Muhmmad Bilal Anwar Lecturer in English FCCU

Learning Through Stories

Learning through Stories

FIRST ROAD FOR LEARNING AND TEACHING

All learners, from babies to grandmothers, learn better with stories. Stories are energizers. Even hard truths can be taught 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. Story telling is fundamental to education and specifically to language teaching. Reading or telling stories in a class is a natural way to learn a new language. Stories can also lead to harmony, understanding, and peaceful resolution of conflict.

Stories from around the world are excellent to use in classroom, but the teachers also need to use the stories from students’ own culture and heritage. Using local and national stories insure that the students know the background culture and may already know the story. This familiarity lowers the young learners’ stress and reduces anxiety in the classroom.

1. Stories as Culture Bearers

Unfortunately, radio, television, and other technologies are fast replacing the elders who, in traditional family huts, used to tell folktales and fables by the fireplace. But today, parents, children, and grandchildren listening to radio or watching television. In fact, very little of their heritage is being transmitted.

But the teachers can make an effort to continue the tradition of storytelling, Today’s children will have little of their culture and heritage to pass on to the next generation.

2. Stories as solutions to large classes and limited resources

In many countries, a shortage of teaching/learning resources is a major constraint. Teachers can use stories to teach language and to introduce other subjects, such as HIV/AIDS problem. Storytelling can enable the teachers to handle large classes of pupils even in the absence of books.

3. For Speaking Skills

a. Storytelling with objects. Use objects such as toys, forks, cups to start the stories. For example, divide the students in the groups of three to five and distribute four to five objects to each group. Ask each of the group to make a story that includes all of their objects.

b. Storytelling with pictures. Use pictures in the same way as objects were used in the previous activity. Distribute four to five pictures to each group. Make sure each student has one picture. Ask each group to make up a story that includes all the pictures.

4. For Listening Skills

a. Read or tell simple stories to the students. You can use pictures or small objects. b. After initial storytelling, ask the learners tell the story. This technique is the most effective if it involve several students. c. Choose one person to re-tell the story, then ask others to continue the story. d. Let all the students tell the story unless it is finished. In short, let each student tell two or three sentences of the story.

5. For Reading

Find an easy version of story that the children can read. Read the story aloud the first time, or let the readers read it silently. Or let the students read the story aloud with each student reading one sentence. One method of introducing a story is Choral Reading, in which the teacher reads a sentence or phrase and the class repeat it.

Caution: After the first reading, ask comprehension questions to find out what the students understood. Help them with the parts they do not understand. Important: Use the same story for several different activities. One story provides rich material for other activities, for example, discussion of values, role play, creating small playlet, even creating individual books.

6. For Writing

Have the learners draw or paint a scene from a story and then write at least one line from the story under the picture. Use the variation of the speaking activities above (storytelling with objects or storytelling with pictures).

After the learners create the story, have the group dictate it as one person writes it down. Have the students write individual stories, using objects or pictures. Then they can compare their stories within small groups.

ADVANTAGES “LEARNING THROUGH STORIES”

Stories make students aware that English is not just words, structures and idioms, but it is a lively, dramatic and versatile means of communication. It emphasizes that learning and teaching should be pleasurable. Using story in the younger learner (YL) classroom gives children, who are shy when speaking a foreign language, a character to “hide behind.”

Any Questions???

Thank You!!!