Enhancing young learners' speaking via telling stories

Enhancing speaking can be very tough not only in a target language, though in native as well; because learning how to speak well and to sound attractive we all should be aware of the art of speaking and communication to succeed in a certain career. According to Frederike Klippel the way we sound when we speak a foreign language has a strong influence on the assumptions other people make about us and the judgments they make about the sort of people we are. It is interesting to note that pronunciation or the study of intonation has been relatively neglected in recent years - many courses do not deal with it specifically at all, preferring to leave it to a process of osmosis - yet most learners attach great importance to it. Our pronunciation is also intimately connected with our feelings about ourselves; our confidence (lack of it), our sense of identity, and our self-esteem.

According to my experience a teacher will take a story as a suitable resource for teaching and learning a foreign language. A story is something that everybody is familiar with, a majority of people used to listen to stories and like them very much. Children want to enjoy a character’s adventures and like to distinguish between good and evil. Having worked with children’s stories I have made my own concept. Although a teacher works with children who are involved in learning English very much, it is very important to choose a suitable level for a certain class. They study English as their hobby and this is why they are very involved. They want to learn and the researcher has freedom to create lessons in my way. Stories give me many opportunities for practice everything children have learnt.

In the Storytelling Handbook (Ellis and Brewster, 2011, p.1) state:

• ·    Stories are motivating and fun; they create a deep interest and a desire to continue learning.

• ·    Listening to stories is a shared social experience; it provokes a shared response of laughter, sadness, excitement and anticipation.

• ·    Stories exercise the imagination; children can become personally involved in a story as they identify with the characters and try to interpret the narrative and illustrations.

• ·    Stories are a useful tool in linking fantasy and the imagination with the child’s real world; they provide a way of enabling children to make sense of their everyday life.

• ·    Listening to stories allows the teacher to introduce or revise new vocabulary and sentence structures by exposing the children to language.

• · Stories help students of all levels to understand literature, they carry ideological massages.

Also, most of the teachers believe that there is no universal rule for teaching speaking and it only depends on a teacher conducting the lesson to make it unique, useful and effective. There are no universal techniques developed by teachers or researchers which could possibly be the model for all. Number of them said that it usually depends on particular situation, class, age, level, and even nationality or the cultural background as well. Surprisingly, these concerns were confirmed by some of the teachers who have comparatively more experience.

This shows that each teacher who is conducting speaking skills lessons or sessions should himself or herself try to come up with the best ways and techniques to teach the class. Accordingly, it is essential to note that, while observing some of the teacher's lessons (who are experienced already) I witnessed the clear instance of what is stated above. They all had different techniques and strategies which fit their needs in regards with their classes.

Furthermore, the work of the Canadian educator Kieran Egan (2011) provides insights about educational development that are especially applicable to elementary and middle school language programs. Egan describes development in terms of the characteristics that determine how the learner makes sense of the world. He thinks of educational development as a process of accumulating and exercising layers of ability to engage with the world. As individuals develop, they add new layers of education without leaving behind the qualities characteristic of earlier layers. As he puts it, “Each stage contributes something vital and necessary to the mature adult’s ability to make sense of the world and human experience”. Egan distinguishes four educational layers: the mythic layer, the romantic layer, the philosophic layer and the ironic layer. The final stage, the ironic layer, is made up of essential contributions from all the earlier stages, governed by the ironic orientation to the world.

The mythic layer: Ages 4 to 5 through 9 to 10 years:

•For these early elementary-school learners, emotions have primary importance. The students always want to know how to feel about what they are learning. They make sense of things through emotional and moral categories (e.g., good versus bad, happy versus sad, etc.).

•Young children are drawn into a topic or an idea through simple polar opposites. For example, they find it hard to resist the appeal of very tiny versus really huge, freezing 21 cold versus burning hot, a wicked witch versus the perfect princess, and so on. Once presented in this way, concepts can be developed by filling in between the poles.

•The world of the imagination is vivid and real to these children, so they move easily in and out of a world where animals talk or activities take place on a magical trip to another world.

• •Learners in the mythic layer often believe that the world thinks and feels as they do.

• •These learners interpret the world in terms of absolutes, in the same way that a fairy tale world operates. The wicked witch is all bad; the daring prince is all good.

•Using story form is the ideal approach for teaching mythic layer learners. Like a fairy tale, instruction should have a clear and strong beginning, middle, and end; it should introduce things using strong opposites; it should address absolute meanings; and it should have strong emotional and moral appeal. Although it does not have to be a story, instruction should incorporate these strong story elements.