Safet Ahmed is a last year student teacher at "Preschool pedagogy and a foreign language" at Konstantin Preslavsky University of Shumen, College Dobrich. She loves working with children. She imagines herself as a teacher at a kindergarten, surrounded by happy children. 

Email: Safet92gizem18@gmail.com

 

Note

This article is part of Project 08-61/24.01.2024 of Dobrich College, Shumen University, Bulgaria.
 

Introduction

From a very early age, we are accustomed to having stories read to us. They develop imagination and when read expressively, they captivate the child. This aids easy memorization of words and whole phrases. Reading books in a foreign language, accompanied by illustrations and demonstration, is an interesting way to introduce the new language to little ones. 

 

Storytelling

Storytelling is part of the child’s life. Through stories we can develop all language skills in English, acquire words and grammar structures, contribute to the whole children’s development (Ellis and Brewster 2014). Ellis and Brewster (2014) and Brewster et al (2002) outline the basic advantages of using stories with young learners. They include motivation, fun, language acquisition, improving memory, developing imagination, realizing cross-curricular work and links between home and school.

Stories can be told, read (where the listener benefits from the illustrations), or watched as video clips. Mourao (2015) summarizes the benefits of using picture books. Hird (2018) describes the benefits of using story videos. Ilieva (2022b: 124) claims that “Video materials unite sound and image, colour and motion, they provoke emotions and lay context for a variety of suitable activities. There is a wealth of free on-line video clips suitable for young and very young learners; they can be chosen according to the topic, grammar or vocabulary covered, length.” When we use video stories, we unite the advantages of storytelling and video clips.

My experiment confirmed Ilieva’s (2015) statement that

“When we read a book to the group or when we sing and recite together, children remember the text no matter how complex the structures are.” (Ilieva 2022a: 311)

She insists on finding materials with “a text (with sentences) and not only enumerating words.” This is important for uniting storytelling methodology with lexical approach: learning language as a whole (Lewis 1993).
 

Methodology: Experiment and observation

I would like to share my observations over my 4-years-old daughter. She is the subject of my experimental work. I read her a few stories (I wanted to see experimentally if English is easily acquired through stories).

As methods I use experimental work and observation. I allocate 1 hour each day. This hour is divided into two 30-minute sessions: one is in the morning before we start our routine activities, and the second one is in the evening before bath and bedtime. I accentuate the whole phrases in the story, articulating them clearly and emphasizing them. Some phrases, as in the book I describe in the experiment below, are suitable for demonstration. While working with the book "Stop and Go," I included a playful approach, creating a track in the room together with the child; I acted as the navigator, and she went through the track. At places where we placed a "pedestrian crossing," I would say "Stop," and when she looked both sides, I would say "Go" for her to proceed. After successfully completing the track, we switch roles, which helps improve pronunciation. This is how I approach every story I read to my child. I incorporate as many ways of engagement as possible.
 

Results

One of the stories I used in our small-scale experiment was “Stop and go“ which teaches children traffic rules and the rules for crossing the road at the traffic lights through the characters’ experience. There were also illustrations to visualize the information and the happenings. While we were reading the story the child was very excited about the characters’ experiences. A day later I saw that my experiment was successful: while we were crossing the street she said “Mum, we have to reach the zebra crossing – it looks like a zebra. (in Bulgarian)” and pointed to it. The same day, a few hours later we stopped at that so exciting zebra crossing. The traffic lights were red. While we were waiting patiently for the green to come so that we could cross the street, a woman crossed the street without looking left or right and without minding the red light. Seeing this, my daughter said in Bulgarian “She did it wrong! This is not correct! She doesn’t follow the rules! A car could hit her. This is dangerous. We read about it yesterday. Remember that story, about the traffic lights?” I had explained her the rules of crossing the street, the role of the traffic lights, the traffic rules and the dangers before but this was the first time she realized what it meant, how to behave as a pedestrian and what right and wrong when crossing the street was. Therefore, I consider our experience with story reading positive and fruitful and I am continuing using it with my daughter and will use it next year at the kindergarten when I start work.

