The effects of storytelling on the comprehension and oral production of english opaque idioms among efl learners at ikun

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY – HO CHI MINH CITY
UNIVERSITY OF SOCIAL SCIENCES AND HUMANITIES
FACULTY OF ENGLISH LINGUISTICS & LITERATURE

THE EFFECTS OF STORYTELLING ON THE
COMPREHENSION AND ORAL PRODUCTION OF
ENGLISH OPAQUE IDIOMS AMONG EFL
LEARNERS AT IKUN

A thesis submitted to the
Faculty of English Linguistics & Literature
in partial fulfillment of the Master’s degree in TESOL

By
NGUYỄN MINH GIANG

Supervised by
PHÓ PHƯƠNG DUNG, Ph.D.

HO CHI MINH CITY, APRIL 2018


ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
First of all, I would like to express my deepest gratitude to my supervisor, Dr. Phó
Phương Dung. It has been my luck to have a supervisor to allow me considerable
freedom to discover most of the things by myself, and at the same time tirelessly help
me whenever I get stuck. I am also grateful for her extremely careful proof-reading and
comments on my writing. Additionally, her patience with a slow researcher like me is
really admirable. Had it not been for her patience and guidance, I would never have
finished my thesis.
My heartfelt thanks also go to a colleague of mine, who has wholeheartedly supported

me in the data collection process. He also helped me to pilot some of the instruments
used in the current study.
I also owe sincere thanks to many of my teachers, friends, and students for their
encouragement and advice during the process of conducting this study and writing my
thesis, which means a lot to me. Without their mental support, it would have definitely
taken much more time for the thesis to be completed.

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STATEMENT OF ORIGINALITY
I certify that this thesis entitled “THE EFFECTS OF STORYTELLING ON THE
COMPREHENSION AND ORAL PRODUCTION OF ENGLISH OPAQUE
IDIOMS AMONG EFL LEARNERS AT IKUN” is my own work.
This thesis has not been submitted for the award of any degree or diploma in any other
institution.
Ho Chi Minh City, April 2, 2018

Nguyễn Minh Giang

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RETENTION AND USE OF THE THESIS
I hereby state that I, Nguyễn Minh Giang, being the candidate for the degree of Master
in TESOL, accept the requirements of the University relating to the retention and use of
Master’s Thesis deposited in the Library.
In terms of these conditions, I agree that the original of my thesis deposited in the
Library should be accessible for the purpose of study and research in accordance with
the normal conditions established by the Library for the care, loan or reproduction of

the theses.
Ho Chi Minh City, April 2, 2018

Nguyễn Minh Giang

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TABLE OF CONTENTS
Acknowledgements ......................................................................................................... i
Statement of originality .................................................................................................. ii
Retention and use of the thesis ...................................................................................... iii
Table of contents ........................................................................................................... iv
List of abbreviations.................................................................................................... viii
List of tables .................................................................................................................. ix
List of figures ................................................................................................................. x
Abstract ......................................................................................................................... xi
Chapter 1. Introduction ............................................................................................... 1
1.1 Background of the study ....................................................................................... 1
1.2 Context of the study .............................................................................................. 3
1.3 Aims of the study .................................................................................................. 3
1.4 Research questions ............................................................................................... 3
1.5 Significance of the study ...................................................................................... 4
1.6 Outline of the thesis .............................................................................................. 4
chapter 2. Literature review ....................................................................................... 6
2.1 Storytelling ........................................................................................................... 6
2.1.1 Definition of storytelling ................................................................................ 6
2.1.2 Requirements of storytelling .......................................................................... 9
2.1.3 Other factors related to storytelling.............................................................. 10
2.1.3.1 Available stories and self-designed stories ............................................ 10

