is the productive skill
in the oral mode. It, like the other skills, is more complicated than it seems at
first and involves more than just pronouncing words. Whereas, the single
most important reason for teaching speaking skills is to develop oral fluency,
the ability to express oneself intelligibly, reasonably, accurately and without
undue hesitation so speaking skill is also called “oral skill”. Therefore, in this
part, the author only mentioned speaking skill instead of oral skills.
2.1.1. Definitions of speaking skill
Speaking is crucially important for the whole learning process.
“speaking makes you a more fluent language user, speaking is a chance to
notice the gaps between what you want to say and what you can say, it is a
chance to test hypotheses about language.” The term “speaking” catches

much attention of linguistics. Therefore, many definitions have been offered
to this term so far.
According to the Oxford Dictionary of Current English (2004, p.414),
speaking is “the action of conveying information or expressing ones’ thoughts
and feelings in spoken languages.”
Chaney (1998, p.13), however, considered speaking as “the process of
building and sharing meaning through the use of verbal or non-verbal
symbols in a variety of contexts”.

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Sharing the same viewpoint, Florez (1999, p.1) added that speaking is
an “interactive” process, which consists of three main stages “producing,
receiving and processing information.”
In language teaching and learning, speaking is considered a skill to
practise and master. In this light, Nunan (2003, p.48) put it that “speaking is
the productive oral skill. It consists of producing systematic verbal utterance
to convey meaning.”
Also considering speaking as a skill, Bygate (1987, p.3) investigated
the distinction between knowledge and skill in speaking lessons, which he
considered to be crucial in the teaching of speaking. Indeed, to be a good
learner of speaking, studying knowledge of grammar, vocabulary,
pronunciation, intonation, etc. is not enough but the skill to use this
knowledge to communicate successfully is indispensable. He also discussed
further at great length the two sub-skills of interaction skills that the speakers
use when they speak: the routine skills and negotiation skills. Routines are the
conventional ways of presenting information such as descriptions,
comparisons, story telling. They can be either expository, concerning
presenting factual information, or evaluative where the speakers explain,

reason, justify, predict and draw conclusions. They can also be interaction
routines that can be found in interactions in different specific situations like
interviews or discussions, etc.
In brief, there are different concepts of speaking, i.e. speaking as an
action, a process and a skill. In this study, the term “speaking” will be used to
refer to a skill related to language teaching and learning.
2.1.2. Elements of speaking skill
2.1.2.1. Accuracy

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Recognizably, accuracy is one of the most important criteria to measure
one’s linguistic ability and to shelter language users from communication
breakdowns. According to Richards (1992, p.31), accuracy concerns “the
ability to produce grammatically correct sentence”. In other words, accuracy
in language means grammatical accuracy only.
Based on Nguyen Bang and Nguyen Ba Ngoc (2001), accuracy
involves “the correct use of vocabulary, grammar and pronunciation.”
Nevertheless, with Thornbury (2005), the term “accuracy” seems to
cover more than that. Specifically, speaking English accurately means doing
without or with few errors on not only grammar but vocabulary and
pronunciation as well. He also set the clear scale for assessment of accuracy.
•

Grammar: Students use correct words order, tenses, tense

agreement, etc. Students do not leave out articles, prepositions, or difficult
tenses.
•

Vocabulary: Students have a range of vocabulary that

corresponds to the syllabus year list and uses words you have taught.
•

Pronunciation: Students speak and most people understand. Even

broader than that.
2.1.2.2. Fluency
Fluency is also used as a criterion to measure one’s speaking
competence. Speaking fluently means being able to communicate one’s ideas
without having to stop and think too much about what one is saying. Richards
(1992, p.141) defined fluency as “the features which gave speech the qualities
of being natural and normal.”

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Nguyen Bang and Nguyen Ba Ngoc (2001) considered fluency as “the
ability to keep going when speaking spontaneously”. When speaking fluently,
language learners should be able to get message across whatever resources
and abilities what they have got, regardless of grammatical and other
mistakes. Meanwhile, many educators believe that in a communicative class
“It is not necessary to teach conversational features or push students to
communicate accurately” and that “fluency can be developed by simply
providing students with lots of conversational practice”.
More specifically, Thornbury (2005) pointed out the criteria for
assessing fluency:
•

Lack of hesitation: Students speak smoothly, at a natural speech.

