Luận văn thạc sĩ VNU ULIS a study on using storytelling to improve english speaking for students at a primary school in hanoi

INTRODUCTION 1 Rationale

Statement of the problem

The researcher studied a number of studies investigating the effectiveness of storytelling, but most of them focus on developing vocabulary, listening, or presentation on the teenagers and adults Therefore, the specific problem addressed in this study was to investigate the effectiveness of storytelling on primary students’ speaking skill and their attitudes to this technique

This research aims to investigate the effectiveness of storytelling on speaking skill and their attitudes to this technique in speaking at Ly Nam De Primary School

This aim is specified into the following objectives:

1 To examine the impact of applying storytelling in teaching speaking for the young learners at a primary school in Hanoi

2 To determine the students’ attitudes in learning speaking through storytelling

In an attempt to achieve the aims and objectives stated above, the following research questions were addressed:

1 To what extent can storytelling affect children’s English speaking ability?

LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com

2 What are the students’ attitudes towards using storytelling in developing speaking skill?

The study was conducted at Ly Nam De Primary School in Hanoi The research concentrates on the young learners of eight years old The participants involved in the research are 14 students at Ly Nam De Primary School This study investigated the effects of storytelling and students’ attitude towards using storytelling in learning speaking Therefore, the teaching of other speaking strategies to other grades would be beyond the scope

In terms of theory, the study is expected to contribute the effective ways to develop speaking skill In terms of practice, the findings of this study can be used as a reference for teachers of English in general and teachers at the Ly Nam De school in particular to improve teaching speaking skills and attract students in learning speaking

The study consists of three main parts: the introduction, the development and the conclusion

CHAPTER 1: “Introduction” presents rationale, statement of the problem, aims and objectives of the study, research question, the scope of the study, significance of the study, and the design of the study

CHAPTER 2: “Literature” provides a literature review on theoretical issues related to speaking, storytelling, students’ attitude and previous studies

CHAPTER 3: “Methodology” describes an overview on context of the study, research design, instrument used in the study

CHAPTER 4:“Data analysis and discussion” presents details in the methodology, the data analysis, findings and discussion

CHAPTER 5: “Conclusion” gives a brief review of the whole study and some limitations of the study and suggestions for further study

Research question

In an attempt to achieve the aims and objectives stated above, the following research questions were addressed:

1 To what extent can storytelling affect children’s English speaking ability?

2 What are the students’ attitudes towards using storytelling in developing speaking skill?

The study was conducted at Ly Nam De Primary School in Hanoi The research concentrates on the young learners of eight years old The participants involved in the research are 14 students at Ly Nam De Primary School This study investigated the effects of storytelling and students’ attitude towards using storytelling in learning speaking Therefore, the teaching of other speaking strategies to other grades would be beyond the scope

In terms of theory, the study is expected to contribute the effective ways to develop speaking skill In terms of practice, the findings of this study can be used as a reference for teachers of English in general and teachers at the Ly Nam De school in particular to improve teaching speaking skills and attract students in learning speaking

Significance of the study

In terms of theory, the study is expected to contribute the effective ways to develop speaking skill In terms of practice, the findings of this study can be used as a reference for teachers of English in general and teachers at the Ly Nam De school in particular to improve teaching speaking skills and attract students in learning speaking.

Organization of the thesis

LITERATURE REVIEW 4 2.1 Speaking

Definitions of speaking skill

Speaking is an important skill in daily life as emphasized by many educators and researchers Bailey and Savage (1994) emphasize that speaking is a basic skill which is the output of reading and listening and it is used to communicate every day Similarly, Hayriye (2006) states that speaking is considered as a vital part of language learning because the ability to communicate plays an important part in students’ school life and in other fields throughout life

Nunan suggests that speaking is considered as the same an oral interaction which are conventional ways of speaking information, expressing the idea, and thought in mind (Nunan, 1991) According to this view, it is clear that speaking is the activity of giving speeches and talks to give speakers’ opinion Moreover, Chaney’s definition gives the opinion that speaking is the process of building and sharing meaning through the use of verbal and non-verbal symbols, in a variety of contexts (Chaney, 1988) From this point of view, speakers can clearly demonstrate feeling and opinion through body language only in speaking

In summary, most of these show some common characteristics which speaking uses the words and produces the sound to express their ideas, feeling, thought through ordinary voice Moreover, speaking needs verbal and non-verbal symbols to express speakers’ knowledge, opinion in communication As result, speakers need to combine various skills in speaking

2.1.2 Techniques to teach speaking skill to young learners

Nunan (1991) recommends that learners would be better if they are given the maximum number of chances to practice the target language in meaningful situations Moreover, Nunan (2003) has provided some suggestions for teaching speaking as below:

Firstly, teachers need to prepare the lesson carefully to get the differences in

5 context between two languages and two cultures He explains that students meet difficulties in learning foreign language with different contexts because they have few opportunities to use the target language outside the classroom Therefore, some foreign language learners can neither understand native speakers nor communicate with them in the real life

Secondly, it is necessary to develop fluency and accuracy at the beginning and intermediate levels Teachers should provide students with fluency building practice It is also true to realize that making mistakes is a natural part of learning a new language but accuracy is the also the purpose of the process

Thirdly, using group or pair work promotes the speaking lesson Pair work and group work activities can increase the amount of time that learners get to speak in the target language Besides, students have more chances to exchange the speaking topics, knowledge which is useful in speaking

Next, teachers should plan speaking tasks that involve negotiation for meaning by asking for clarification, repetition or explanation Teachers get students’ ability, teacher should prepare the speaking tasks which are useful for all levels of students in the class

Finally, teachers should design classroom activities that involve guidance and practice in both transactional speaking (communicating to get something done, including the exchange of goods or services) and interactional speaking (communicating with someone for social purposes).

Assessing speaking skill

Assessment refers to collect information and judge learner’s knowledge (Brindley, 2003) A teacher must set clear instructional goals to assess goals which students can meet

A teacher needs to spare time for a students’ response Meanwhile, learners should be given a couple of minutes to make the transition into English before giving them an English language assessment Moreover, the test needs to have

6 clear instruction More seriously, students need to be shown that the examiners assessing them can be trusted (Linse, 2005)

Many forms of speaking test are used to measure students’ ability Johnson

(2001) recommends the techniques of testing speaking such as oral interview, role- play, simulation, and imitation Each technique has its own advantages An oral interview is a traditional technique which an examiner asks the learners’ personal questions and perhaps also about a passage or picture sequence Heaton (1990) strongly supports that an excellent way of testing speaking is the oral interview

That is the reason why the researcher decides this study includes two parts in the test which are personal introduction and tell the story basing on picture sequences.

Criteria levels for evaluating speaking skill

A wide range of authors set standards for English speaking evaluation Oller

(1979) focuses on language use in daily life so he sets five standards for English speaking evaluation Heaton (1990) presents a system with six bands with many characteristics including fluency, accuracy, vocabulary, grammar and communication He advises using a scale for grading students’ performance on speaking tests rather than a marking scheme It is better to use a rating scale containing short descriptions of each grade Basing on the characteristics of storytelling and speaking, this research is based on the rubric adapted from SaeOng (2010) and Heaton (2009) including content, fluency, grammar and vocabulary to evaluate speaking ability Fluency criteria examines how fluently, smoothly, speed of speech students can speak Content criteria evaluate students’ ability to arrange the content of the story and connect content Grammar criteria evaluates students word- orders and grammar of the sentences The vocabulary criteria examines students appropriate words and meaning in the stories.