2.1.3.2 Online storytelling and face-to-face storytelling ................................... 11
2.1.3.3 Story reading and storytelling ................................................................ 11
2.1.3.4 Practice of storytelling ........................................................................... 12
2.1.4 Use of storytelling to teach other aspects of language, not idioms .............. 13
2.2 Opaque idioms .................................................................................................... 15
2.2.1 Idioms ........................................................................................................... 15
2.2.1.1 Definition of idioms ............................................................................... 15
2.2.1.2 Reasons to use idioms ............................................................................ 17
2.2.2 Opaque idioms.............................................................................................. 18
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2.2.3 Methods for teaching idioms ........................................................................ 20
2.2.3.1 Teaching idioms using non-story methods ............................................ 21
2.2.3.2 Teaching idioms using stories ............................................................... 23
2.2.4 Contexts in language teaching ..................................................................... 25
2.3 Language comprehension and oral language production ................................... 27
2.3.1 Language comprehension ............................................................................. 27
2.3.2 Oral language production ............................................................................. 29
2.4 Issues yet to be solved ........................................................................................ 30
2.5 Summary ............................................................................................................. 31
Chapter 3. Methodology ............................................................................................ 32
3.1 Research design .................................................................................................. 32
3.2 Research site ....................................................................................................... 33
3.3 Pilot studies......................................................................................................... 34
3.4 Participants ......................................................................................................... 37
3.5 Teaching materials .............................................................................................. 38
3.5.1 Selection of the idioms ................................................................................. 38
3.5.2 Design of teaching materials for both groups .............................................. 40
3.5.2.1 Design of the teaching materials for the EG .......................................... 40

3.5.2.2 Design of the teaching material for the CG ........................................... 41
3.5.3 Teaching of idioms in both groups............................................................... 42
3.5.3.1 Teaching in the EG ................................................................................ 42
3.5.3.2 Teaching in the CG ................................................................................ 44
3.6 Research instruments .......................................................................................... 45
3.6.1 Pretest ........................................................................................................... 45
3.6.2 Posttest ......................................................................................................... 46
3.6.2.1 Comprehension Posttest ......................................................................... 46
3.6.2.2 Oral Production Posttest ........................................................................ 47
3.6.3 Interview....................................................................................................... 50
3.7 Data collection procedure ................................................................................... 52
3.8 Data analysis procedure ...................................................................................... 53
3.9 Summary ............................................................................................................. 55

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Chapter 4. Results and discussion ............................................................................ 56
4.1 Preconditions of Independent-samples T-tests ................................................... 56
4.2 Pretest ................................................................................................................. 57
4.3 Effects of the storytelling method on the students’ comprehension of the English
opaque idioms ........................................................................................................... 59
4.4 Effects of the storytelling method on the students’ oral production of the English
opaque idioms ........................................................................................................... 63
4.5 Students’ viewpoints on the storytelling method ............................................... 69
4.5.1 What the students liked and disliked about the storytelling method............ 69
4.5.1.1 What the students liked about the stories .............................................. 69
4.5.1.2 What the students disliked about the stories .......................................... 70
4.5.1.3 Students’ feelings when studying with the storytelling method ............ 72
4.5.2 Students’ contributions to the enhancement of the storytelling method ...... 76

4.5.2.1 Students’ contributions to the enhancement of comprehension of the
opaque idioms .................................................................................................... 76
4.5.2.2 Students’ contributions to the enhancement of oral production of the
opaque idioms .................................................................................................... 77
4.6 Summary ............................................................................................................. 80
Chapter 5. Conclusion ............................................................................................... 81
5.1 Summary of the current study ............................................................................ 81
5.2 Pedagogical implications .................................................................................... 82
5.2.1 Implications for EFL learners ...................................................................... 82
5.2.2 Implications for EFL teachers ...................................................................... 83
5.2.3 Implications for material writers .................................................................. 85
5.2.4 Implications for syllabus designers .............................................................. 85
5.3 Limitations of the study ...................................................................................... 86
5.4 Recommendations for future studies .................................................................. 87
References ................................................................................................................... 88
Appendices .................................................................................................................. 93
Appendix 1. Pre-intermediate communication syllabus .............................................. 94
Appendix 2. Survey of English opaque idioms ........................................................... 95

