Storytelling:

Characteristics
Author 1:

Mr. sc. Mauro Dujmović, Visoka (2006).Storytelling as a method of EFL teaching.

1. Stories are motivating and funny and can help develop positive attitudes towards the foreign
language and language learning.
2.– Stories exercise the imagination
3- Listening to stories in class is a shared social experience.
4- Listening to stories allows the teacher to introduce or revise new vocabulary and sentence
structures by exposing the children to language in varied, memorable and familiar contexts,
which will enrich their thinking and gradually enter their own speech.
5-Listening to stories develops the child's listening and concentrating skills

Author 2 :

Fitzgibbon B. Heidi and Wilhelm H. Kim (1998). storytelling in ESL/EFL classrooms. TESL
reporter,volume (31-32), pp. 21-31.
1-Storytelling interests students, lowers affective filters and allows learning to take place more
readily and more naturally within a meaningful interactive communication context.
2-Students need to use their abilities to organize evaluate and interpret information.
3-Storytelling fosters teaching learner collaboration,learner centered models more pluralistic
inclusive approaches to instruction.

Author 3:

E. Martin Pedersen (1995). Storytelling and the art of teaching. Vol 33 No 1 page 2.
Pedersen (1995)advocates teachers as storytellers and storytelling as a pedagogical method
especially when working with ESL children. Stories help to communicate literary and cultural
heritage while also helping learners better develop a sense of rhetorical structure which assists
in the study of literature and in their own writing.

1.Oral stories develop listening skills in a unique way. The listeners benefit from observing non-
polished speech created on-the-spot.
2.Stories have numerous affective benefits for social and emotional development.
3.A story session is a time to share feelings. A relaxed, happy relationship between storyteller
and listener is established, drawing them together and building mutual confidence.
4.Stories help children to know themselves and to know others so they can cope with the
psychological problems of growing up.

Author 4:
David Holt and Bill Moneey (2005) The Storyteller's Guide (American Storytelling)
Paperback .
David Holt and Bill Mooney (2005) comment on the importance of stories to teach
multiculturalism stories tell of our similarities and differences our strengths and weaknesses our
hopes and dreams they have the power to teach us understanding and tolerance this is a
powerful tool,fg storytelling is also promoted as fostering natural communication allowing
students to experience authentic language input

Characteristics:
_Storytelling introduce students to multiculturalism.
_Promotes fostering natural communication.
_ Allows students to experience authentic language input.

Author 5:

Andrew Wright (2009) Storytelling With Children Second Edition Paperback.

Andrew Wright (2009) holds that stories, which rely so much on words, offer a major and
constant source of language experience for children. Moreover, he suggests that stories can
motivate children, stimulate children’s imagination and arouse children’s interests, etc.

Characteristics:
1. Stories can provide natural repetition. When the students read the stories, they tend to pay
attention to the key words, and new language can be naturally repeated in stories.
2. Children have another instinct in language learning – picking up chunks.
3. Children’s listening skill can be developed. While children listen to stories, they try to guess
the meaning of the new words and to grasp the main idea.

Objectives:
Author 1:

John Morgan & Mario Rinvolucri (1983) Once upon a time: using stories in the language
classroom. 120 pages.

John Morgan and Mario Rinvolucri (1983) discuss use of stories as leadings to listening
comprehension activities and as prompts for written comprehension questions, after stories are
told by the teacher student may be ask to retell the story to practice speaking or to recall details
and sequence. Stories also provide a context to discuss grammatical points.
Objectives:
_ Improvement of listening comprehension.
_ Provide students opportunities to encourage oral production.
_ Introduce students to grammar in a true to life context.

Author 2

Mr. sc. Mauro Dujmović, Visoka (2006).Storytelling as a method of EFL teaching.

_Reinforce conceptual development in children (for example, colour, size, shape, time, cause
and effect, and so on).
_ Reinforce in Learning development . This major category covers: – Reinforcing thinking
strategies (for example, comparing, classifying, predicting, problem–solving, hypothesizing,
planning, and so on).
_Development of strategies for learning English (for example, guessing the meaning of new
words, training the memory, self–testing, and so on)
_ Development of study skills (for example, making, understanding and interpreting charts and
graphs, making and learning to use dictionaries, organizing work, and so on).

Author 3:
K. Sean Buval, What are the benefits of storytelling?, 2010

-To open a window into the minds of the listeners.

-To provide a chance to experience a variety of emotions without the risk of those
emotions themselves.
-To awake portions of emotional lives that may have lain dormant or have not yet been
explored.
-To provide opportunities to know how past generations responded to challenges.
-To let us know how new generations are encountering and dealing with similar
opportunities or the brand-new challenges they face.