They do not hesitate long and it is easy to follow what they are saying.
•

Length: Students can put ideas together to form a message or an

argument. They can make not only the simplest of sentence patterns but also
complex ones to complete the task.
•

Independence: Students are able to express their ideas in a

number of ways, keep talking and ask questions, etc to keep the conversation
going.
2.1.3. Teaching speaking skill
2.1.3.1. Methods of teaching speaking skill
So far, teaching foreign language in general and teaching speaking skill
in particular has experienced three main methods, i.e. grammar-translation,
audio-lingual and communicative language teaching (CLT), respectively.
Whereas the two previous methods show a big number of drawbacks resulting
in learners’ failure to make achievement in speaking skill, CLT which

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emphasizes “learning to communicate through interaction in the target
language.”

(Nunan,

1991,

p.56)

considerably

enhances

students’

communicative skill. In the CLT classrooms, students are supposed to work in
pairs or groups requiring negotiation and co-operation to do not only
accuracy-based tasks but also fluency-based ones. Besides, they are provided
with authentic activities and meaningful tasks, students feel free with real-life
communication.
2.1.3.2. Stages of a speaking lesson
In Terry’s (2008) presentation about “how to teach speaking in an EFL
class”, it was proposed that a speaking lesson consists of three main stages.
Specifically, in the pre-communicative stage, teachers are supposed to
introduce the communicative function, highlight the fixed expression, point
out the target structure and provide students with the necessary vocabulary
and the language of interaction.
In the practice stage, teachers prompt and correct students if necessary.
In the last stage of communicative interaction, teachers encourage language
negotiation among students, take notes of any aspects that may hinder
communication such as pronunciation, vocabulary, grammar, etc.
After this stage, teachers give students feedback on pronunciation,
grammar and vocabulary and ask students to repeat the task if necessary.

2.1.4. Characteristics of a successful speaking activity
There are many characteristics of a successful speaking activity which
were introduced by Ur (1996) as follows:

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•

Learners talk a lot: As much as possible of the period time

allotted to the activity is in fact occupied by learner talk. This may seem
obvious, but often most time is taken up with the teacher’s talk and pauses.
•

Participation is even: Classroom discussion is not dominated by

a minority of talkative participants, all get a chance to speak and contributions
are fairly evenly distributed.
•

Motivation is high: Learners are eager to speak because they are

interested in the topic and have something new to say about it, or because
they want to contribute to achieving a task objective.
•

Language is of an acceptable level: Learners express themselves

in utterances that are relevant, easily comprehensible to each other and of an

acceptable level of language accuracy.
In practice, however, few classroom activities succeed in satisfying all
the criteria mentioned above. Therefore, language teachers should make great
efforts to employ a variety of effective techniques to create some of the
mentioned-above criteria.
2.1.5. Problems with speaking activities
According to Ur (1996), there still exist some problems with speaking
activities as follows:
•

Inhibition: Unlike reading, writing and listening activities,

speaking requires some degree of real-time exposure to an audience. Learners
are often inhibited about trying to say things in a foreign language in the
classroom: worried about making mistakes, fearful of criticism or losing face,
or simply shy of the attention that their speech attracts.

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•

Nothing to say: Even if they are not inhibited, you often hear

learners complain that they cannot think of anything to say: they have no
motive to express themselves beyond the guilty feeling that they should be
speaking.
•

Low or uneven participation: Only one participant can talk at a

time if he or she is to be heard, and in a large group this means that each one
will have only very little time talking. This problem is compounded by the
tendency of some learners to dominate, while others speak very little or not at
all.
•

Mother-tongue use: In classes where all, or a number of, the

learners share the same mother tongue, they may tend to use it: because it is
easier, because it feels unnatural to speak to one another in a foreign
language, and because they feel less “exposed” if they are speaking their
mother tongue. If they are talking in small groups it can be quite difficult to
get some classes-particularly the less disciplined or motivated ones-to keep to
the target language.
In order for the learners to develop their communicative skills, it is
advised that the language teachers should help the learners to overcome these
problems with speaking activities.
2.1.6. Ways of organizing speaking activities
The way in which a classroom is organized can have a significant
influence on language learning processes. The dominant view of second
language classroom processes today favors a great amount of student-centered
learning instead of the traditional teacher-dominated classroom. The teacherdominated classroom is characterized by the teacher’s speaking most of the
time, leading activities, and constantly passing judgments on students’

