Storytelling as a way of developing students’ communicative skills

Abstract

The article is devoted to the analysis of storytelling as specific teaching technique and the way of using it in the combination with the other English language teaching methods at all the stages of an English lesson. Storytelling activities are taken into consideration as alternative to the traditional way of increasing communicative proficiency. They are described as the form of work designed for motivating students, encouraging their active participation, use of imagination, creativity and cooperation between a teacher and learners. It is shown that storytelling activities are a good way of recycling and memorizing linguistic units as repetition is typical for narration. Such exercises may help students improve their general knowledge and to be able to communicate on various subjects. Storytelling is viewed both as a kind of time-filler as well as introductive or illustrative exercise and the activity playing the central role in communicative situation created for developing learner’s communicative skills. Storytelling exercises may be viewed as integral parts of other activities: warming-up exercises, guessing or discussion games, ranking and problem-solving activities. They seem to be helpful for passing new lexical items from the short-term to more reliable long-term memory.

It is pointed out that storytelling activities usually require some preparation. Storytelling games make use of variety of techniques. They may be enacted around the certain topic, may be based on the use of active vocabulary or learners“ own experience.

The set of storytelling activities efficient for the development of students’ communicative competence has been offered. It is proved that storytelling exercises give learners the opportunity to sense the work of language as living communication. They can cover a wide spectrum of individual preferences in ways of learning. It is shown that storytelling is suitable for all levels of proficiency. Narration can help students to become more language curious and more confident in their everyday speech and writing. It is shown that storytelling may be based on team work in order to maximize ways of making every learner experience success. It is pointed out that some storytelling activities may have quite a complicated structure consisting of a number of stages. Some of them can be used as warming-up exercises some activities can help students to integrate new knowledge into existing knowledge. The storytelling exercises offered in the article are easily adaptable to different teacher’s aims and different learners’ needs. Such activities may be challenging but they get students motivated and help to create learning environment which leads students to success and joy of learning. They promote a feeling of well being and relaxation.