Making the most of storytelling

with young learners

 
 
 
 
Aims:
• Understand the importance of storytelling with young learners

Clarify strategies that may help you incorporate storytelling into your teaching

Materials required:
• A story relevant for language teaching

Appropriate for:
• Teachers with any level of experience

Applicable to learners:
• 6–12 year olds

Storytelling can be one of the most motivating classroom activities for young learners. There are many
benefits to storytelling such as promoting a feeling of well-being and relaxation. Stories encourage active
participation and the use of imagination and creativity. They also allow teachers to recycle vocabulary or a
specific language area.
However, not all stories are appropriate for the language classroom. Some may contain too many new
words or are very long, making it difficult for learners to concentrate. Whatever story you use needs to have
a beginning, middle and an ending — this helps learners understand the story and helps you maintain a
clear focus.
To make the telling of the story memorable, you can incorporate visuals of the characters or key vocabulary
words and use gestures and body movements to help with meaning. To keep learners focused on the story,
you can vary your volume and voice tone, use exaggerated character voices and maintain eye contact with
the learners.

Cambridge English Teacher © Cambridge University Press and Cambridge English Language Assessment 2014

 
  
 

Task

Choose a story you want to use in the classroom with your young learners or invent one yourself.

When you tell the story, use some of the strategies suggested above.

After the lesson make notes on how the learners responded and how you dealt with the story.

• Did the story motivate learners? Why / Why not?

• What other strategies can you use to help learners understand the story and get enjoyment from it?

Having identified these points, make an action plan for your next storytelling lesson by completing these
sentences.

• In my next storytelling lesson I will try to…(say what you are going to do)
• I will do this by … (say how you will do it)
• I will be able to see if learner motivation has increased because …(say what evidence will show an
increase in motivation)

Further reading

Garvie, E. (1990) Story as Vehicle, Teaching English to Young Children, Philadelphia: Multilingual Matters
Ltd.

Morgan, J & Rinvolucri, M. (1988), Once Upon a Time, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Wright, A. (1995) Storytelling with Children, Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Cambridge English Teacher © Cambridge University Press and Cambridge English Language Assessment 2014