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c. The Importance of Storytelling
Wright 1995: 13 proposes that telling and reading stories to children is a central part of classroom life, moreover it is very important to the English teacher
of children to master techniques of telling stories. The speech abilities needed for storytelling are essentially the same ones required for all speaking activities.
Storytelling encourages students to experiment with voice, tone, eye contact, gestures, and facial expressions. It also lets them practice techniques for holding
audience attention. Storytelling encourages reading motivation and aids listening comprehension. It can lead directly to story writing.
Penny UR 1996: 289 states, “Young children love having the stories told to them. Telling a story in the foreign language is one of the simplest and richest
sources of foreign language input for young learners. The most effective combination in teaching is pictures and stories together.” It is supported by Zaro
and Salabery 1995 : 2-3 who give many reasons why stories are necessary in teaching foreign languages to children. They state:
1. The development of listening skills
Possibly the most important of these skills is listening for gist which involves listening for the main
idea or plot without necessarily understanding everything. Other skills as listening for specific information
can also be developed through stories.
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2. The acquisition of new vocabulary
Most of the new language in stories is perfectly contextualized and it is usually repeated more than once so that the listener has more than one
opportunity to understand the meaning. If additional information is alse given to help learners with the comprehension of the story as with visual
aids for example, the introduction of new words need not be a huge task. The grammatical structures included in the story should be seen mainly as
formulaic expression which do not need grammatical analysis but which can be learnt in an ongoing way because they appear frequently in stories in
appropriate contexts.
3. The development of the child’s literary competence
By that, we mean the child’s ability to understand and enjoy literature that involves a range of strategies and skills acquired over the child’s life
mainly through extensive reading. However, many of these skills can be developed through specific activities. It can be said that the use of stories
introduces the child not only to stylistic conventions such as reported speech, metaphor, emphasis, etc but also to narrative conventions such as the
time-space relationship of events, repetition, ellipsis, etc.
4. The communication exchange involved in stories
Storytelling is an activity that requires a certain level of interaction between the storyteller and the audience and between the individual
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listeners. The storyteller can obtain the collaboration of the audience at several points during the story, by getting them to suggest an alternative
ending, by asking for a resume of the story up the moment, by getting the audience’s opinion etc.
5. Motivation
