The use of teacher’s self developed stories as a technique to teach english vocabulary to children in a third grade of a public primary school

Abstract

“Young children are natural language acquirers. They are extremely receptive to spoken language and learn vocabulary easily. This study explored how young children learned English vocabulary by listening short stories developed by the English language teacher. Stories were developed using children´s contextual elements that made the stories significant. A key component in storytelling was the ´telling´ part, where the teacher (teller) created voices for each of the characters. In addition, a number of puppets were designed using a variety of materials which complemented the storytelling experience. Findings from storytelling showed that children learned English vocabulary, especially lexicon associated to their immediate context. In addition, participants reported positive attitudes and reactions towards the use of stories. Overall students responded well to the activities that were applied after the stories, proving a successful learning.”