LEARNING THROUGH STORIES

Teaching English to young learners is obviously different from that to adults because
children are generally not aware that they are acquiring a language (Brown, 1987: 47). Furthermore,
Musthafa (2008: 6) argues that for children, learning a language is easily when the language is
meaningful, interesting and functional. It indicates that young learners should be treated with more
consideration that teaching English as a foreign language has to be taught as interesting as possible.
Thus, the teacher should make the children happy in learning and young learners’ classroom has to
be created in a fascinating and enjoyable situation.
Considering this view points, the process of learning should be supported by good and
interesting media as pointed by Alexander et al. (1987: 415, cited in Cahyono, 2008) who states that
the use of media is often effective in arousing students’ interest. Shortly stated, the use of learning
media is crucial in teaching English for young learners since it can increase children’s motivation,
avoid boredom in learning process, and strengthen students’ comprehension. One of the media
considered effective in teaching English for young learners is stories. Therefore, this paper
discusses the use of stories, outlines the theoretical basis, and shows the procedures in using them in
the classroom.

1.1 USING STORY.

Stories for children exist in every country and every culture. Stories entertain
children, educate children and give children their cultural ability. In the English language
classroom, using stories is useful since the teachers can use well-known stories to introduce and
practice new language. It is supported by Wright, 1997 and Garvie, 1990 (cited in Cameron,
2001: 160) that stories are frequently claimed to bring many benefits to young learner
classroom, including language development.
In addition Ellis and Brewster (2003) give several reasons why teachers should use
storybooks.
• Storybooks can enrich the pupils’ learning experience. Stories are motivating and fun and
can help develop positive attitudes towards the foreign language.
• Stories exercise the imagination and are a useful tool in linking fantasy and the imagination
with the child’s real world.
• Listening to stories in class is a shared social experience.
 • Children enjoy listening to stories over and over gain. This repetition allows language items
to be acquired and reinforced.
• Listening to stories develops the child’s listening and concentrating skills.
• Stories create opportunities for developing continuity in children’s learning (among others,
school subjects across the curriculum)
There are several criteria a teacher could use for selecting a story that would be accessible
and relevant for the learners. Therefore, stories provide a meaningful context for the introduction of
new language and can create opportunities for continuity in children’s learning.
1.2 GOOD STORIES
A good story is simply one that listeners or readers enjoy. Stories that have the qualities of
content, organization and language use are potentially useful tools in the foreign language
classroom, since they have potential to capture children’s interest and motivate them to learn.
However, not all good stories will be automatically good for language learning. In this case,
suitability is a crucial factor that needs to be considered in selecting the material. It refers to
whether or not the text interests the students to read and whether or not it is appropriate for their
goals in learning English.
In selecting the stories, learners’ preferable stories need to be taken into account. It is in line
with Musthafa’s statement (2008: 6) who claims that learning becomes meaningful for the children
when decision-making is related to their needs. Schouten-van Parreren (1989, cited in…….)
suggests that children choose the stories they want to hear may help maximize the learning take
places. It indicates that children are much more likely to hear with enthusiasm if they have made
decision about what they hear. Thus, it can be concluded that students need to be involved in
selecting the stories.
Based on the description above, it can be inferred that, good story is one that can promote
language learning. The characteristic of good story is as follows:
1) Content: a good story for language learning have interesting characters, clear plot and create
a surprise or a strong feeling of satisfaction at the end.
2) Value: It provides the good values and attitude.
3) Organization: the good stories have the following features of the organization:
- an opening: often formulaic in fairy tales e.g ‘once upon a time………’;
- Introduction of the characters;
- Description of the setting;
 - Introduction of a problem;
- A series of event;
- The resolution of the problem;
- A closing: often formulaic in fairy tales---“they all lived happily ever after”;
- A moral: in which may or may not be explicitly stated such as what has been found in
LRRH. The story has two morals: the wickedness will be overcome and children should
do what their parents tell them.
4) The balance of dialogue and narrative: there is a mix between dialogue and narrative since
both of them has advantage in language learning. The use of dialogue will enable children to
learn phrases for conversation and narrative may offer repeated patterns of language that
will help grammar learning through noticing of the patterns.
Narrative texts concerns the series of events while dialogue is use of language as it would be
spoken by the characters. For example:
The little girl walked through the forest; the wolf ran to grandmother’s house (narrative).
‘all the better to eat you with’ (dialogue).
5) Language use:
 it provides the appropriate repetition of words and phrases which can be helpful for
language learning. It refers to repetition of grammatical patterns that occurs across
the text. For example:
LRRH : Grandmother, what big eyes you’ve got!
BBW : All the better to see you with, my dear.
LRRH : Grandmother, what big ears you’ve got!
BBW : All the better to hear you with, my dear.
LRRH : Grandmother, what big teeth you’ve got!
BBW : All the better to EAT you with…..
 It provides the pictures that can be used to emphasize what is happening in the story.
In terms of vocabulary.
 It uses alliteration. It refers to the use of words that have the same initial consonants.
For example: red riding and big bad. It can offer a source for developing knowledge
of letter sounds.
 the writer uses contrasting lexical sets of words. The stories contain strong contrasts
between characters or actions or setting. In LRRH, the innocent girl and the bad wolf
 are clearly contrasted characters, representing good and evil; the old woman and the
young girl contrast youth and age. For language learning, forming contrasting sets
may be helpful for understanding and recall.
6) The use of new language: a story presents some new language but the overall total of new
words should be not too high.
The successful choice, however, is not enough to ensure the good use of a story in class. The
activities designed for each story and the exploitation of the rich material in the story itself
are very important also.