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performance, whereas in a highly student-centered classroom, students will be
observed working individually or in pairs and small groups. The followings

are different ways of organizing classroom activities according to Doff
(1990):
• Pair work: the teacher divides the whole class into pairs. Every student
works with his or her partner and all the pairs work at the same time.
• Open or public pair work: as with the pair work, the class will be
divided into pairs, and each pair of students speaks in turn in front of
the class.
• Group work: the teacher divides the class into small groups to work
together, and as in pair work, all the groups work at the same time.
• Whole class activity: the whole class takes part into an activity
together. An example of this activity is Circle games. These games
involve the learners sitting in a circle and working as a whole class.
• Choosing different ways of organizing the class depends on many
things, for example, the activity, level of the students, personal
characteristics of the students, the teacher, subject matter, and so on.
Doff (1990) argued that for certain types of activities, pair work and
group work have a number of advantages over working with the whole
class. These advantages are as the followings:
• Pair work and group work give students far more chance to speak
English.
• Working in pairs or groups encourages the students to be more
involved and to concentrate on the task.

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• Students feel less anxious when they are working privately than when
they are on show in front of the whole class.
• Pair work and group work encourage the students to share ideas and
knowledge.

2.1.7. Principles in teaching speaking skills
As I mentioned above, the single most important reason for teaching
speaking skills is to develop oral fluency, the ability to express oneself
intelligibly, reasonably, accurately and without undue hesitation. The learners
of English will want to use speech principally for two reasons. The first
reason is that they want to give and receive information, that is, for
transactional or message-oriented purposes. The other is that they want to
maintain good social relationships, that is, for interactional purposes focused
on sharing personal experiences and opinions. Language educators and
teachers have made great efforts to find out the main principles of teaching
speaking so far. Here the author wishes to suggest some main principles
presented by Ur (1996) as follows:
• Take account of the student as a person: It means that the teachers
should be sensitive, sympathetic and encouraging. They should
select materials that are motivating and within the students’ ability.
• Reduce anxiety by moving from easy to less easy: It means that the
teachers should provide a familiar, private environment and help
students take short turns.
• Maintain a careful balance between accuracy and fluency: It
requires that the teachers should provide practice in pronunciation,
word stress, sentence stress and intonation. Moreover, the teachers

17


should also provide students with opportunities for fluent use of
speech.
• Provide a good model for students to imitate: The teachers should
consciously teach correct pronunciation and repeatedly use target
speech patterns.

• Provide appropriate stimuli for eliciting speech: The teachers can
use a wide variety of sources such as: books, radios, audio and video
cassettes, pictures, stories, songs, etc.
• Vary classroom interaction modes: The teachers can arrange the
class activities in different ways: individual to whole class, in pair
work or group work.
• Give clear instructions: The teachers should speak loudly, slowly
and clearly and it is a good idea that the teachers demonstrate the
proposed task themselves.
• Monitor student activity continuously: The teachers should
encourage those who find the activity difficult and praise students
who perform well or try hard to fulfill the task.
• Prepare well for class: The teachers should make a checklist of
things to obtain and a checklist of things to do.
• Handle errors sensitively and effectively: The teachers should
ignore performance errors. However, it is necessary that the teachers
correct errors in language that they recently taught or errors that
might shock the listeners (e.g. childrens). In addition, errors in
structures that need to be used frequently by students should also be
corrected. (E.g. “What means that?” instead of “What does it

18


mean?”). And the teachers should remember that corrections should
be made in accuracy phase, not fluency phase.
2.2. Overview of storytelling
2.2.1. Definitions of storytelling
Storytelling can be used in language classes. So what are stories and
what is storytelling?

