In learning language, there are some
approaches to make the children as learners gather the target language. One of
the approaches is through a story.
Cameron (2001) said that stories as the holistic approaches to language
teaching and learning. And to answer some question about learning through
stories, I try to hold a Cameron’s book as a basic knowledge about that.
For the first question that was proposed; do
you think stories can be used to help children learn English? In this case,
I fully believe that stories can be used to help children to learn English. We
can know how important and useful the use of stories by analyzing from the
examining the text in the story and analyzing the discourse organization of
stories, and also the language that is used in the stories. In learning English
through stories the process involving and even improving the students’ skills.
Here, like as story telling is an oral activity and it has a shape they do
because they are designed to be listened to and participate in. And as we know,
in oral activity there are two process; receptive skill and productive skill.
For the example in the class situation; the teacher bring a book story to the
class, then s/he tells a story to the children by using English. When the
teacher tells the story and the students pay attention to it, it was a process
of receptive skill. And after that, when the teacher doing communicating to the
students by asking e.g “than, what happen next” or even asking them, “Who
is wear the red gloves?” it evokes the students to answer and speak in
English, and it is a productive skill. In other case, the teacher can use other
words that have same similar consonants (alliteration) to make the students
learn the new words in English. From these my arguments, I believe that stories
can help the children to learn English. Wright also adds that stories are
frequently claimed to bring many benefits to young learners (1997), while
Bettelheim said that stories can serve as metaphors for society or for our
deepest psyche (1976).
For the next question; what aspects or
elements do stories offer for language learning? To answer this question, I
still make reference to Cameron who said that stories offer a whole imaginary
world, created by language, which children can enter and enjoy, learning
language as they go (2001:159). Just like I said before that in learning
English language by the stories involves the students’ skill in listening and
speaking (oral activity). Here, the first step is bringing the students to the
story world and enter to it. The teacher are demanded to choose the best
stories to make the children enjoy it.
Because of the stories would engage imaginary world, the children are
asked to play with their imaginary. It means that children connect the language
that was delivered form the story with their imagination. There is correlation
between the knowledge of students with building new knowledge from the story.
In other one, stories offer children to
learn from the character in the stories. It is a process of moral delivering
through stories. In other words, the teacher directs the children to take the
moral from the story. In the first, they have to know about the good and bad
characters in the stories by teachers’ help. Then, they also learn form the
stories about the characters become to. It deals with the children’s period in
that time as the imitators. Stories also provide children who have the
linguistic, spatial, and even bodily-kinesthetic intelligences to learn a
foreign language optimally.
For the example; when the teacher tells a
story to the children in learning English, the process of imaging of story in
the children’s mind also train their spatial intelligence. And when the
children are asked to act out like as the characters in the story, it trains
the children to has braveness to do something with their friend and course, it
will accommodate them to learn a foreign language.
To answer the next question about what
factors teachers do need to consider when delivering the stories? From read
Cameron’s book, I conclude that there are some factors that teacher need to
consider when delivering the stories. For the first one, the teacher needs to
consider the quality of stories. Cameron (2001:160) mentions that the teacher
look fist at what we mean by stories, differentiating stories from other kinds
of text in the terms of what they contain and how they are composed. In this
context, we have to see that not all the texts are story and not all the
stories are text that we can tells to the children. The teacher can choose or even
makes the story useful for foreign language learning.
For the second one, the teacher has to
consider from discourse organization of stories (p.160-162). In discourse of
organizing the stories, the teacher can analyze it from occurring events happen
at different point inn temporal sequence. In other ways, organizing feature of
stories is their thematic structure. Here, we can find some central interest
factor that changes over the timescale of the story, for example when the evil
overcome in the story. In line with it, Propp (1958: 161) analyzed the
structure of typical stories has some features that have been found in analysis
of how the people tells stories in their conversations.
For the third one, the teacher can consider
what the language that is used in the stories. According to Cameron (p.163),
children’s stories contain uses of language that are considered typical of
poetic and literary text. In this case, the teacher can choose the stories has
good quality. In the story, there devices offer opportunities for the children
to learn a foreign language. Children can learn a language from the device in the
story that contain the parallelism (predictability + surprise +, or
repetition + change are reflecting patterns of repetition of language). For
example, the teacher use the story Little Red Riding Hood (LRRH) which is
contain the dialogue between LRRH and the Wolf; “Grandmother, what big eyes
you’ve got”, the wolf said “All better to see you with…”, then the
LRRH asks “Grandmother, what big ears you’ve got”, the wolf said “All
better to hear you with…”, and so on, so forth. Here, the process of
repetition happens. Naturally, the children will remember what the language
that was used by them from the repetition. In other case, the children try to
speak up when the teacher asks them why the grandmother has big eyes. Then,
other devices like as rich vocabulary. The stories are designed to
entertain and stories may include unusual word. From the story, the children try
to pick up the words that they enjoy and in this process, the stories offer the
space for growth in their vocabulary. Other ways, the teachers can bring a
picture to make the students more understand about the plot of story. For
example in the class situation, the teacher arrives to the class with brings
the story. When s/he is telling, s/he is inserting a new word. When the
students do not understand about the new words, the teacher explains the word
through picture. So here, the students gain double in learning a foreign
language.
And for the last question, what kind of
stages and props do teachers need to design?
The kind of stages to teach children in
gathering English language can be done with the simple way based on the
sufficient way. In other words, the teacher can modify the techniques to tell
the story to the children not only in the stages. In simple way, the teacher
can bring the real book to have a story in the class. The teacher can bring a
story book has a contain pictures and tells the story in the front of the
children.
For the first one, the teacher can design
what the story that they want to tell to the children by choosing a story
(authentic story) or making good story. Then, in the class, teacher can tell
the story by sit down and the children around him/her. Or the teacher my stand
up and arrange the chair for the children to be circle and s/he walks while
tell a story. The teacher also does not forget to bring a picture to help the
children understand about the new words. Other way, the teacher can bring props
like as the word card to help the children to understand the words in the
story.
Created on April 16, 2012