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Appendix 3. Result of the survey ................................................................................. 98
Appendix 4. List of 40 English opaque idioms used in the treatment (alphabetically
ordered) ........................................................................................................................ 99
Appendix 5. Teaching materials ................................................................................ 100
Appendix 5A. Eight idiom stories told in the EG .................................................. 101
Appendix 5B. Eight idiom lessons taught in the CG ............................................. 110
Appendix 6. Sample lesson plans .............................................................................. 119
Appendix 6A. Experimental group − lesson plan (lesson 2 − can you tell me why?)

................................................................................................................................ 120
Appendix 6B. Control group − lesson plan (lesson 2) .......................................... 123
Appendix 7. Pretest .................................................................................................... 125
Appendix 8. Comprehension Posttest and Oral Production Posttest ......................... 127
Appendix 8A. Comprehension Posttest ................................................................. 128
Appendix 8B. Oral Production Posttest ................................................................. 131
Appendix 9. Scoring criteria for the Oral Production Posttest...................................144
Appendix 10. Interview.............................................................................................. 146
Appendix 10A. English version of the interview ................................................... 147
Appendix 10B. Vietnamese version of the interview ............................................. 148
Appendix 11. SPSS output of the tests of normality ................................................. 149
Appendix 12. SPSS output of between-group comparisons ...................................... 150
Appendix 12A. SPSS output of the Pretest results ................................................ 151
Appendix 12B. SPSS output of the Comprehension Posttest Results ................... 152
Appendix 12C. SPSS output of the Oral Production Posttest results .................... 153
Appendix 13. Pictorial illustration for the idiom GIVE SOMEONE BEANS .......... 154

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LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS
ADJ

adjective

ADV

adverb

CG

control group

EFL

English as a foreign language

EG

experimental group

L1

first language

L2

second language

N

noun

S1, S2, S3,…, S11

student 1, student 2, student 3,… ,student 11

SPSS

Statistical Package for the Social Sciences

V

verb

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LIST OF TABLES
Table 3.1 Result of the survey ..................................................................................... 39
Table 4.1 Tests of normality for the scores of the two groups .................................... 56
Table 4.2 Result of Mann-Whitney U test for the Pretest scores ................................ 58
Table 4.3 Descriptive statistics of the Comprehenion Posttest scores ......................... 59
Table 4.4 Results of Mann-Whitney U test for the Comprehension Posttest scores ... 60
Table 4.5 Descriptive statistics of the Oral Production Posttest scores ....................... 64
Table 4.6 Results of Mann-Whitney U test for the Oral Production Posttest scores ... 64
Table 4.7 Frequency of mistakes in each mistake group ............................................. 66

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LIST OF FIGURES
Figure 4.1 Test of outliers of Pretest ............................................................................ 57

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ABSTRACT
This study aimed at investigating the effects of the storytelling method on the
comprehension and oral production of the selected 40 English opaque idioms among

EFL learners at a language center called IKUN. To achieve the aim of the study, the
researcher employed a mixed methods research design. The sample of the study
consisted of 23 EFL learners in two pre-intermediate communication classes at IKUN.
The students in one group were taught with the traditional method while those in the
other group were taught with the storytelling method. The results of the study revealed
that the employment of the storytelling method noticeably helped the students to
understand and recall the meaning and the use of the idioms. However, the current
method did not remarkably aid them in producing the idioms orally. Despite such
shortcomings, the method received a great deal of positive feedback from the students
since it is not only educational, but also entertaining. Some recommendations for the
use of the storytelling method will be presented in this thesis.
Keywords: storytelling, opaque idioms, comprehension, oral production

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CHAPTER 1
INTRODUCTION
This chapter presents the background of the study, aims of the study, and research
questions. The significance of the study is also pointed out. Clearly described at
the end of the chapter is the outline of the thesis.
1.1 Background of the study
It goes without saying that English is a requirement of many jobs in Vietnam.
Therefore, more and more people are enrolled in a variety of English institutions in
order to improve their English proficiency and be successful in this language. For
some learners, that “success” is best proved by acquiring international certificates
such as TOEIC, IELTS, or TOEFL with high scores. For many other learners,
however, the sense of success is simply synonymous with a great ability to
understand, speak, and write the English language. Either way, idioms are
unarguably an indispensable successful factor.