First of all, what are stories? Bill Wren (2010) defined that “stories
are about people, told by people, told to people. In other words, a story is
people involved in events told by people to people”.
A different definition expressed by Helen McKay and Berice Dudley
(1996) is that “a story is defined as a narrative or tale of real or fictitious
events. Stories are a nourishment for our hungry souls. Often stories we
regard as fiction have elements of truth dressed up to make them more
palatable. Stories are magic, taking us everywhere: backwards, forwards or
happening right in the present time, transporting us to many places and
situations we might never go".
So, what is storytelling? According to Davidson and Michelle (2004),
“storytelling is a means for sharing and interpreting experiences. Stories are
universal in that they can bridge cultural, linguistic and age-related divides.
Storytelling can be used as a method to teach ethics, values, and cultural
norms and differences”
Storytelling is also an interactive performance art form. Direct
interaction between the teller and audience is an essential element of the
storytelling experience. An audience responds to the teller's words and
actions. The teller uses this generally non-verbal feedback to immediately,

19


spontaneously, and improvisationally adjust the tones, wording, and pace of
the story to better meet the needs of the audience. Also, the member of the
National Storytelling Association (1997) commented that “storytelling is a
process, a medium for sharing, interpreting, offering the content and meaning
of a story to an audience. Because storytelling is spontaneous and
experiential, and thus a dynamic interaction between teller and listener, it is
far more difficult to describe than is the script and camera directions of a

movie, or the lines and stage direction notes of a play. Storytelling emerges
from the interaction and cooperative, coordinated efforts of teller and
audience”.
This is summed up very well in Jeff Gere’s definition (2002)
“storytelling is the act of using language and gesture in colorful ways to
create scenes in a sequence. Flexibility is key as new versions of the story
may bubble up and surprise the teller. Storytellers may even find the story
taking on a life that is coming out of the teller and not the author. The story
then rings true for the teller and the listener. A storyteller’s cultural
background and unique personal attitudes and experiences shine through in
words and gestures”.
2.2.2. Types of stories
Classifying stories into categories can be very difficult because
categories often overlap. Therefore, different linguists use different ways to
classify stories. According to Helen McKay and Berice Dudley (1996), "there
are many different types of stories. The most important consideration when
choosing a tale to tell is whether you like it enough to tell it with enthusiasm.
Stories should communicate to you a need to be told". They classify stories
into many more categories as follows:

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•

Fable - a short moral story not based on fact, using animals as

characters, such as, Aesop's Fables-The Fox and the Grapes, Lion and the
mouse and others.
•

Fairytale - The best-known would be Grimm's fairytales about

imaginary folk, such as elves, giants, witches, gnomes, and fairies.
•

Folk tale - a traditional story, in which ordinary people gain

special insight, transforming them and enabling them to overcome
extraordinary obstacles. See The Magic Orange Tree & other Haitian
Folktales by Diane Wolkstein.
•

Legend - a story based on the life of a real person in which

events are depicted larger than life, for example, The Stories of Robin Hood,
or King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table.
•

Myth - a story about gods and heroes, explaining the workings of

nature and human nature. Such as, Psyche and Eros or Inanna by Diane
Wolkstein.
•

Parable - a fictitious story told to point to a moral, for example,

The Sower and the Seed from the New Testament of the Bible.
•

Personal story - a life story from your own or your family's

experience, such as, Streets and Alleys by Syd Lieberman.
•

Religious story - an historical and philosophical story based on a

particular culture and religious persuasion, for example, The Story of Lazarus
from the Bible.
•

Tall tale - an exaggerated story, often humorous. Fishing stories,

Australian Bush stories, such as, The Loaded Dog by Henry Lawson.

21


•

Traditional tale - a story handed down orally from generation to

generation, such as the Polynesian stories - Maui, and The Coming of the
Maori.
Meanwhile, according to Mariam Ispahani (2005), there are five main
following types of stories:
•

Myth - a legendary story that ancient people created to explain

the mysteries of life, death, the beginning of the world, and natural powers.
•

Saga - a story of heroic deeds of a medieval Norwegian hero.