Author 4:

Rodas R. , Diana L. (2011). TPR and Storytelling as strategies for teaching English as a
foreign language to pre-school children.(Master thesis). Universidad de Cuenca. Cuenca-
Ecuador.

Storytelling incites children to be creative, to experiment and to think. This way, the
learning experience becomes a dialogue where children and teachers participate
together and negotiate to try and construct meaning out of a particular situation.

Types:

Digital storytelling:

1 Author:

Hartley J. ,& McWilliam K. (Eds.) .(2009). Story Circle: Digital Storytelling Around
the World. West sussex, WS: Blackwell.
”Is a workshop-based practice in which people are taught to use digital media to create short
audio video stories, usually about their own lives. The idea is that this puts the universal human
delight narrative and self-expression into the hands of everyone. It may include verbal
Gales,making lists (loves and hates ), and writing make-believe scenarios, as well as scripting
what will become each person's own story.”

2 Author:

Bernard R. R. (2008). Digital Storytelling: A Powerful Technology Tool for the 21st
Century Classroom. Theory Into Practice, 47 (3), p 220-228.Doi:
10.1080/00405840802153916.

”Digital storytelling is a technology application that is well-positioned to take advantage of user-

contributed content and to help teachers overcome some of the obstacles to productively using
technology in their classrooms. At its core, digital storytelling allows computer users to become
creative storytellers through the traditional processes of selecting a topic, conducting some
research, writing a script, and developing an interesting story. This material is then combined
with various types of multimedia, including computer-based graphics, recorded audio, computer-
generated text, video clips, and music so that it can be played on a computer, uploaded on a
web site, or burned on a DVD.We are currently witnessing dramatic growth in the educational
use of digital storytelling, as a convergence of affordable technologies interacts with a
contemporary agenda for today’s classroom, as illustrated in Figure 1.”

“Teachers who are able to create their own digital stories may find that they can be particularly
helpful not only in engaging students in the content but also in facilitating discussion about the
topics presented in a story and helping make abstract or conceptual content more
understandable. A multimedia-rich digital story can serve as an anticipatory set or hook to
capture the attention of students and increase their interest in exploring new ideas. Teacher-
created digital stories may also be used to enhance current lessons within a larger unit, as a
way to facilitate discussion about the topics presented in a story and as a way to make abstract
or conceptual content more understandable (Robin, 2008).”
Story theater:

Hines, M. (1995). “Story Theater.” FORUM, Vol. 33, No. 1, January-March 1995. p.6. En
[http://dosfan.lib.uic.edu/usia/E-USIA/forum/vols/vol33/no1/P6.htm].
“Story Theater takes a text (a piece of fiction, a fable, or a folk tale) and students act it out. They
have not written this text, but if there is narration, they recite that narration. They do not write
dialogues; but if characters in the story have dialogue, then students will speak that dialogue.
Students will orchestrate the drama that a story portrays, choosing sound effects, props, and
blackboard pictures to provide background. They decide who stands where and what actions
are needed to bring the story alive… in a special way .”

Collaborative Storytelling:

Liu C., Liu K. , Chena G. , Liu B. (2010). Children's collaborative storytelling with
linear and nonlinear approaches. Procedia Social and Behavioral Sciences, 2, p
4787–4792. Doi: 10.1016/j.sbspro.2010.03.771
“Collaborative storytelling is an imperative and innovative pathway to children’s learning.
Collaborative storytelling can be developed in linear and nonlinear approaches. Linear stories
contain exactly one begin, one middle and one end. All children collaborate on a shared story in
the form of relay and no branches can be developed. Children deeply rely on evaluating the
relationship, continuity and coherence of story path before sequentially participating in building
up the story. By contrast, nonlinear stories enable children to link and orchestrate different
ideas. Children can thus integrate other’s episodes to develop different branches of stories.
Since the linear and nonlinear approaches facilitate children to develop stories in different
manners, children’s perception towards linear and nonlinear approaches may be different, which
may affect their motivation and ultimate success in collaborative storytelling”.