There are two main reasons why idioms play an important role in learners’
success. The first reason is that idioms can noticeably help an English
communicator comprehend their interlocutors easily. De Caro (2009) stated that
“English is a language particularly rich in idioms” (p. 124). It is, therefore,
believed that if an English learner can comprehend and use English idioms well,
they will stand a big chance of successfully communicating with a native speaker.
In line with De Caro (2009), McCarthy et al. (2010) put forth that idioms are what
native speakers use in their real life, in both informal contexts and formal ones.
The second reason is that English idioms help a test-taker have an opportunity to
obtain relatively high scores in some exams. To be more specific, a candidate in
the IELTS exam is supposed to use idiomatic expressions correctly in their
answers if they wish to get a band 7 or above in the speaking section (British
Council, n.d.).

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Unfortunately, not many English learners can use idioms with ease due to the
difficulties both in structure and meaning. Structurally, idioms are highly fixed
expressions as stated in Gairns and Redman (1986) and Thornbury (2002).
Semantically, according to Gairns and Redman (1986) and Schmitt (2000), the
meaning of idioms cannot be deduced or retrieved. In other words, the meanings of
idioms are difficult to be guessed only based on the meaning of the words in them.
However, not all idioms are equally difficult to comprehend and use. Elkiliỗ
(2008) and McCarthy et al. (2010) proposed the same idea that students learn
opaque idioms with much more difficulties than transparent ones. For those
reasons, a need to help EFL learners to master idioms, especially opaque ones, is
extremely necessary.
In the field of teaching methods, the use of stories in general and storytelling in
particular has been proved to be effective and interesting. Many authors including

Rashid (2011), Lestari (2011), Keshta (2013), Akhyak and Indramawan (2013),
and Abdul-Ameer (2014), concluded that stories can benefit learners in many
aspects, namely vocabulary, listening, and speaking. The feeling of interest that
stories bring to language learners has also been shared by many authors (e.g.
Davis, 2007; Keshta, 2013; Akhyak & Indramawan, 2013; Wilkin, 2014) that
stories and storytelling provide something essential to the soul of learners, evoke
their interest by creating vivid pictures in their minds, challenge their imaginations
and things, and bring something personal to them.
In fact, there have been several studies on the teaching of idioms using a variety of
story types. However, the majority of those used ready-made stories as the
treatments, which may not be able to arouse learners’ interest in and curiosity
about the plot if they have heard or read them beforehand. Also, most of these
studies used stories which were read by either the learners or the teachers, not told
by the teachers. According to Gallets (2005), storytelling has more advantages
over story reading. Last but not least, most studies done by these aforementioned
authors are about idioms with unspecified kinds. This might not be able to totally
prove the effectiveness of the treatment employed because the meanings of

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transparent idioms can be predicted without context. One question left unanswered
is how storytelling affects EFL learners’ ability to understand and use opaque
idioms. For this reason, the current study was conducted in order to address this
question.
1.2 Context of the study
This study was conducted at an English center in Go Vap District called IKUN,
where the current researcher was in charge of four communication classes at two
levels: basic and pre-intermediate. Since learners at the basic level cannot
understand whole stories told in English, especially those containing idioms, the

