CC BY
8
DOI 10.5281/zenodo.12545387
Gurbanov M., Dr. senior lecturer Head of Science (Research) Department Dovletmammet Azadi Turkmen National Institute of World Languages
Turkmenistan, Ashgabat Research Fellow, Shinawatra University, Thailand
Gurbanova A. instructor
Department of English Philology Dovletmammet Azadi Turkmen National Institute of World Languages
Turkmenistan, Ashgabat
TEACHING ENGLISH AS A FOREIGN LANGUAGE USING STORIES
The article discusses teaching and learning English as a foreign language through stories as well as its improvement for reading skills. It also states the majority of young learners are really keen on games, songs, fairy tales or role plays. Teachers should work according to the needs and interests of the pupils and have to find new and interesting methods and ways to make lessons engaging. Storytelling can be used to enhance students reading and develop speaking, listening skills. Motivating young learners to learn English through stories at an early age provide them with the opportunity to stimulate their enthusiasm and awareness of the use of English. Stories play important role in child literacy development.
Keywords: English, stories, teaching, learning, CALL, CLT, TPR, reading skills, activities.
INTRODUCTION
While teaching we have to motivate our learners in different ways because of their character, way of learning. The majority of young learners are really keen on games, songs, fairy tales or role plays. Teachers should work according to the needs and interests of the pupils and have to find new and interesting methods and ways to make lessons engaging. Storytelling can be used to enhance students reading and develop speaking, listening skills. Motivating young learners to learn English through stories at an early age provide them with the opportunity to stimulate their enthusiasm and awareness of the use of English. Stories play important role in child literacy development. Stories guide us through our whole life - from the moment we were born and it does not change when we become teenagers or adults. When we are children, our parents tell us or read us stories and fairy tales. When we are older, we can hear stories in radio or watch them on TV. As pupils, we have to create our own stories at school from time to time. As adults, we watch soap operas or films, read books or magazine stories. Stories are
for all of us, not just for children. We learn our mother tongue through stories. Therefore, it is natural to learn foreign language through them as well. Teachers should try to teach their students about language, life and culture through stories.
Stories told and read at home and school both entertain and educate young learners. Using stories in the classroom is fun, but the activity should not be considered trivial or frivolous. Indeed, there is strong support for storytelling in pedagogical theory. [1] Storytelling in English as a Second Language classrooms is often used informally by teachers to share cultural and personal information (e.g. telling English stories, or "growing-up" stories, or simply stories from one's experiences to communicate an idea). More recently, however, storytelling has been promoted as an effective way to teach English to non-native speakers.
LITERATURE REVIEW
Every word, every phrase, every preposition, every verb in a story... appears in context. That means we can learn which words naturally go together with other words. just like the combination of "appear" "in" and "context" in the last sentence. We might never learn a word without knowing how to use it, or a grammar rule without a real-life example to go with it. Unlike traditional language learning methods, with word lists, grammar rules and exercises, stories make sure that we learn things the way they're supposed to be learned. [2] The educational value of using stories and the technique of storytelling has always been undisputed throughout the world. Now more and more English as a foreign language teachers of young learners are using carefully selected stories from the world of children's literature because they have become more familiar with an acquisition-based methodology and because stories comply to the major objectives in most countries for foreign language teaching to young learners: linguistic, psychological, cognitive, social and cultural.
Stories are often (but not always) created through a collaborative process involving both the teacher and the students. The stories tend to be quirky and memorable (and to give students opportunities to be inventive), which heightens engagement. Coming up with stories together helps to bind a class as a community—akin to an "inside joke," family legend, or local tradition. The teacher explicitly discusses meanings of words and grammatical forms as the story is told—instead of asking students to memorize them beforehand as separate lists of rules and words. Grammatical explanations of new or difficult forms are interjected within the telling of the story itself. As the story develops, the teacher checks for comprehension and provides explanation as necessary. [3] Teachers use stories to supplement their core materials or to create self-contained units of work that constitute mini-syllabuses. In this way, a story provides the starting point and rich context for developing a wide variety of related language and learning activities involving students personally, creatively and actively in an all-round whole curriculum approach. Advocates of storytelling as a pedagogical tool claim many advantages. The most frequently mentioned advantages in the research literature are affective benefits: storytelling interests students, lowers
affective filters, and allows learning to take place more readily and more naturally within a meaningful, interactive communication context.