Storytelling

In the past, without the invention of television, computer or internet, most children liked listening to the folklores from grandparents or parents before sleeping That is one kind of storytelling which is defined by Rubin (1990) storytelling is the “oral interpretation of literature and folklore”, which means that components of storytelling are the story, the storyteller, space, and listeners Harari declares that stories with full of imagination as well as experience differed humans from animals (Harari, 2014) It is the traditional and natural method for humans to impart their information from generations to generations

In the modern context, storytelling is defined by different authors in a variety of ways Safdarian (2013) defines storytelling as students retell stories in their own language after listening to the stories by the teacher In another way, storytelling that involves improvisation in telling story, facial gestures, and body movement is an oral activity to grab audiences’ attention by using multi-sensory stirring emotion of an event in a story (Stanley and Dillingham, 2009) Besides, Champion as cited in Irawati (2003) clarifies that storytelling is an oral activity where language and gestures can be used in a colorful way to create scenes in a sequence

It can be inferred from all above that storytelling is oral activities with creative scenes in sequences which promote children’s imagination, language learning and motivation

Many researchers state that using stories brings various advantages including language learning, imaginational and motivational benefits Ellis and Brewster

(2002) emphasize storytelling develops the imagination When children identify characters and illustrations, they get personally involved in a story The imaginative experience develops their creative skill Storytelling is also a useful tool to link fantasy and imagination with a child’s real world Hayriye (2006) declares that storytelling encourages students to share ideas with plenty of imagination without worrying about the right or wrong conclusion

Stories contain natural repetition of key vocabularies and sentences which support children understand the details and remember what happened in the stories

Therefore, the uses of stories can develop language learning in the context (Ellis &

Brewster, 2002) Moreover, Ellis and Brewster also emphasize that “stories may bridge the gap between language study and language use and also link classroom learning with the world outside Some of the activities do not always have a very language element but are nevertheless important in creating a feeling among the pupils that learning English means fun, activity, creativity and enjoyment” (Ellis and Brewster, 1991:1)

Stockdale (1995) proposes that storytelling enhances motivation because learners can be completely attracted to stories by the combination of instruction and entertainment Krashen (1981) states that learners with great motivation, self- confidence, a good self-image, and a low level of anxiety are easy to successful in second language acquisition Based on these benefits, storytelling develops students’ speaking skills by providing a means of transmitting images, ideas, and emotions that motivate them to learn the language

Teachers are an important factor in teaching and promoting the learning process They have great responsibility to transfer their knowledge and skills to the students, to guide learners in developing their mind, and to educate them on how to absorb, to analyze, and to expand their individual knowledge and skill

First of all, teachers need to prepare themselves before telling stories to students Teachers as storytellers should familiarize themselves with the books and illustrations by deciding which illustrations or details they will focus on To help teachers boost their confidence, they should listen to recording of the story carefully Teachers should read a story several times until they feel confident, and know how tell the story well enough (Ellis & Brewster, 2002)

Moreover, to get these targets, it is important to have techniques in teaching speaking through storytelling Zaro and Salaberri (1995: 5) suggested some of these techniques: i Firstly, teachers should notice that storytelling can provokes curiosity because it evokes students’ imagination and interest in language skill ii Secondly, when presenting storytelling, teacher should allow learners to experience with the target language and encourage their cooperation iii Next, teachers can use mother tongue, use the voice, facial expressions, hand motions to emphasize the story to express if necessary Ellis and Brewster (2002) also have the same opinion that teachers create an atmosphere for storytelling that children can see the teacher’s face and the illustrations Teachers use gesture, mime, facial expression, varied pace and tone to convey meaning and keep students’ attention Richard-Amato (2003) adds that stories may be meaningless if told without expression, feeling or physical involvement on the part of the student

Finally, storytelling should be relaxed, funny and informal

Besides, Brewster, Ellis, and Giard (2004) recommend some techniques in using storytelling in the classroom: a) If students are not familiar with storytelling, teachers should begin with a short session which has simple requirements b) Teachers should tell story slowly and clearly in order to give students time to recognize sounds, words, relate what they hear to what they see in the pictures, to think, ask questions or give some comments c) Teachers should make comments about the illustration and point learners to focus their students’ attention d) Teachers should encourage students to get involve in telling the story by asking them to repeat some key vocabularies items and phases e) Teachers should use gestures, mimes, facial expressions, voice projection and pausing variably to convey meaning and encourage students to tell the stories

10 f) Teachers should ask students questions while telling the story to gain interaction between learners and that story g) By repeating the story, teachers create opportunities for students to expose to language and have chances to work out the meaning and have it remembered (Brewster et al 2004: 21)

In conclusion, teacher will play a vital role as a storyteller with natural and attracting voice Teacher expresses the story in the simple ways with great facial expression to get students’ attention

To teach English speaking through storytelling, criteria for choosing storybooks need to be highly appropriat According to Changer and Harrison

(1992), the following criteria for choosing textbooks are noticed:

Firstly, the level of language such as the vocabulary, structures and functions should be suitable for students’ ability

Secondly, storybooks should contain features which students can imitate such as rhyme, onomatopoeia, rhythm or intonation to improve their pronunciation

Thirdly, the story can lead students to predict what is coming next in the story

Storybooks should arouse curiosity and make students want to find out more about the target language, culture and language learning

Last but not least, the storybooks should also enable students to respond positively to the storyline, develop positive attitudes towards the target language, culture and language learning Finally, storybooks should give information concerning life in the target culture

Based on the above criteria, teachers should not only be aware of students’ language level, repetition and language features, but they also must choose storybooks which can motivate and develop students’ memory skills and arouse curiosity

Students’ attitude…………………………………………………… 1 Students’ attitude

Gardner (1985) states that “attitude is an evaluated reaction to some referent or attitude object, inferred on the basis of the individual’s beliefs or opinions about the referent” In general, if students have positive attitudes, their experiences are likely to be perceived favorably On the other hand, if they have negative attitudes, their experiences are likely to be perceived unfavorably

Based on the above criteria, the researcher comes to the conclusion that attitudes refers to students’ feeling and shapes their behavior towards language learning Attitudes also influence the learners’ success or failure in their learning

With the advantages of stories, this method is hoped to motivate students to the speaking lesson and inspire them in learning language The stories “Little Red Riding Hood” and “The happy and unhappy family” are suitable for level and characteristics of students in this study

Students have their different characteristics that affect learning Teachers should be aware of students’ characteristics to find the suitable methods for young learners

In this study, young learners are defined as students in the primary According to Piaget’s theory of cognitive development, at the age of 6-12, children start to develop their logical and operational thinking In general, young learners have the characteristics of “enthusiasm for learning and curiosity about the world around them” (Harmer, 2007: 82) Therefore, children’s world is full of imagination

Harmer shared the opinion that young learners learn by examples (Harmer, 2007:

82-83) Hence, the stories have the precious lesson with the detail or special behaviors will help students remember well However, children are easy to get bored, they only pay attention in the short time The study discovers that “it is not surprising to note that a child’s concentrate span increases as he/she grows older

Children cannot concentrate on one thing for a long period” (Brumfit, Moon and Tongue, 1991: 7)

Children also are very sensitive and dislike criticism They look for guidance and support Therefore, they require individual attention and approval from their teachers They seem to respond well to praises, and it is very important to praise them for what they do It is common sense that if children are praised, they are motivated and feel successful (Scott and Ytreberg, 1990: 3) Children getting positive encouragement will be more excited and motivated Therefore, Harmer highlights that teachers try to understand “how their students think and operate”

The following list shows general characteristics and language development of a young learner according to Scott and Ytreberg (1990)

- They can tell the difference between fact and fiction

- Their basic concepts are formed They have very decided views of the world

- They ask questions all the times They rely on the spoken words as well as the physical world to convey and understand meaning

- They are able to make some decisions about their own learning

- They have definite views about what they like and do not like doing

- They have a developed sense of fairness about what happens in the classroom and begin to question the teacher’s decisions

- They are able to work with others and learn from others

In conclusion, children can learn better when they interact with the real things or learn in situation which motivates them in the good ways They do not like learning in a directive way, they enjoy active involvement which take them curiosity Understanding the young learners’ characteristic will help the teachers get the objectives of the lessons efficiently Based on the above-mentioned theory, using storytelling as a suitable resource for teaching and learning a foreign language.