researcher chose two pre-intermediate classes as participants of the study. There
were 23 students in the two chosen classes, ranging from 19 to 28 years old. Each
pre-intermediate class lasted 10 weeks with three ninety-minute sessions per week
and was under the instruction of two teachers (one Vietnamese and one foreigner),
each of those teaching the class every other week.
1.3 Aims of the study
The aims of the study are (1) to investigate the effects of the storytelling method
on the comprehension of the target English opaque idioms among pre-intermediate
students at IKUN, (2) to examine the effects of the storytelling method on the oral
production of the target English opaque idioms among pre-intermediate students at
IKUN, and (3) to explore the students’ viewpoints on the employment of the
storytelling method in teaching English opaque idioms. The effects of the
instruction were measured immediately after the instruction by the use of
Comprehension Posttest and Oral Production Posttest. The viewpoints of the
learners were collected thanks to the individual interviews conducted one week
after the Posttest.
1.4 Research questions
The aims of the study can be addressed through the following research questions:

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(1) Is there any significant difference between the effects of the storytelling
method and the traditional method on the comprehension of English opaque
idioms among pre-intermediate EFL students at IKUN?
(2) Is there any significant difference between the effects of the storytelling
method and the traditional method on the oral production of English opaque
idioms among pre-intermediate EFL students at IKUN?
(3) What are the students’ viewpoints on the application of the storytelling method
to the teaching of English opaque idioms?

Due to its limitation in scope, the term “comprehension” refers to the students’
ability to recall the meanings of the idioms and the use of idioms in contexts, and
the term “oral production” refers to their ability to verbally produce the English
idioms based on the given Vietnamese meanings, and their capacity to orally use
the English idioms in contexts.
1.5 Significance of the study
As mentioned earlier, there has been almost no research on the effects of stories in
general and storytelling in particular on students’ mastery of English opaque
idioms (the most difficult type of idioms). Furthermore, storytelling with selfdesigned stories is thought to be easy to interest and suit the recipients of the
stories (Spaulding, 2011; Davies, 2007). Altogether, this study will propose an
entertaining way to teach a challenging linguistic aspect to see if it is useful not
only in comprehension but also in oral production, which seems to be ignored by
previous researchers. Together with the students’ feedback on the design and
application of the current method, the adjusted version of the current method will
be a promising premise for future studies related to difficult lexical items.
1.6 Outline of the thesis
This thesis consists of five chapters. The first chapter is the introduction of the
study, discussing the background, context, aims, research questions, and

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significance of the study. The second chapter is a thorough review of the related
literature on five areas, namely storytelling, opaque idioms, methods to teach
idioms, the importance of context in language teaching and learning, and language
comprehension and oral production. The third chapter is the presentation of the
research methodology, including a description of the research design, research site,
pilot studies, participants, teaching materials, research instruments, and data
collection and analysis procedures. The most significant section of this thesis is the
fourth chapter where the data will be presented, analyzed and explained. The last

chapter consists of the conclusion, pedagogical implications, limitations of the
study, and recommendations for future studies.

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CHAPTER 2
LITERATURE REVIEW
This chapter reviews the key terms related to the current study, including
storytelling, opaque idioms, language comprehension, and language production.
Besides, previous studies related to each of those four terms will be analyzed so
that the readers can gain some insight into the key terms easily.
2.1 Storytelling
2.1.1 Definition of storytelling
The field of storytelling has dominated the concerns of many authors. Different
authors have different viewpoints on what storytelling is.
Spaulding (2011) defined storytelling as “an art of creating and connecting with
people in the past that you never knew” (p. 13). The very first impression is that
the author used a very nice word, which is “art” for storytelling in this definition.
This means that storytelling is something beautiful and cleverly done with some
personal style. In this definition, the object that storytelling focused on is “the
people that you never knew”, meaning that it could be anyone that you have never
seen or heard of such as our forefathers or strangers, not necessarily only those
who are closely related to history events. Spaulding (2011) also pointed out the
purpose of storytelling: to create and connect with people in the past. According to
her, with storytelling, we can know about people in the past or even create unreal
characters. Much as this definition provided, it can be seen that this definition has
some limitations. First, the characters in storytelling are very limited. They are
neither the people at the present time nor the storytellers themselves, who may
want to share their personal lives to the listeners. Moreover, though storytelling is

considered as an art in this definition, how to make it an art was not mentioned.
One more aspect which has not been pointed out in this definition is the form of
storytelling.