Visual storytelling:

Nancy Kalow’s Visual Storytelling: The Digital Video Documentary is a publication of the
Center for Documentary Studies at Duke University. © 2011.
“ The Visual Storytelling approach leads to good technical quality and engaging storytelling by
taking advantage of the inherent strengths of the camera, namely closeness, showing rather
than telling, and shooting to edit”

TPR storytelling:

Rodas R. , Diana L. (2011). TPR and Storytelling as strategies for teaching English as a
foreign language to pre-school children.(Master thesis). Universidad de Cuenca. Cuenca-
Ecuador.
“Students are exposed to authentic and abundant language in short periods of time providing
them with comprehensible messages that are immersed in context in a natural and useful way
and interiorized through a great amount of repetition. Teachers direct their efforts toward their
students rather than grammar, the textbook or the curriculum; they are facilitators who lead to
language proficiency by using the target language in context and making it comprehensible and
interesting to students. With TPRS, students understand the story through the action and the
repetition of the vocabulary within the story and acquire sentence structure, vocabulary, and
grammar through the input provided by the teacher.
According to what has been stated, the class should begin with Total Physical Response and
the introduction of the vocabulary word or structure with a gesture or action. Next, students
participate in cooperative creative story-building process with the help of the teacher who asks
personalized questions (yes/no questions) about the story using a high number of repetitions
with the vocabulary contained in the story.”

Age:
Susan Engel, Bennington College, Bennington, Vermont, Edited from the Zero to
Three Journal, December 1996/January 1997.

From 0 to 3:
Children are born with no language, let alone narrative skills, but that within 24-30
months most have learned the rudiments of storytelling: how to sequence events, how
to set action in place and time, and organize a story around characters.
By the time most children are three or four they can tell many kinds of stories:
autobiography, fiction, and reports they have overheard. They can tell stories with other
people, and to other people. By the time most children are adolescents, stories both
formal, conversational, and unspoken, pervade daily life. In adulthood narratives provide
a form for organizing huge amounts of information and serve a host of powerful
psychological and social functions.
Nature of storytelling changes as the child develops:
An early stage: At a first stage children are attentive and responsive observers to their
parents’ tales, they do not repeat words and as a way of showing interest and or
keeping the mother going, and respond with emotion. Also, the repetition of this stories
give them a chance to internalize the story and master the pieces.
A second stage: At a later stage children begin to participate, adding elements to the
story, taking on greater pieces of the authorial responsibility.
A third stage: Finally, by the time children are three they can tell a whole story by
themselves, or contribute pieces to a parent’s story that the parent didn’t even know
about.

From babyhood to early teens:

Pam Myers, BSEd, (2012, September, 12), Storytelling for children, retreived from:
http://childdevelopmentinfo.com/child-activities/storytelling-for-children/
As young children listen to a storyteller, they’re hearing inflections in speech and words
presented in a compelling and fascinating way. Older children can expand their
vocabulary and learn skills that may serve them well if they decide to act in plays later.
Storytelling also presents certain literary devices in a demonstrative and memorable
way. Children will see and hear the building of plot, characterization, climax, conflict,
conclusion, etc. Perhaps rhyme or poetic prose will be used to tell the story, allowing
children to hear the way the language sounds and how that can add to the story.
Without books or illustrations, children have to remember key points of the plot and
character names. This is an excellent exercise in memorization skills and it also may
help guide children when they wish to write a story of their own. Storytelling opens
children’s minds to other cultures and life philosophies; it develops the inner world of
imagination and creative thinking. Children tap into their imaginative minds and provide
their own imagery.
If you’re telling stories to a group of kids who aren’t all your own, stories about life in the
past, in other cultures, or animals make good stories. Telling things from a unique point
of view will get children to think about what life is like for others, which is a good
precursor for developing empathy.

Teenagers:

Gail De Vos, 2003, Storytelling for Young Adults: A Guide to Tales for Teens,
British library cataloguing.
Teenagers are, contrary to popular opinion (including their own), very active and vibrant
storytellers, using a rich repertoire of tales at a high level of competence as a means of
social currency within their everyday conversational exchanges. Teenagers tell personal
experience narrative as anybody else, but it is the broad range of stories within their
wider repertoires that is both surprising and significant, stories that display high levels of
traditionality in their structures, motifs, and concerns. In fact, teenagers are the
unrecognized bearers and guardians of oral narrative traditions.
Storytelling, like reading books and watching films, is an activity that engages the
attention and the emotions of an audience. If the storyline works, teenagers enter into
the story and identifies with character or situation portrayed. It is by entering into the
story and “living” in it that teenagers are open to the benefits of the experience.
Listening to stories can serve as an outlet and testing ground for the strong emotions
that young adults are experiencing and, in many instances, trying to
camouflage.Through this technique teenagers are able to try out their own dreams,
fantasies, fears, and concerns without experiencing real-life consequences. Storytelling
keeps the young adult safe from consequences while strong, even extreme, emotions
and roles are tried out in the stories.