Previous studies in the world and in Vietnam

Mukminatus (2017) used the observation and questionnaire to measure the effectiveness of storytelling in developing speaking skill This research yeilds the

13 result that storytelling could improve students’ speaking skill in the Hasymim Asy’sari University Students could retell the content of the reading text in the module, even they were highly motivated to their discussion and showed their interest in the topic given

Ampha (2013) conducted a study for the effectiveness of storytelling-based instruction to enhance English listening and speaking skills of the sixth grade students This study aimed to measure the effectiveness of the storytelling based instruction and examine learners’ attitudes toward this skill The participants were

220 students in the secondary school who experienced five storytelling-based instruction in five weeks The research found that storytelling-based instruction successfully enhanced the students’ English speaking and listening ability

Storytelling-based instruction was shown to be effective It also showed that students’ satisfaction of learning English through storytelling-based instruction was highly positive

In summary, using storytelling as a technique in teaching speaking is admitted to motivate students’ to speak naturally with accuracy, fluency and good gestures

Moreover, storytelling also provides students with chances to be more confident in front of the crowd

Although many researchers approved that storytelling is an effective method to improve language in the world, storytelling seems to be quite unpopular in Vietnam since it is highly likely that not many researchers apply storytelling in teaching speaking The researcher finds only some master thesis named “Using short stories to improve the efficiency of teaching speaking and listening skills to students at Hai Phong foreign language centre” by Nhan (2010) in the University of Language and International Studies In the research , it attempted to find out the effects of short stories on teaching speaking and listening Besides, it also investigated students’ attitude towards using short stories in language teaching As the result, using short story in teaching enhance students’ listening and speaking

14 skills Moreover, it reduces students’ anxiety by creating a friendly and relaxing classroom atmosphere that helps them get involved in the class activities

Besides, in the thesis named “Teaching vocabularies to primary children by using storytelling method” by Trang (2012) proved the effect of storytelling in teaching vocabularies This study aims to emphasize the effective ways to teach vocabulary through storytelling Participants were 153 students in the primary schools who answer the questions about the usefulness and importance of vocabularies To measure the effectiveness, questionnaires were used once more time As the result, using this technique approved that it is practical, useful and interesting to teach vocabularies

Given the teaching and learning situation, the researchers improve the importance and the effectiveness of storytelling in teaching language The fact that there has been little research in implementing storytelling to improve speaking skill, especially for primary school students Thus, the researcher made the decision to conduct an action research to examine the students’ attitude of storytelling in learning speaking skills and measure the effect of this method in improving speaking skill.

Summary

The chapter has presented the relevant literature, which can form the theoretical and conceptual framework for the study It is firstly concerned with the storytelling and speaking, including some definitions, students’ attitude, characteristic of primary students, criteria for selecting storybooks, storytelling techniques, the advantage of storytelling, criteria levels for evaluating speaking skill, techniques to teach speaking skill to young learners, criteria levels for evaluating speaking skill The final part focused on presenting a review of the main storytelling strategy employed in this study All of these serve as a basis for an action research on using storytelling to improve speaking skill for students in the primary which is implemented and presented in the next chapter

METHODOLOGY

Context of the study

This study is an action research to apply storytelling to teach speaking In particular, the purpose of this study is to identify the effect storytelling on improving students’ speaking skill and students’ attitude toward this technique

The study was conducted at Ly Nam De Primary School in Hanoi The school was established in 2016 and up to now it has 30 classes with 40 teachers of different subjects and more than a thousand students The school is located in Mieu Nha Village, Nam Tu Liem District Many clubs after school which is really useful to develop students’ life skills Like other normal primary schools in Vietnam, this school has five grades from grade 1 to grade 5

The teaching staff consists of 6 teachers of English who are both Vietnamese and foreign language teachers They graduated from different college and university The researcher has worked as an English teacher who teach Math and Science through English in this school and attended the MA course at University of Language and International Studies, Vietnam National University, Hanoi To complete the course, the research has approved by the principal’s permission

In this school, apart from the English periods of Ministry of Educating and Training, children have more chances to attend transforming program at school such as Binh Minh and Ismart transforming education Furthermore, many extra- curricular activities such as English speaking Contest, English festival, Science Swat have actively developed in the school to motivate students and create an educational environment for both English teachers and students As a result, the

English movements of teaching and learning have become much more cheerful and the quality has been gradually improved

The research concentrates on the young learners of eight years old According to the pretest, they had basic words so they had difficulties in expressing the full sentences or whole ideas, their grammar using was also limited They were afraid of making incorrect answers so they were reserved

The participants involved in the research are 14 students at Ly Nam De Primary School Almost all of them have been learning English for more than two years Moreover in the teaching process, the researcher realized that they have good attitude in learning language but most of the students have little interest and motivation in learning speaking This fact gives the researcher a stimulation to carry out this research with the hope to change this problem Each lesson lasts 40 minutes All of the participants would be willing to join the course

There are two stories used during the research which is “The happy family and unhappy family” and “Little Red Riding Hood” First of all, the language with the curious details is suitable for children These stories provide children with a lot of precious lessons about how to behave with members in the family For these above reasons, the researcher decided to choose these two stories to teach in experimental groups.

Research design

This study used action research to search the teaching for improvement

According to Cohen and Manion (2002), the aim of action research was to improve the current state of affairs in educational context in the research.Therefore, action research fits the purposes of this study which finds out the effect of using storytelling in teaching speaking and students’ attitudes to this technique Therefore, the action research is as an approach to this study

14 students took part in the study The action research was conducted using the cycle suggested by Nunan (1992) The research cycle includes seven phases initiation/ problem identification; preliminary, investigation; hypothesis; intervention; evaluation, dissemination and follow-up

During teaching speaking lessons to young students, the researcher found that students were so reserved to speak that they kept silent when being required to respond Some preferred using Vietnamese to answer the teacher’s questions

Some were not confident enough to perform in front of the crowd Even the speaking lessons are too difficult for the teachers to attract students because the inputs are not curious and mysterious enough Moreover, they had difficulties in pronunciation Some students had limited vocabulary which led to impossible conservations Moreover, they did not know how to solve the problem in the lessons Therefore, students’ speaking proficiency was limited Day by day, students had low motivation to learn speaking

From teaching experience, to identify the actual speaking ability of the

14 chosen younger students at Ly Nam De Primary School, the researcher conducted a pre-test The students took the test in which they had to take the basic introduction about themselves, families and then answer the questions related to the chosen topics The score of the pre-test showed students’ speaking needed to be improved

In order to specify the current situations, the researcher had informal chats with the students in the break time to discover their problems The students themselves recognized that they never told the whole stories, they were only familiar with speaking only the words The others said, they knew to tell the story in Vietnamese but they did not know how to express in English because of their lack of vocabularies Some shared that they were not confident enough

18 because they had little chance to stand in front of the crowd before Other causes were mentioned namely their lack of motivation and low competences

Students’ limited speaking skill could be hypothesized due to their lack of vocabulary, grammar, motivation and appropriate speaking strategies which motivated the researcher to read the literature on developing speaking skill and increased the motivation for primary students While studying the literature through teaching methodology books, journal articles, the researcher came across the idea of using storytelling strategy in teaching speaking, and hypothesized that the use of strategy might help to improve the situation

In this phase, the researcher designed speaking courses for the participants to learn speaking through storytelling.The pre-test was conducted to both 14 students in these classes The test was designed with two parts which last from 3 to 5 minutes for each students Part 1 is the general conservation in which students are required to answer the questions about personal details and their family In part 2, students described the pictures and told the story basing on the pictures Then students gave out the lessons to their real life The tester gave them scores based on the students’ answers The scores would be used in the data analysis of the research

Seven meetings later, the post-test was implemented to measure students’ achievement in speaking as well as the effect of storytelling in teaching speaking The post- tests kept the same format and criteria as the pre-test, and the examiner was the same According to Crowl (1996: 114), “the test has been designed so that the procedures for administering the test, the materials used in the test, and the way in which the test is scored are constant” The students’ marks on this test were applied to data analysis of the research.The course of learning speaking through storytelling was applied in 8 weeks All the course procedures are shown below