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A part of these issues can be addressed in Gere et al.’s (2002) definition that
“storytelling is the act of using language and gesture in colourful ways to create
scenes in a sequence” (p. 10). Unlike Spaulding (2011), who did not tell the
readers what storytelling looked like, in this definition, Gere et al. (2002) clearly
presented the means of storytelling, which is the use of language and gesture in
colourful ways. The author also stated the purpose of storytelling: to create scenes
in a sequence. This purpose is much more general than that of the previous
definition since the subject of storytelling in this definition can be anything, not
just the people that we never knew. From the phrase “in a sequence”, we can
realize that storytelling cannot be a disorganized speech. It should be organized
cohesively. In this definition, although the authors used the word “language” and
the phrase “in colourful ways”, it is still unclear what kind of language he meant.
Was it body language, sign language, written language, or both spoken and written
language? In addition, how to make it “colourful” was not mentioned.
In the book “Learning through Storytelling in Higher Education”, McDrury and
Alterio (2004) clarified what kinds of language used in storytelling by stating that
“storytelling is a uniquely human experience that enables us to convey, through the
language of words, aspects of ourselves and others, and the worlds, real or
imagined, that we inhabit” (p. 31). In this definition, the author provided the
phrase “language of words” as a way to reject some possible thoughts of the
language types used in storytelling in the two previous definitions. What is more, it
is worth mentioning that the “character” of storytelling in this definition is
incredibly huge. It can be anyone and anything: from ourselves to other people and

the whole world; from real to imagined. It is not limited like “the people that we
never knew” as in Spaulding’s (2011) definition and not something too general
such as “create scenes in a sequence” as in Gere et al.’s (2002). However, similar
to the previous definitions, readers may still wonder whether it is language read
out loud or told.

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So far, it is still unclear who receive storytelling, and their connection with the
story teller as well as the stories. These two following definitions by Ellis and
Brewster (2014) and Harvey (2013) can help answer the questions.
Storytelling is telling a story to people who are willing to listen. This
can be telling a story from a book by reading it aloud, telling a story
without a book by word of mouth in the age-old oral tradition or
telling an anecdote or even a joke. (Ellis & Brewster, 2014, p.25)
This definition can help solve two questions. First, who are the audience?
According to Ellis and Brewster (2014), the audience are “people who are willing
to listen” (p. 25). The three words “willing to listen” indirectly pointed out that
storytellers must grab the audience’s attention by telling something they desire to
hear, not by teaching them something dull. Second, regarding the language of
storytelling, Ellis and Brewster (2014) clearly presented two forms of language in
storytelling: reading a story from a book and telling a story without a book. For
this reason, the means of storytelling is more clearly presented in Ellis and
Brewster (2014) than in McDrury and Alterio (2004). Also, this definition
supplemented the form of storytelling: telling a joke or an anecdote. This
information may enable the readers to explain how storytelling can make the
audience “willing to listen”: by telling them something purely funny.
One more definition worth reviewing is that of Harvey (2013), which stated that
“storytelling is a three-way relationship among the teller, the story, and the

audience, with each element of the triangle connected” (p. 11). Similar to Ellis and
Brewster (2014), the role of the audience was clearly presented in this definition.
She emphasized the indispensable role of the audience by using the phrase “threeway relationship” in which each element of the triangle is closely connected to the
other two. These connections will have to be considered very carefully when the
researcher designs and delivers stories so that they can yield the best result
possible.