The other method I found successful and would like to share is acquisition through suitable video clips of stories and songs where children listen to the text and see what is going on. This way my daughter acquires whole phrases like Are you ready?, or words describing animals, numbers, and colours. When language is well visualized it is easily understood; it develops visual memory and child’s thinking. The child develops links between language and images, acquires grammar structures: I have noticed in different situations that she uses correctly DO, DID (present and past simple tense) and CAN. She has built comparatively rich vocabulary stock in English for her age only through stories (either read by me or watched on clips). She uses correctly colours in English, she can describe objects and animals, and name some of them in English, she knows the letters and numbers in English and sings English songs for children. Using video clips for English language learning and acquisition, we can create cross-curricular links to other subjects. In our case the other subjects are Mathematics (counting), Nature (animals) and Arts. My daughter started painting the film characters, choosing the colours according to their personages in the film and naming colours in English, explaining what and why with words from the video. For example, when we go for a walk, she points out objects, animals, plants, and says their colours. When we play in the yard, she uses phrases from the story "Stop and Go" like "Mum, stop!" or "Mum, go!“. In the kindergarten she also switches to English sometimes. One day they had dry beans for lunch in the kindergarten. She said in English “I don’t eat. I want to eat soup.” This shows incomplete grammatical structure – the first sentence lacks object, but she can form negative of the word in the present simple tense correctly. From advertising and other videos, she has acquired eyeshadow, lipstick and other make-up components. One morning she told me “Mum, you need a bit of make-up.” showing her cheeks. She pronounced only make-up in English, the rest of the sentence was in Bulgarian.

These examples convinced me that the storytelling and video methodologies work well and can be successfully used with very young learners. Moreover, storytelling develops still greater interest in the foreign language and motivation for learning it. 

 

Conclusions

My experiment with stories and video materials showed that the child acquired lexis, structures (tenses and the use of modal and auxiliary verbs), that English picture books aid developing social and existential skills (crossing the road), they develop thinking and analyzing (right and wrong attitude in a situation) and last but not least heighten interest and motivation, focus the child’s attention on topics and issues previously discussed in native language.  

Reading fairy tales will never go out of style. It fosters the love for reading and languages. It nurtures children's imagination, leading to creativity and the development of their potential.
 

References

Brewster, J., Ellis, G., Girard, D., (2002). The Primary English Teacher’s Guide. London: Longman, Penguin.

Ellis, G., Brewster, J., (2014). Tell it again! The storytelling handbook for primary English language teachers. London: British Council.

Hird, E., (2018). Using story videos in the Primary classroom. World of fun. Cambridge University Press and UCLES 2018, https://worldoffun.cambridge.org/storage/app/media/Using%20story%20videos%20in%20the%20primary%20classroom.pdf 

Ilieva, Zh., (2015). Acquiring Expressions through Texts for Children: Lexical Approach with Young and Very Young Learners. Humanizing Language Teaching, 17:6, Dec 2015, http://old.hltmag.co.uk/dec15/index.htm, http://old.hltmag.co.uk/dec15/idea.htm.

Ilieva, Zh., (2022a). Developing Materials for Young Learners. Annual of Konstantin Preslavsky University of Shumen, Faculty of Humanities, Proceedings of the Jubilee International Scientific Conference “Humanities – Traditions and Challenges”, Vol. XXХIII A / 1, Linguistics, Translation, Media Studies and Teaching Methodology, Shumen: Konstantin Preslavsky Publishing House, 2022, pp. 309-317. ISSN 1311-7300 (print), ISSN 2603-512Х (online) https://www.shu.bg/wp-content/uploads/file-manager-advanced/users/faculties/fhn/izdaniya/godishnici/2022/1/God_FHN_T1.pdf

Ilieva, Zh., (2022b). Free Online Video Materials in Teaching English to Young and Very Young Learners. Edu&Tech (Education and Technologies Journal), 2022, 13:1, pp. 124-129. ISSN 1314-1791 (print), ISSN 2535-1214 (online) https://www.edutechjournal.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/1_2022_124-129.pdf

Lewis, M., (1993). The lexical approach. Hove: Language Teaching Publications.

Mourao, S., (2015). The potential of picturebooks with young learners. In J. Bland (ed.), Teaching English to Young Learners. Critical Issues in Language Teaching with 3-12 year olds. London: Bloomsbury Academic, pp. 199-218.

Mack, S., H. Ziefert, (2018). Stop and Go! South Orange: Blue Apple Books.

 

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