Week 1 - Teacher explained the purpose of the study to students

- Students were asked to introduce themselves and family, then they made up the story based on the picture and told it Then they got the experience or the lesson in their daily life

 The happy and unhappy family (period 1)

- Introduce the topic “the family” and the story “The happy and unhappy family”

- Take students curiosity by letting them guess what happened in the pictures, discuss the topics

- Provide the new words and grammar

- Use story outline including the identifications of main characters, settings, problems of the story, story events, and how the problem was solved in the story

 Tell the story then let students read the story in groups by role-play

 Require students to rewrite the short story at home

The happy and unhappy family (period 2)

- Ask some questions to remind the students of the story

- Check students’ mistakes in the writing story Ask students to work in groups to solve the problem in the story and the real life

- Explain how to apply storytelling by using tip forms and gave an example of tips in retelling story Let the students retell the story in pairs Ask students to practice telling story in pairs

- Call some students to rehearse in front of the class Remind students to use intonation, eye contact, fluency and body language when telling story.Remind students to prepare to tell the story carefully for the next meeting

The happy and unhappy family (period 3)

- Ask students to retell the story in front of the class

- Ask students to give their friends’ evaluation

- Give students comment Give out the situation in the real life and require students to solve

Little Red Riding Hood (period 1) Introduce the topic “the family” and the story “The happy and unhappy family”

- Take students curiosity by letting them guess what happened in the pictures, discuss the topics

- Provide the new words and grammar

- Use story outline including the identifications of main characters, settings, problems of the story, story events, and how the problem was solved in the story

- Tell the story then let students read the story in groups by role- play

- Require students to rewrite the short story at home

The Little Red Ridding Hood ( period 2)

- Ask some questions to remind the students of the story

- Check students’ mistakes in the writing story

- Ask students to group in groups to solve the problem in the story and the real life

- Ask students to practice telling story in pairs

- Call some students to rehearse in front of the class Remind students using intonation, eye contact, fluency and body language when telling story

- Remind students to prepare to tell the story carefully for the next meeting

The Little Red Ridding ( period 3)

- Inform the next oral test

- Ask students to retell the story in front of the class

- Ask students to give their friends’ evaluation

- Give out the situation in the real life and require students to solve

- Students took the oral test

- Students filled the questionnaire sheet

In the 1 st week, students took the pre-test (see Appendix 3 for the content of pre-test) The oral test was implemented without any comments after the pre-test The plan and framework in 8 weeks were informed Besides, the time and rules in the class were also set

From the 2 nd to the 6 th week, the teacher applied the storytelling technique in teaching speaking from the first to the sixth lesson to the students The stories

22 were carried out strictly based on the stages: pre-storytelling, while-storytelling and post-storytelling (see Appendix 1 for a sample lesson plan)

Pre-storytelling stage is the introduction and oriented stage The students made predictions which let students have some expectations about the topic, it is necessary to activate their background knowledge related to the topic through pre-speaking activities Instead of introducing new words or grammar structures researcher asked students to look at the title or the given pictures in the story first, then asked them to describe the pictures and led them predict the topic and content of the story Then, students got chances to familiarize themselves with the content of the story and learnt more language proficiency in the story The key vocabularies were introduced by using visual aids, miming, brainstorming or showing the real objects Teachers can start telling the story when participants can identify the new words

In the while-stage, teacher introduced the story in the interesting voice

Instead of asking students to translate the story, the teacher made it more interesting by different activities such as stopping the sentences then students guessed the next, children chose different pictures basing on teachers’ narration, using flashcards of characters To check whether students comprehend the story or not, the teacher carried out some different activities like discussing in pairs or groups, comparing/contrasting what students predicted about the text before listening, or answering comprehension questions were some useful activities for the stage

In the last stage, students were required to retell the story, read the dialogue

Data collection instruments

This study examined the students’ improvement in speaking by using storytelling technique The researcher carefully collected the data using observation, tests, and questionnaire as instruments in order to answer the research questions

The combination of various data collection instruments would provide an overview of students’ attitude in learning speaking before and after the treatment as well as the ways to apply this strategy effectively The following part discusses each data collection instrument used in this study in detail

In the study, the researcher used questionnaire to gather more uniform and accurate data According to Harry (2009), questionnaire is a set of systematically

24 structured questions used by a researcher to get needed information from respondents Through questions, the researcher gets information to know the learners’ opinion on whether the technique is interesting or not By the questionnaire the researcher would know the students opinion related to the speaking learning process The questionnaires were given for students in the last meeting and they had 10 minutes to answer all questions The result of this test would be analyzed and discussed

The questionnaire of this study (see Appendix 2A and Appendix 2B) was designed by the researcher to collect the data It has 10 questions which are designed to seek the data to answer both research questions They concerned about the students’ attitude about the impact of storytelling and their self- evaluation of their improvement after the treatment The questionnaires were translated into Vietnamese so that the students could understand the questions well enough

Tests are considered as an useful tool in the assessment of the research

According to Overton (2008) test is a method to determine a student’s ability to complete certain tasks or demonstrate mastery of a skill or knowledge of content

The test was given to the students to assess their speaking’s ability before the treatment and their achievement after treatment Speaking test can measure students’ proficiency and test scores can be marked objectively Therefore, the test result can be concise and objective enough for the study In this research, tests are divided into two categories: pre-test and post-test The aim of the pretest is to find out the students’ ability in speaking skill before treatment The post-test is to find out whether their speaking skill improves or not after treatment

The pre-test and post-test had the same format and level of difficulty which made the tests have reliability Part 1 is the general conservation in which students are required to answer the questions about personal details and their family Part 2 is more complex, students arranged pictures of stories into the

25 suitable sequence then told the story basing on that sequence The test is also designed with one opened question which refers to the situation or context that students are going to use in the future

The post-speaking test tasks were designed to match with the course The course provided two stories relating to the family topic and helped students developing speaking through the storytelling Therefore, all testing contents are relevant to what students have learnt

Speaking tests and speaking rubrics were included in Appendix 3 and 4 In terms of speaking rubric, the test follows the test’s assessment of Heaton

(1990) and SaeOng (2010) The researcher made use of the software Microsoft Excel to analyze the data which were analyzed quantitatively by means of descriptive statistics focusing on the percentages

However, using test cores to assess students’ language proficiency also has potential drawbacks that they do not always reflect students’ real ability as some students may not perform well in tests due to some psychological factors such as nervousness or anxiety or other reasons such as lack of reliability and validity in some available tests Therefore, other instruments, questionnaire and observation were employed to gather more information

In order to reduce the drawbacks of the test and the questionnaires and make sure the result of the study more persuasive, the observation was made in the research Observation allows seeing in a relatively unobtrusive way what it is that naturally do compared with what they say they do (Burns, 1999: 81)

In this research, observation will be used since the researcher participates in teaching and assessing process This observation is implemented to know the students’ participation, records students’ attitude, the tasks during lesson, and the extent of storytelling’s effect on students in each lesson, even it remarks the process of completing the homework checking section The observation form will be used eight times from the first meeting to the eighth one

Data analysis methods

The data was collected from the instruments: pre-test, post-test, questionnaire for students and observation The researcher took advantage of the software Microsoft Excel to calculate the mean, median and standard deviation of students’ scores in the two speaking tests Data from the questionnaire responses was analyzed quantitatively by means of descriptive statistics focusing on the percentages By contrast, data from observation in the questionnaire were analyzed qualitatively to identify the main themes and patterns.