Gradually, it came to mean a long eventful narrative about a family, social
group, or dynasty with several chapters, cantos or even volumes.
•

Fable - a short tale which involves animals as essential characters

in it and carries a moral for the readers.
•

Folk-tale - a light imaginary story handed down orally from

generation to generation. They are popular because they describe the hopes
and fears of common people in a natural fanciful way.
•

Fairy-tale - a magical story about fairies. A fairy is a tiny

imaginary being with supernatural powers.
2.2.3. Using storytelling in the English language classroom
Effective teaching in classroom environment requires different types of
methods and techniques. Storytelling is one of the activities that these
techniques use. There has been quite a lot of research done on the use of
storytelling in particular.
There is a common perception that storytelling can make a significant
contribution in the language classroom to build speaking, writing, reading and

listening skills. Besides, storytelling is one of the most basic ways of sharing

22


knowledge, of making sense of experiences, and of seeing oneself in relation
to others. In the classroom, storytelling is an important activity with strong
links to literacy. As professional storyteller Helen Forest (2000) pointed out,
“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, etc. In our fast-paced, media-driven world,
storytelling can be a nurturing way to remind children that spoken words are
powerful, that listening is important, and that clear communication between
people is an art”.
According to Haven (2000) “using storytelling in the classroom is a
powerful and effective way to improve and develop language skills, and
moreover activities where students participate in telling, writing, reading and
listening to stories can motivate them to be active learners, developing within
them a constructive approach towards English language learning”.
A similar opinion expressed by Isabel et al (2004) is that “stories are
pervasively used as a powerful and promising educational means for teaching
and learning. Stories draw the learners’ attention and thus can convey certain
messages more easily to them”. In storytelling, the words are not memorized,
but are recreated through spontaneous, energetic performance, assisted by
audience participation and interaction.
Andrews, Dee, Hull, Donahue (2009) also reported that “Learning is
most effective when it takes place in social environments that provide
authentic social cues about how knowledge is to be applied. Stories provide a
tool to transfer knowledge in a social context”.
Contrary to the opinions mentioned above is Jeff Gere's one(2002)

“storytelling is not like math. A storyteller must be loose, expressive, and

23


even goofy at times. Some students love storytelling, and some hate it. But
because the ability to speak with comfort and conviction in front of people is
important to success in this world, students must be encouraged to practice
these skills. Teachers must have the same determination and the same
performance expectations they would have if they were teaching math”.
2.2.4. Benefits of using storytelling in developing oral skills or
speaking skills for students
Storytelling has many key values for both the individual telling the
story and the people listening to the story being told. Among the values that
storytelling instills into its participants as stated by Margaret Read
Macdonald, in The Storytellers Start-Up Book, is that “it hones our literary
and imaginative skills. We improve our ability to listen, speak, imagine,
compose phrases and create stories”. Macdonald continued on in her book to
say that “storytelling broadens our awareness of our own as well as other
cultures, allows us to understand ourselves better, gives us a sense of
belonging to a group and increases our vocabularies”.
Similarly, Jack McGuire listed the benefits in his book, Creative
Storytelling, by stating “the specific educational and social benefits to
storytelling from a child’s point of view are numerous and well documented”.
Some of the values McGuire touched upon are “helping a child recognize
patterns in language, stimulating a child’s powers of creativity, providing a
child with problem solving and decision making activities, strengthening a
child’s capacity to form objective, rational and practical applications,
assisting a child to develop skills in dialogue and cooperative interpersonal
behavior”. It also familiarizes and introduces a child to symbols, and

traditions of different cultural heritages shared among the people around

24


them. There are tremendous gains to be made through storytelling as a
strategy to increase the oral language of second language learners in
particular.
Besides, stories are motivating and immensely interesting, can best
attract listeners and promote communication. “The excitement and drama of
storytelling provide a context that holds students' attention” (Cooter, 1991;
Black, 1998).
Furthermore, the lively atmosphere and real life environment created
by stories encourages the students to talk and discuss with each other. When
telling and listening to a story, the learners will easily be plunged into the
plots and the scene and forget about themselves, which will, to a great degree,
relieve

their

nervousness. Colon-vila

(1997) also commented that

“storytelling helps language learners become more self-confident to express
themselves spontaneously and creatively”.
However, teachers have not been zealous to use storytelling in the classroom
because “storytelling consists of more than just telling stories. It may include
not only creating a story but also the use of pictures, acting, singing, and so
forth” (Alvey, 1977).

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