On the other hand, the game is a dialogue lesson - lively and active communication between the teacher and students, brought together by their joint fascination with the subject-specific communicative and cognitive activity. Students begin to think and to speak their second language fluently, without fear of making mistakes. The game helps to express specific knowledge through personal feelings. This encourages students to speak spontaneously, without resorting to a pattern or a cliché, which leads to the logical understanding of the utterance. [4] In this regard, at the same time they offer opportunities for inventive variations through relating the stories to the learners' own lives and imaginations. They virtually solve the 'problem' of motivation at a stroke. Moreover, they offer multiple possibilities for spinoff activities involving visual, tactile, and dramatic elements. Proponents claim that storytelling leads to improved language skills as students engage in storytelling and story enactments themselves. DISCUSSION
When teacher is able to create a safe and positive learning environment, students want to show up to class and stay in class. Creating a positive reinforcement in order for staff to support as a whole. Teachers should learn strategies through workshops and professional development trainings. We can also improve learners' English skills with the help of CALL method. Many technological affordances such as multimedia, digital storytelling, video conferencing and chatting can provide students with authentic aural input. One of the advantages of using CALL in teaching listening is providing students with comprehensible input and extensive listening for out of classroom times. One specific technology that can improve listening comprehension and understanding of academic language is podcasting as it provides students with opportunities for mobile learning. CALL can give a new role to teaching materials. Without computers, students cannot really influence the linear progression of the class content but computers can adapt to the student. Adapting to the student usually means that the student controls the pace of the learning. However, it also means that students can make choices in what and how to learn. They may even skip unnecessary items or doing remedial work on difficult concepts. Such control makes students feel more competent in their learning. Students tend to prefer exercises where they have control over content, such as branching stories and adventures. With these, the computer has the role of providing attractive context for the use of language rather than directly providing the language the student needs.
TPR Storytelling (Teaching Proficiency through Reading and Storytelling or TPRS) is a method of teaching foreign languages. TPRS lessons use a mixture of reading and storytelling to help students learn a foreign language in a classroom setting. The method works in three steps: in step one the new vocabulary structures to be learned are taught using a combination of translation, gestures,
and personalized questions. In step two, those structures are used in a spoken class story. Finally, in step three, these same structures are used in a class reading. Throughout these three steps, the teacher will use a number of techniques to help make the target language comprehensible to the students, including careful limiting of vocabulary, constant asking of easy comprehension questions, frequent comprehension checks, and very short grammar explanations known as "pop-up grammar". Many teachers also assign additional reading activities such as free voluntary reading, and there have been several easy novels written by TPRS teachers for this purpose. [5] Storytelling shares important characteristics with CLT. For example, both storytelling and CLT emphasize learner-centeredness, as well as cooperative and collaborative learning. In the storytelling classroom, activities are planned to encourage students' writing and speaking skills through meaningful, real-world experiences. For example, children practice writing and speaking by writing and telling stories to an audience of their classmates. This sounds a great deal like CLT, in which students may share information and achieve their learning goals as a group or team.
The cluster model of pedagogical education develops in the general areas related to teaching, creating educational literature, improving the scientific potential of pedagogical staff, continuity of education and training. This shows the general methodological nature of the problem. At the same time, these general areas are privatized in such areas as management and organization of education, types and areas of education, continuity and integration, teaching methods and tools. [6] In this way, we can apply cluster approach to teach English to the learners. Higher education produces teaching materials (stories with exercise or activities) to the secondary education schools. Both spheres higher and public education unite around the only aim. CONCLUSIONS
By using stories, students can begin to recognize and to understand how stories are structured— necessary knowledge and skills for both reading and writing. Theories behind the narrative paradigm, schema activation, and the role of story schemata in second language comprehension all support the view that storytelling can be a useful tool within the language classroom.
References:
1. 16 Reasons To Learn A Language Through Story. I Will Teach You A Language. (2020). Retrieved from https://www.iwillteachyoualanguage.com/blog/learn-a- language-through-stories.
2. Borich, J. (2020). Teaching Foreign Language Through Storytelling. Education Week. Retrieved from https://www.edweek.org/tm/articles/2012/04/02/tln_borich.html.
3. Mixon, M., & Temu, P. (2006). First Road to Learning Language through Stories. English Teaching Forum, 44(2), 14.
4. Mukhamedov, G. I., Khodjamkulov, U. N., Shofkorov, A. M., & Makhmudov,
K. S. (2020). Pedagogical education cluster: content and form. ISJ Theoretical & Applied Science, 01 (81), 252.
5. Saydakhmetova, D. (2020) Teaching Russian as a foreign language through stories. European Journal of Research and Reflection in Educational Sciences Vol. 8 No. 5, Progressive Academic Publishing, UK. Pp. 75-78
6. Teaching Russian through stories. Abc-russian.com. (2020). Retrieved from http://www.abc-russian.com/2014/12/teaching-russian-through-stories.html.
7. Tyabaev, A., Sedelnikova, S., & Voytovich, A. (2015). Student-Centered Learning: The Experience of Teaching International Students in Russian Universities. Procedia - Social And Behavioral Sciences, 215, 88. https ://doi.org/10.1016/j. sbspro.2015.11.578