Summary

This chapter presents the procedures followed throughout the study It introduces a complete description of the methodology of the study in terms of the participants, setting of the study, and the research design including research approach, research procedures, data collection instruments (tests, a questionnaire for students and observation) and data analysis methods The researcher would like to have valuable results so research methodology will be selected carefully

DATA ANALYSIS AND FINDINGS 27 4.1 Data analysis

Analysis of test results

The purpose of the speaking test was to answer the first research question to what extent storytelling affected students’ speaking ability The pre-test was complemented in the first week and the post- test was taken in the eighth week The scores of the tests in this study were divided into four criteria including content, fluency, grammar, and vocabulary The test results are shown below: a Content

The table above shows the findings on the content of speaking which cover the students’ ability in connecting content of the story:

Table 2.1: The students’ content of speaking

Score Pre-test Post-test

The result from the pre-test shows that 11 students (79%) get 3 points They had a few mistakes in arranging the story which made story to be lack of coherences 2 students (14%) got point 2 because they made a lot of mistakes in arranging content and had difficulties in tell the whole story It is pity that there is 1 student (7%) getting point 1 because he was unable to tell the story through the

28 pictures and arranged the content incorrectly No one got point 4 and 5 in the pre- test

After performing the treatment, the post-test result showed the significant changing 7 students (50%) got point 5 because they were able to arranged the content correctly and told the story interestingly and excitedly 5 students (36%) were at the level of point 4 because they arranged the suitable content and told the whole story interestingly but they also made almost unnoticeable mistakes

Students getting 5 points increase from 0% to 50%, and students getting 4 increase from 0% to 36%.The number of students getting 3 points decreased in comparison with the pre-test In the post-test, there were only 2 students (14%) getting point 3 in the post test which is less than the pre-test No one got 1 and 2 in the post- test

Hence, this could assume that there is an incredible improvement in content through learning storytelling b Fluency

This table shows the findings on the fluency of speaking which covers the students’ speaking performance:

Table 2.2: The students’ fluency of speaking

The pre-test regarding fluency showed that there was no student (0%) getting

5 points and 3 students (21%) getting point 4 While in the post-test, there were 2 students (14%) getting point 5 because they spoke smoothly and spontaneously; 8

29 students (57%) got point 4 The rest got point 1, 2,or 3 in the pre-test but the rest got 3 in the post- test From that result, students made a great progress in fluency in speaking after learning storytelling c Grammar

This table shows the findings on using grammar which covers the students’ speaking performance:

Table 2.3: The students’ grammar in speaking

In the pre-test, students’ ability of using grammar was classified from point 1 to 5 but in the post-test, students’ marks were from 3 to 5 It could be assumed that no student whose result was at 5 points but 7 students (50%) got point 5 Before treatment, 8 students (57%) got point 4 and the rest got point 1, 2 or 3 After treatment, 4 students (29%) got point 4 and the rest got point 3

This leads to the conclusion that students’ grammar in speaking is really improved d Vocabulary

This table shows the findings on using vocabulary which covers the students’ speaking performance:

Table 2.4: The students’ speaking vocabulary

Number of students % Number of students %

In the pre-test, students got from point 1 to 4, no one got point 5 After treatment, the points increased from point 3 to 5, no one got point 1 or 2 In the pre-test, there were 7 students (50%) got point 4 , 3 students (22%) point 3 , and the rest got 1 or point 2 It could be seen in the table that the number of students who got point 5 were 7 students (50%), point 4 were 5 students (36%) and the rest got 3 points No one got point 1 or 2 in the post-test It could be concluded that students’ vocabulary in speaking was better e Students’ speaking competence

The following is score of students’ speaking achievement in the tests:

Table 2.5: Record of students’ test scores

Students Pre-test scores(/20) Post-test scores(/20)

Table 2.6: Comparison of mean, standard deviation, mode, minimum and maximum between the pre-test and post-test

The comparison of the mean reconfirmed that students made a great progress in speaking after learning speaking through storytelling Comparing with the mean of the pre-test, it can be seen that the mean score in the post-test is higher than the pre-test The data about mode, minimum, and maximum in the pre-test were also higher than those in the pre-test To be more specific, the mode of the test increased from 15 (in the pre-test) to 19 (in the post-test) The lowest score (minimum) of the post-test was also higher than that of the pre-test Especially, the highest score (maximum) of the post-test was up to 20, whereas no one could reach this mark in the pre-test This fact clearly shows that after learning speaking through storytelling, students’ speaking improved significantly

Moreover, the standard deviation is shortened from 3.8 in the pre-test to 2.7 in the post-test It means that the distance between students in the post-test is shorter than that of the pre-test

In short, the better result of the post-test can lead to the conclusion that the use of storytelling has positive effect on improving students’ speaking.

Analysis of questionnaires

The questionnaires were used to attain students’ viewpoints regarding how they felt after learning through storytelling The students were required to answer 10 questions The data which was obtained from questionnaire would be used as the

32 simple statistic to count percentage The result of the questionnaire can be seen in the following:

Please tick (√) in the box that best describes your thought:

Table 3: Students’ attitude toward storytelling

State degree of students’ agreement Frequency (%) of the scale of students’ feeling

1 I like to learn English subject through storytelling because storytelling makes learning become more interesting and funny The time seemed to go by quickly during the class lessons

2 I like to imitate the intonation of the character in the story after I listen to an English short story

3 I like to volunteer to answer and share my opinion through storytelling lessons

4 I like to imagine and take curiosity about some pictures in the story when I experience learning speaking through storytelling

5 I have an opportunity to understand my classmate’s viewpoint and experiences

6 I believe that I will be able to apply to speak what I learned in today’s lesson in various situations in the real life

7 I am happy because I can tell the story in English by myself

8 I am more confident to speak because I have more vocabulary to express the topic

9 The course has encouraged and motivate me to learn speaking more after learned English through storytelling

10 I would like to participate in more storytelling in the future

As shown in Table 3, all students thought that learning speaking through storytelling made them motivated and interested in lessons and actively engaged in the speaking process The results revealed that students had positive satisfaction towards the use of storytelling

According to the data provided in the first question with the statement, it can be found out that 86% of the students completely agree and 14% of them agree that they like learning through storytelling because it makes learning become more interesting and funny It means that storytelling can attract students to the lessons

The next question was raised to account students’ attitude to the imitation after storytelling Basing on the table 3, most students self-evaluated they liked imitating the intonation in the storytelling (57% completely agree, 14 % agree), the rest disagree and strong disagree Hence, it can be concluded that most of the students (71%) like imitating the intonation in the story

It is interesting to note that storytelling can make 93% of students more motivated to demonstrate their opinion in front of the class in the next question

Only 1 students (7%) admitted he was also reserved to answer the teacher’s question

In the 4 th question, the stories can arouse students’ curiosity and imagination which make 93% of students interested in, only 7% of the students did not agree It means storytelling helped to develop almost all students’ curiosity and imagination

To the researcher’s surprise, 93% of students completely agree, 7% of the students agreed that they had opportunities to understand classmate’s viewpoint and experiences upon hearing their storytelling It means that all students (100%) can learn from their friends’ view points through storytelling lessons

The data in the sixth question also shows 36% of the students chose completely agree and 57% of the students chose “agree” that they can apply what they learned to their real life, only 1 student(7%) met the difficulty It means that most students are able to apply to speak what they have learnt in the lesson in various situations in their daily life after using storytelling

The seventh question was designed to investigate the students’ reflection on their ability after they completed the story by themselves According to the data collected, 7 students (50%) completely agree and 50% agree they were happy because they could told the story in English by themselves It means that all the students (100%) were motivated after their storytelling

In the eighth question, 43% of students strong agreed and 43% of students agreed that they became more confident in speaking because storytelling lessons provided more vocabulary to speak Only 1 students (7%) was also not confident

So it can be concluded that almost students admitted they were more confident after learning storytelling

In the next question, 57% of students completely agreed and 43% agreed that they were encouraged and more motivated to learn English after the treatment It

35 means that all students admitted they had more motivation to learn speaking through storytelling

Basing on the data on the last question, 8 students (57%) completely agreed and 6 (43%) students agreed with the statement “I would like to participate more storytelling in the future” It means that all students wanted to continue speaking through storytelling in the future

The above data shows that students had good attitude towards learning English through storytelling The story helped them engage in the lesson with an active attitude They admitted storytelling enrich their vocabularies, stimulate their imagination and understanding of the world, but also develop their language ability and appreciate literature As result, their English improved so they become more confident and have more interest in learning speaking.