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After reviewing several definitions, the current researcher comes up with a
temporary definition of storytelling:
Storytelling, a closely interrelated three-way relationship between the teller, the
audience, and the story, is an art of using spoken language either read out loud
from a text or told from the teller’s memory, and gestures in colourful ways to tell
a tradition story, joke, or an anecdote in the world, real or imagined, to people
who are willing to listen.
This definition will be adjusted after some other factors related to storytelling are
reviewed.
2.1.2 Requirements of storytelling
As regards the issue of what storytelling must have, many authors have required
many different things from storytelling. Haven and Ducey (2007) and Spaulding
(2011) suggested that stories themselves and storytelling must be fun so that it can
attract the audience’s attention. However, being humorous only is not enough, it
also needs to be purposeful, meaning that it conveys some message, not just
laughter. Spaulding (2011) believed that if it is not funny, yet meaningful, then the
listeners will still be satisfied with the stories. Besides, stories in storytelling must
be imaginative so that the storytellers can freely create images in the listeners’
minds in order to illustrate the details of the stories (Spaulding, 2011). Also, in the
book entitled “Storytelling Techniques in TED”, Karia (2013) said that stories in

storytelling must be personal because it can interest the audience better than stories
that they already knew.
To sum up, storytelling should be humorous, creative, meaningful and personal. In
the current study, the self-designed stories must be humorous, creative and
personal. The factor of being meaningful is not a must for those stories because it
is very hard to tell something funny using a short story with around 10 sentences,
which would be mentioned in Chapter 3.

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2.1.3 Other factors related to storytelling
It is necessary that the researcher review some related aspects such as available
stories and self-designed stories, online storytelling and face-to-face storytelling,
story reading and storytelling, and the practice of storytelling. These factors, if
carefully reviewed, will help the researcher to generate his complete operational
definition of storytelling and explain the ways storytelling is used in this study.
2.1.3.1 Available stories and self-designed stories
Davies (2007) discussed some main points about available stories and selfdesigned ones. According to him, available stories have to be chosen in a careful
way in order to suit the age of the audience. He illustrated this point by stating that
kids do not like stories made for adults and vice versa. After a selection of stories,
a storyteller ought to adjust the stories so that they are suitable for the audience’s
level of language proficiency. As regards self-designed stories, he explained the
reason for using such a kind of story: to fit the audience as well as the storyteller’s
styles. For this reason, the storyteller will become confident because they master
the story better than any other people.
Spaulding (2011), in the book entitled “The Art of Storytelling”, used two very
vivid pictures, namely “fresh peas” and “frozen peas” as a comparison between
self-designed stories and available stories, respectively. Accordingly, available
stories are like frozen peas, which lost their favor due to many reasons while selfdesigned stories are seen as fresh peas, which always bring interesting feelings to

those who try them. Therefore, according to Spaulding (2011), self-designed
stories are something fresh that almost every audience wants to enjoy.
For this reason, in this study, the stories applied in the experimental group (EG)
will be self-designed ones in order to fit the audience’s interests, make them better
focus and attentively listen to something they have never heard before.

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2.1.3.2 Online storytelling and face-to-face storytelling
Spaulding (2011), when discussing face-to-face storytelling and online
storytelling, saw face-to-face storytelling as “true storytelling” (p. 17) because
according to the author, storytelling has to be a three-way connection between the
audience, the teller, and the story. Among these three pairs of connection, the one
between the teller and the audience is very important because of two aspects. The
first aspect is the sense of community. Spaulding (2011) clearly explained that in
today’s world, people are getting more and more separated from one another.
Fortunately, face-to-face storytelling, which makes people sit together, smile,
laugh and cry with the storyteller, is one of the good ways to make them become
more connected. The second aspect is the adjustment of the storyteller’s style. In
other words, the storyteller has a direct interaction with the audience while online
storytellers do not. Therefore, they cannot adjust their performance to fit the
audience’s understanding.
2.1.3.3 Story reading and storytelling
Storytelling has been more highly appreciated than story reading by Gallets (2005)
and Haven and Ducey (2007) for some reasons. First, storytelling is more
successful than story reading in helping students to create pictures in their minds.
Gallets (2005) and Haven and Ducey (2007) explained that with story reading, the
students were handed illustrated pictures when the story was being read, and,
therefore, it was hard to produce imaginations in their minds. Second, with