1.3 HOW TO USE THE STORY

According to Cameron (2001: 174) There are three stages in using stories in the classroom:
• preparation activity: brainstorming vocabulary
As a preparation activity, before the story reading, it would be useful to introduce the
ideas and some of the key vocabulary. In this case, new words and phrases that are crucial to
understand the story should be pre-taught, and the support offered by pictures and provide
the adequate context for the meaning of the new words. It can make them comfortable to
read the text.
A reading section should begin with a pre-reading activity to introduce the topic and
to make sure students have enough vocabulary and background information to understand
the text. Introduction of a text is useful for students who have a little background knowledge
about the topic. It can be done by asking the children to think what the story will be about as
you point to the pictures. Ask for their prediction and write some of their predictions on the
board.
Based on the description above, it can be concluded that common activities in this
stage are: analyzing the pictures, providing key words lists, general telling, and sharing
existing knowledge.
• Core Activity: reading the story
In this stage, it is recommended that the teacher holds the book so children can see
the pictures on the pages. Giving them plenty of time to look at the pictures is required since
talk about the pictures and show the children how looking at the pictures help them to
understand what is happening.
 In the attempt to make children understand the story, teachers should read the story
to the children in a fun way using different voices and showing that you are enjoying it. Go
back to check children’s predictions. While reading, the teacher can pause at the end of each
page to point and repeat key words or ideas, or to ask children to recall or predict what
happens next.
After listening to a story, children should have the chance to respond to it. They can
be encouraged to express their feelings about the story, in English as possible, using simple
phrases such as: “I liked it when….”, “I thought the dinosaurs were good”.
• Follow-up activity: vocabulary learning
In this stage, children are asked questions about things that happened in the story to
check their understanding. They can show their understanding through drawing a picture as
a further response to the story and acting out the story. Children also might be asked to
choose five new words that they like and are going to learn. At the beginning of the next
lesson, they can be asked to tell the words to a friend to motivate their self-directed learning.
1.4 DEVELOPING TASK AROUND THE STORY
Cameron (2001: 175) mentions a number of ways that can be used in developing task. They are
as follows:
 Recording the story
In this case, teacher is suggested to record the story on the cassette during one telling, the
recording can be used for further listening practice, at home or in class. Since five or ten
minutes spent listening to a familiar story will re-activate vocabulary and grammatical
patterns, and offer opportunities for children to notice aspects of the language use that
passed them by on previous readings or that they have partly learnt.
 Acting roles
While the teacher reads the narrative, the children can be asked to dress up and act out
the dialogue, the story becomes a performance that might entertain another class,
providing useful repeated practice in the process.
 Retelling the story
Learners could be given (or draw) a set of pictures of the story and arrange them in
order. They might then also get a set of simple sentences written on strips of card to
match the picture. The pictures and sentences could be struck into the children’s books
and used for reading. If they are not writing in English, pairs of children could work on
 composing a sentence orally for each picture and, after they have practice several times,
can tell the whole class their story, using the pictures as prompts. They might reconstruct
the story, orally in writing, using much simpler text.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Cahyono, B.Y. (2010). The Teaching of English Language Skills and English Language
Component. Malang: State University of Malang Press.

Cameron, Lynn. (2001). Teaching to Young Learner. United Kingdom: Cambridge University Press

Ellis, G. and Brewster, J. 2003. The Primary English Teacher’s Guide. Penguin English

Musthafa, B. (2008). Teaching English to Young Learners: Principles and Technique. Bandung:
School of Postgraduate Studies (SPs) Indonesia University of Education (UPI).