Analysis of observation

To take a closer look at what was happening during the lessons to identify the extent of using storytelling to teach speaking and observed students’ attitude on each lesson Therefore, the observation was used to support both research questions The observation was written closely following the activities happened during the lessons The analysis of the observation shows some dominant issues appearing in the course such as students’ participation, time, homework completion, attitude to learning, effect of learning a Students’ participation

Teacher’s observation showed that the students got involved in the lesson more and more actively In the first day, 7 students came to the class late, 1 student was so afraid of speaking test so he did not come to the class, the rest came to the class on time However, from the 2 nd to the last, students came to the class early or on time and less students came to the class late The second day, 5 students came to class early, 4 students came on time, 5 students came late On the third day, 5 students came to the class early, 7 students came on time the 2 students came late

But the seventh and eighth meeting 14 students came early In summary, students’

36 attitude to learn speaking become better and they were looking forward to the lessons b Students’ homework

They became more and more responsibility to their homework From the 3 rd meeting they had the homework, there were 14 students completed the homework but not until the teacher reminded did they submit the homework Most of their sentences were meaningful However, all students made grammar mistakes and 2 students had spelling mistakes

In all next day, all students finished their homework with high responsibility and more and more students submitted the exercise without teacher’s reminder

They told the story by their own words with more inflexible words in the 5 th meeting In the 7 th meeting, 14 students were motivated to finish the homework All students could rewrite the story by themselves with the correct sequence and content All students improved grammar and spelling Some students had no mistakes In summary, all students are responsible to do their homework as well as learning Their homework quality was improved after learning storytelling c The extent of the lesson’s effect on the students

The researcher followed the procedures of a story with 3 stages: pre-speaking, while-speaking, and post-speaking Each story spans in three lessons

Through the tasks in the lesson, the researcher realized that students became better and better In the pre-test day, the researcher identified some factors causing the low achievement of students’ speaking skill Firstly, students have low mastery of grammar and vocabulary In the pre-test, students faced with the new material so they had difficulties in pronunciation, understanding of the content, controlling grammar As a result, they were silent or they spoke in Vietnamese

Secondly, students faced up with limited time and speaking practice

On the 2 nd day, 3 students met difficulties in understanding All students were lack of fluency, content, grammar and vocabulary at the beginning of the lesson but at the end of the lesson, all of these behaviors were improved

On the 3 rd day, all students learnt by heart the vocabulary and used the words to retold the story better 13 students answered the questions relating to the story correctly 1 students got the detail of the stories incorrectly and needed teacher’s support All students read the story with the better intonation and fluency Students had great imagination when they made the questions to ask their friends and prepared the solutions in their lives

On the 4 th day, all students joined speaking activity in which 13 students were confident to speak out but 1 student was reserved However, at the end of the class, with the support of teacher, all students were better than before They were ready to listen teacher’s comment on the homework Students joined the pair activity to share the story with high motivation The content, vocabulary and grammar were improved so much Students’ fluency was also limited

On the 5 th day, all students completed the homework with high motivation

They told the story in their own words and introduced the members in the family with inflexible words Some students were reserved to answer teachers’ question because they limited the words to express the ideas Some students made mistakes of grammar when expressing Students caught up with the story and distinguished between the bad and good behaviors in the story Many grammar mistakes existed

Fluency was limited because they lacked vocabulary

On the 6 th day, they got familiar with learning storytelling so they caught up with the process so quickly They all got the content of the story They followed the teacher’s process and gave their opinion positively They could draw the precious lessons from the story

On the 7 th day, all students could retell the story with the correct sequence of the story They could have more precious lessons from the story Vocabulary, grammar, fluency and intonation improved clearly

To sum up, through the storytelling lessons, students’ grammar, vocabulary, fluency, imagination, life skill to behave the situation became better They were also more confident in front of the class Therefore, the post- test completed as plan d Students’ attitude

They were not enthusiastic and not interested in joining the speaking test

When researcher asked them to answer the question in English, they felt shy and worried because they were afraid their friends would laugh at them or they would be fault On the second day, most students were eager to the lesson Their emotion was attracted to the story so they paid attention to the lesson However, 3 students were little bit reserved On the third day, they were positive to join the lesson, eager to give the opinion, speak more freely However, there were still 3 students who were shy on speaking because they did not know how to arrange the idea in the whole sentences After having teacher’s support, they were ready to speak out On the fourth day, they were eager to listen to friends’ stories with the curiosity 13 students were confident but 1 students also was still reserved On the next day, students were curious and motivation in the lesson However, some students were also reserved with the reason that they did not know how to express the ideas On the sixth day, they paid attention to the lesson and were eager to the storytelling All students told the stories on by one There was 1 student who needed teacher’ support On the seventh day, most of the students were eager to the lesson apart from 2 students were quite reserved because they did not learn by heart the story at home

In summary, the situation gradually changed in the 2nd and the 3rd lesson In the 4th and the 5th lesson, it was much better More and more students were attracted to the lessons and the tasks day by day The students also showed their excitement and interest when doing the tasks They actively discussed

39 with their friends in pairs or in groups and enthusiastically volunteered to express their ideas.

Findings and discussion

The researcher successfully collected the data using tests, and questionnaire and observation as instruments in order to answer the research questions The results proved that the use of storytelling brought the improvement to fourteen chosen students’ speaking skill

The analysis of the test results in Chapter 3 showed that there is a good improvement after treatment of storytelling In addition, the observation supports the test result also showed that through the storytelling lessons, students’ speaking became better All students told the stories with better fluency than before treatment Stories contain natural repetition of key vocabularies and structure that support children to get the details and remember what happened in the stories They practiced telling the story positively so their fluency improved Students developed their imagination when they made the questions to ask their friends and gave out the solutions to the stories and their lives The students were able to visualize aspects of the story such as characters, settings and activities They got familiar with learning storytelling so they caught up with the process so quickly They could apply the vocabulary with better intonation to tell the story effectively Basing on the picture sequences, they added more details to make the content so creative Their grammar to express the ideas in the story improved

It can be concluded from the analysis of test results and observation that storytelling could help students improve their speaking significantly

The researcher used questionnaires and observation to investigate their attitude toward storytelling in learning speaking The questionnaire was formed in 10 questions starting from general to specific questions

The second objective addressed in this study was to investigate the students’ attitudes through using storytelling in developing speaking skill The analysis in Chapter 3 showed that students were excited about learning with storytelling

According to Gardner (1985), positive attitude improved student language proficiency and promotes learning language

Basing on students’ responses in the questionnaire, students had positive attitude towards learning through storytelling Firstly, learning through storytelling made the lesson more interesting and funny which made student feel the time to go by quickly The data from the observation also showed that they were attracted to complete the homework by themselves creatively, they went to the class earlier and earlier, they told about the lesson from the story until going the class In addition, more and more students were attracted to the lesson and the task Secondly, storytelling made them motivated and confident They volunteered to give out the opinion, all students can told the story in front of the class, they spoke English more freely an fluently However, some students needed teacher’s support Next, it gave students good chances to imagine, take curiousness, learn from friends, tell stories by themselves and apply the lessons to their real lives which attracted students to learn speaking more In summary, storytelling helps children have positive attitudes towards speaking.

