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Previous researches have shown convincing results about that. Besides improving children‟s language ability, storytelling could also:1 develop cross cultural
understanding, since a story is culture-bound to the background setting Al-Jafar Buzzelli, 2004; Ghosn, 2004, 2 form the children‟s identity by relating themselves to
the characters of the story Gadzikowski, 2007, 3 relate the association between the events in the story with their own experiences Kuyvenhoven, 2009, 4
developchildren‟s social ability, such as doing kindness to other people Zeece, 2009 as well as self-regulation Cooper, 2007.
Furthermore, Damayanti 2007 recommends storytelling activity to be applied as one of the methods in teaching English at the Indonesian elementary school since it is
believed as a cheap-yet-rich teaching media. This is very suitable with the condition in Indonesia, especially for the schools located in the rural area, where some school is said
to be under-resourced. Most of the schools do not have access to the children story
books that can develop their students‟ language ability. By appliying storytelling activity in the English language classroom, teacher could creatively present stories to
the students without waiting for the storybooks published by publishers. However, the teachers could present the stories to the students through their creativities, using media
that could be created from their own surroundings.
C. Teachers’ roles in Storytelling activity: Some Challenges
Teachers hold important roles in avery classroom activity; such as manager, mediator, and facilitator. In the process of storytelling activity, a teacher is expected to
be able to anticipate any distraction that might happen. Besides that, a teacher should also be able to handle any challenges that may arise when deciding to apply storytelling
in teaching English to the elementary school students.
Kuyvenvohen 2009 states that one of the challenges that should be faced by the teacher in applying the storytelling activity in the classroom is the risk of
remembering.A teacher is expected to master the story although there are lots of thing to keep in mind, such as, the plot of the story and the language- in it is delivered in the
foreign language- not in the first language. It can be said as the difficult challenge. Besides that, the teacher is also expected to be able to act out depend on the characters
appear in the story. The teachers should also manage their voice, intonation, gesture, and facial expression, just like the real actressesactors. According to the study
conducted by Ananthia 2010, these things are considered as the biggest challenges that make some teachers exclude storytelling activity in teaching English to the elementary
school students.
A research conducted by Groce 2004 studies the teachers‟ perspectives about
storytelling coaching in the in-service-training for the teachers of elementary school. The result of the study showed that all the teachers said that the storytelling training was
very important and beneficial for the teaching and learning process. The study had also shown that the training had motivated the teachers to apply storytelling activity not only
in the language classroom, but also in the other subjetcs. A research conducted by Ananthia 2010 reveals that English teachers in Indonesia did not get any training to
improve their storytelling skill during their study the university, especially the English teacher graduated from English department before year 2006, when the TEYL was
included into the teacher training curriculum. Therefore, it is reccommended to the educational institution to conduct storytelling training for the pre-service teachers
Ananthia, 2010.
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D. PGSD Students Ability in Teaching English at Elementary School