storytelling, the storyteller can freely add or delete some details in a story as long
as its plot does not change, while in story reading the story reader depends heavily
on the texts. Gallets (2005) noted that by changing words of a story, the storyteller
can make the story fit the audience better. Third, the interaction between the
storyteller and the audience is better than that between the story reader and the
audience (Haven & Ducey, 2007). To be more specific, when reading a story to
their students, the story reader holds a book or any other kinds of materials almost
all the time and looks at the materials every now and then, while the storyteller

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usually tells from their memory and thus can look at the audience almost all the
time. Last, the students in the storytelling groups are more attentive than those in
the story reading group (Gallets, 2005). Thanks to the benefits of storytelling over
story reading, the results of the experimental study conducted by Gallets (2005)
revealed that students in the storytelling group remembered the stories better than
those in the story reading group.
After reviewing the differences between storytelling and story reading, the current
researcher decides that it is storytelling, not story reading that will be used in this
study with the hope that the teaching method will grab the students’ attention and
improve their memory of the stories. Accordingly, the researcher of the current
study must take some things into consideration when telling stories. First, he will
not hold any forms of materials when telling the eight stories. Second, he will use
body language appropriately and emotions in moderation to create the feeling that
he is “telling”, not “reading without paper”. Next, although the researcher cannot
change the words very freely due to the target idioms taught and the clues for the
idioms to be inferred, he can add words in order to explain any details that the
students seem not to clearly understand.
2.1.3.4 Practice of storytelling

As to whether or not the storyteller should learn the story scripts by heart, Wilkin
(2014) put forth that storytelling requires the learning of actions, which was
expressed in another way by Harvey (2013) that storytellers move from image to
image, not word to word. Therefore, the storyteller needs to focus on the actions to
complete the stories and it does not matter that they forget some small words
sometimes (Wilkin, 2014). Accordingly, the storyteller needs to divide the story
into scenes and learn the scene, not every single word, by memorizing the first
thing and the last thing of each scene (Haven & Ducey, 2007). Haven and Ducey
(2007) also suggested that the storyteller’s body language is very important since it
will not only help the audience to better understand the story but also help the
storyteller to better visualize the story.

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The researcher and also the storyteller of the current study will do the abovementioned things such as memorizing the stories by scenes, using body language
to visualize the story, interacting with the audience by using some questions such
as “are you following me?” to check their understanding and provide explanations
or simplifications for any difficult details in the stories in time. However, in terms
of preparing the content of the stories to tell, the researcher is supposed to do more
than just remembering the scenes. There are many things that the researcher
needed to strictly remember such as the target idioms, their meanings and the
contexts that help them to make inferences about the idioms.
After reviewing the above aspects, namely storytelling and story reading, online
and face-to-face storytelling, available and self-designed storytelling, the
researcher comes up with the operational definition of storytelling for this
research:
Storytelling is an art of using spoken words and gestures to convey funny
information both real and imagined, not by reading any kinds of materials. It is
self-designed and performed by a person with a real connection with the audience

who are willing to listen, not between a person with the screen or any electronic
devices.
To get insight into the importance of storytelling in teaching fields, which is one of
the focal points of the current study, the researcher would review the effectiveness
of storytelling on linguistic fields other than idioms first, and then he will
introduce its effects on idioms later after reviewing the term “idiom” in section
2.2.
2.1.4 Use of storytelling to teach other aspects of language, not idioms
There have been several studies researching on the effects of storytelling on
students’ vocabulary, listening, and speaking.
Abdul-Ameer (2014) examined the effectiveness of digital storytelling on
children’s vocabulary learning. The participants of this study were 40 eight-year-

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