Summary

In addition, basing on the test, questionnaire, and observation, t h e r e su l t s h o w s t ha t speaking skill was improved after learning storytelling The researcher took advantage of the software Microsoft Excel to calculate the mean, mode, standard deviation, median, minimum and maximum in the two speaking tests As the result from the data analysis, storytelling could help students improve their speaking significantly

Data collected from the questionnaire responses were analyzed quantitatively by means of descriptive statistics focusing on the percentages

Moreover, data from observation was also analyzed qualitatively to support questionnaire to identify the students’ attitude in learning Most students also admitted positive effects of storytelling on their speaking skill Storytelling made them feel motivated, confident and interested in the lesson because this strategy helped to imagine, take curiosity, learn from friends, tell stories by themselves and apply the lessons to their real life

This chapter has supplied quite sufficient data to answer the research questions The results of the data analysis indicate that most of the students got progress in speaking skill and they were interested after storytelling

CONCLUSION

Recapitulation

Storytelling brings great effective in developing speaking From the experience of teaching speaking, the researcher released that students were afraid of speaking and speaking skill was limited It leads the author to conduct the study to examine the effective of using storytelling in developing speaking skill and students’ attitude through this strategy

Fourteen students from grade 3 were chosen as the participants of the study

They all took part in a 8-week speaking course designed by the researcher All of the participants were asked to join the pre-test so that the researcher could examine the students’ speaking competence before the treatment Then the classes were applied speaking lessons with 2 stories After these lessons, these students were asked to take a similar speaking test to the pretest (post-test) to examine the students’ improvement in speaking skill after the treatment The researcher also employed two other data collection instruments which are questionnaire and observation written by the researcher after each lesson to seek data.The data collected from tests, questionnaire and observation mentioned above was then analyzed quantitatively The data analysis helped the researchers achieve the aims of the study.

Concluding remarks

Regarding the first research question, the results of the tests and the observation proved that the use of storytelling has the positive effects in speaking Students’ speaking improved They arranged the content more logically and described the story so creatively because the students were able to visualize aspects of the story such as characters, setting and activities taking place In addition, storytelling also gave them deeper insight into creating stories So they can think or imagine of more stories that familiar or unfamiliar Their speaking was performed with more variety of vocabulary Their grammar was improved significantly They spoke more fluently Moreover, after analyzing the

43 questionnaire and observation, the researcher found that most of the students were interested in learning speaking by using storytelling The findings showed that students were more excited, curious and confident when learning storytelling

In summary, this study revealed that storytelling could successfully enhance students’ speaking Moreover, students have positive attitudes towards storytelling because it helps students to be more self-confident, motivated, creative and curious

5.3 Limitation of the current research

Although all the research questions are addressed and the aims of the research are achieved, the study still has the following limitations:

Firstly, the research focused on only 2 stories about family which supported vocabulary limitedly It means more stories with various topics are necessary

Secondly, this study only takes a further look into the effective of storytelling and students’ attitude on this strategy Besides, many researchers state that storytelling can help students improve many other skills However, this study only focused on speaking skill

Last but not least, this study is an action research to deal with the predominant problems at a primary school in Hanoi However, with the limited number of participants, the results of the study may not be generalized to all students and teachers from other primary school in Vietnam It can only serve as reference for primary schools with hard working students and teachers with similar characteristics as those in this study

5.4 Recommendations and suggestions for further research

The study offers two suggestions for further research as follows:

1 It would be of great value if further research on the same issue can be carried out with a larger size of the participants at any levels of education

2 Secondly, it is suggested that further research be conducted on other skills such as reading, listening, writing and presentation This research should also be conducted to examine the effectiveness of using storytelling to enhance students’

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LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com49

LESSON PLAN The date of preparing : ………

STORYTELLING LITTLE RED RIDDING HOOD Class description:

Grade 3 - Ly Nam De Primary School

Objectives: Students will be able to:

- understand the story “ Little Red Riding Hood” and some vocabularies relating to the family

Take care of grandmother, live happily together, live in the house, see the grandmother, reach the house, look at the, run to the

What big eyes( ears/teeth/….) you have!

Resources: - Teacher : comic book, lesson plan, board , projector, flashcards,

Steps Learning activities Language focus

- Guessing the name of the story through the game “ puzzle game” to draw students’ curiosity at the

II start of the lesson ANSWER KEY: Little Red Riding Hood

- Teacher shows the pictures of the characters and requires students guess who are they about the story

- Teacher shows the first pictures on slide and ask students “Who can you see?”, “where are they?” or

“What are they doing?”, “ how do they feel?-

- Students discussed the questions and give the answers

- Teacher gave some key vocabularies:

Take care of grandmother, live happily together, Live in the house, see the grandmother, reach the house, look at the, run to the What big eyes( ears/teeth/….) you have!

- Teacher listened, supported and gave the short comments

- Students wrote down the new

Happy, take care of, reach the grandmother’s house, grandmother, daughter

III words in the notebooks

- Teacher told the story with the slow speed and body language to express the story

- Teacher stopped in some details and students filled in

- Teacher asks students some questions:

1 Why did Red reach grandmother’s house?

2 What happened before Wolf ate grandmother?

3 How does Red solve the problem when she saw the Wolf in the bed?

4 Which part of the story do you like most?

5 Extended response: how would you describe Red? How do you think so?

- she visited grandmother and gave her some cakes

- Teacher gave the comment and gave the detail in the story as the evidence if necessary

- Students complete the game with the answer

- Teacher shows the pictures on slides and asks students “What is it?”

- Listening and speaking out the appropriate pictures

- Students listen and repeat the words

Take care of grandmother, live happily together, Live in the house, see the grandmother, reach the house, look at the, run to the

What big eyes( ears/teeth/….) you have!

- Students practice role-play to speak out the story Groups

6 Home link - Learn by heart new words and write each word 2 lines

QUESTIONAIRE ON STUDENTS’ ATTIDTUDES TOWARDS

This pre-treatment questionnaire is designed to collect data for my research into “A study on using storytelling to improve English speaking ability for the third grade students at Ly Nam De primary school” Your assistance in responding to the following questions is highly appreciated I promise that you will not be identified in any discussion of the data Please give your answers sincerely as only this will guarantee the success of this study Thank you for your cooperation!

What are the benefits of using storytelling in speaking ? (Put a tick in the appropriate column)

Please tick (√) in the box that best describes your thoughts (1) Completely disagree (2) Disagree

Direction: Please tick (√) in the column to meet with your satisfaction with storytelling-based instruction learning after the course

Statements The scale of students’ feeling

1 I like to learn English subject through storytelling because storytelling makes learning become more interesting and funny The time seemed to go by quickly during the class lessons

2 I like to imitate the intonation of the character in the story after I listen to an English short story

3 I like to volunteer to answer and share my opinion through storytelling lessons

4 I like to imagine and take curiosity about some pictures in the story when I experience to learn speaking through storytelling

5 I have an opportunity to understand my classmate’s viewpoint and experiences upon hearing their storytelling

6 I believe that I will be able to apply to speak what I learned in today’s lesson in various situations in the real life

7 I am happy because can tell the story in English by myself

8 I am more confident to speak because I have more vocabulary to express the family topic

9 The course has encouraged and motivate me to learn speaking more after learned English through storytelling

10 I would like to participate more storytelling in the future

PHIẾU ĐIỀU TRA VỀ VIỆC ÁP DỤNG KỂ CHUYỆN ĐỂ NÂNG CAO KĨ NĂNG NÓI

Bảng câu hỏi khảo sát này được thiết kế để thu thập dữ liệu cho đề tài nghiên cứu

“Sử dụng chiến lược phán đoán để nâng cao kỹ năng đọc hiểu cho học sinh lớp

3 tại một trường tiểu học ở Hà Nội.” Cô rất mong các em dành một chút thời gian giúp cô hoàn thành phiếu điều tra dưới đây Các em hãy đưa ra câu trả lời chân thực nhất bởi chỉ có như vậy mới đảm bảo sự thành công của nghiên cứu này Cô cam đoan rằng thông tin của các em hoàn toàn được bảo mật Cảm ơn sự hợp tác và tham gia của các em!

Học nói qua chuyện kể có những lợi ích gì?( hãy tích vào cột thích hợp)

(1)Hoàn toàn không đồng ý (2) Không đồng ý

Lợi ích của học nói thông qua chuyện 4 3 2 1

1 Em thích học Tiếng Anh thông qua chuyện vì chuyện làm cho việc học thú vị và vui hơn Thời gian như trôi rất nhanh khi học

2 Em thích bắt chước giọng của các nhận vật trong chuyện

3 Em thích xung phong trả lời câu hỏi và bày tỏ ý kiến để rút ra được các bài học trong giờ học chuyện Tiếng Anh

4 Em thích tưởng tựợng và rất tò mò về diễn biến trong câu chuyện khi trair nghiệm học Tiếng Anh qua kể chuyện

5 Em có thêm cơ hội học hỏi thêm các bài nói của các bạn trong lớp

6 Em tin em có thể áp dụng những gì đựơc học vào trong cuộc sống

7 Em thấy vui vì em có thể tự kể được câu chuyện bằng Tiếng Anh

8 Em tự tin hơn vì em có thêm nhiều từ vựng để nói

9 Khoá học Tiếng Anh qua chuyện này giúp em có thêm khích lệ và động lực để học Tiếng Anh

Em muốn tiếp tục học kí năng nói thông qua kể chuỵên

APPENDIX 3: PRE- TEST OF SPEAKING SKILL

1 Greeting & Introduction: Student greets and gives a brief introduction about him/ herself (name, age, class, hobbies,….) and their family

1 Picture sequencing and telling this story

2.What lessons do you learn from the story?

APPENDIX 4: POST-TEST OF SPEAKING SKILL

1 Greeting & Introduction: Student greets and gives a brief introduction about him/ herself (name, age, class, hobbies,….)and their family

1.Put the pictures to the suitable orders and tell this story

2 What lesson do you learn from the story?

APPENDIX 4 SPEAKING RUBRIC English Speaking Rating Sheet

Adapted from Heaton (1990) and Sae-Ong (2010)

The evaluation form for English speaking ability

APPENDIX 5: THE FORMULA OF MEAN, STANDARD DEVIATION AND MEDIAN

Definition: Mean is average from division between sums of student’s scoring a total number of respondents

X: mean of pre-test Y: mean of post-test N: number of subject

∑X = the sum of pre-test score

∑Y = the sum of post-test score

To calculate mean for the pretest of class 10A, the researcher made use of

Microsoft Excel The researcher wrote down the ordinal number in column A, the score of every student in column B, and meaning column C with the following formula

Excel formula: AVERAGE (number1,number2, )

Note: Number1, number2, are 1 to 255 numeric arguments for which you want the average

For example: calculating the mean for the pretest of students in the Pre test

1 Click on cell B16 - the location where mean will be entered

2 Click on the Formula stab

3 Choose More Functions ->Statistical from the ribbon to open the function drop down list

4 Click on MEAN in the list to bring up the function's dialog box

5 Highlight cells B3 to B37 in the spreadsheet to enter the range into the dialog box

Click OK Then, the answer 11.78571 should appear in cell B16

When you click on cell C3 the complete function = MEAN (B2:B15) appears in the formula bar above the worksheet

Definition: is a measure of how widely values are dispersed from the average

XVIII value (the mean) -Formula:

Standard deviation uses the following formula:

Where: x is the sample mean AVERAGE(number1, number2 ) n is the sample size

Excel formula: STDEV(number1,number2 )

Note: Number1, number2 are 1 to 255 number arguments corresponding to a sample of a population

For example: calculating standard deviation of students in pre-test

1 Click on cell B16-the location where the standard deviation will be entered

2 Click on the Formulas tab

3 Choose More Functions ->Statistical from the ribbon to open the function drop down list

4 Click on STDEV in the list to bring up the function's dialog box

5 Highlight cells B3 to B17 in the spreadsheet to enter the range into the dialog box

7 The answer 3185.80 should appear in cell B16 When you click on cell B16 the complete function = STDEV(B2:B15) appears in the formula bar above the worksheet

LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.comXX

Definition: is the middle number of a group of numbers; that is, half the numbers have values that are greater than the median, and half the numbers have values that are less than the median

Median uses the following formula:

Where: Mdn is the median

L is the lower limit of the interval containing the median

N is the total number of scores is the sum of the frequencies or number of scores up to the interval containing the median fw is the frequency or number of scores within the interval containing the median i is the size or range of the interval

Excel formula: MEDIAN (number1,number2 )

Note: Number1, number2 are 1 to 255 numbers for which you want the median

-For example: calculating the median of class A in pre-test

1 Click on cell B16 - the location where median will be entered

2 Click on the Formulas tab

3 Choose More Functions>Statistical from the ribbon to open the function drop down list

MEETING 1 LESSON 1 Activities Teacher’s observation

The extent of the lesson’s effect on students

- Discuss about the time, rules in the storytelling periods

- The planed periods and frame work in five weeks were informed

-In the pre-test, most students lacked vocabularies to express their opinion, they answered in the same ways by using the general action such as “I can cook, I can clean the house to make my family happy” or “I buy medicine when my mother is sick”, and they reacted the situation in the impolite ways

- They were willing to take part in the pre-test

- However, they did not that they would have the test and test’s topic so they were surprised, some students were afraid

- They made the class too noisy After being informed the next storytelling lesson, they were curious

MEETING 2 LESSON 2 Activities Group 1( Experimental group)

- - 5 students came to class late

- - 3 students met difficulties in understanding

- - All students were lack of fluency, content, grammar and vocabulary at the beginning of the lesson but at the end of the lesson, all of these behaviors were improved

-Most students were eager to the lesson, however, 3 students were little bit reserved

- 13/14 students finished the homework before the lesson

- All their sentences were meaningful They related the words in the lesson to their lives

- All students sometimes put the verbs in the incorrect forms

- 2 students had problem in spelling words in the writing exercise

- All students learnt by heart the vocabulary and reacted the choosing situation with these words

- 11 students answered the question relating to the story correctly

- 3 students got the detail of the stories incorrectly and needed teacher retold

- All students read the story with the intonation

- Students had great imagination when they made the questions to ask their friends and prepared the solutions in their lives

- They were positive to join the lesson, eager to give the opinion, speak more freely

- However, there were 3 students were also shy on speaking because they did not know how to arrange the idea in the

XXVII whole sentences After having teacher’s support, they were ready to speak out

- 9 students waited for the lesson from early

- 3students came to the class on time

- 2 students were late for class

All students completed the homework with high responsibility

- All students joined speaking activity

- 12 students were confident to speak out but 2 students were reserved However, at the end of the class, with the support of teacher, all students were better than before

- They were ready to listen teacher’s comment on the homework

- Students joined the pair activity to share the story with high motivation

- Content, vocabulary and grammar was improved so much

- Students’ fluency was also limited

- They were eager to listen to friends’ stories with the curiosity They told about the lesson from the story until going the class

- 13 students were confident but 1 students also were reserved

- 9 students came to class so early

- 5 students came to class on time

- All students completed the homework with high motivation

They told the story by their own words and introduced the members in the family with inflexible words

The extent of the lesson’s effect on students Tasks

- Some students were reserved to answer teachers’ question because they limited the words to express the ideas

- Some students made mistakes of grammar when expressing

- Students caught up with the story and distinguished between the bad and good behaviors in the story

- Fluency were limited because lacking vocabs

- Students were curious and motivation in the lesson

- However, some students were also reserved with the reason that they did not know how to express the ideas

- All of the students came to the class so early

- All students were eager to submit the homework without teacher’s reminding

- They were better in grammar The sentences were more creative and meaningful

- Some students also had the letter mistakes

The extent of the lesson’s effect on students tasks

- They got familiar with learning storytelling so they caught up with the process so quickly

- They all got the content of the story

- They followed the teacher’s process and gave their opinion positively

- They could draw the precious lessons from the story

- On the sixth day, they paid attention to the lesson and were eager to the lesson All students told the stories one by one

There was one student who needed teacher’s support

- 14 students were motivated to finish the homework

- 3 students were not confident to submit the homework until the teacher’s reminding

- All students could rewrote the story by themselves with the correct sequence and content

- All students improved grammar and spelling Some students had no mistakes

- All students could retell the story with the correct sequence of the story

- They could have more precious lessons from the story

- Vocabulary, grammar and intonation improved clearly

- Most of the students were eager to the lesson apart from 2 students were quite reserved because they did not learn by heart the story at home

All students joined the class early

Results were on the test

They were ready to join the test

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