Eltam journal no 2 8th eltam iatefl tesol international biannual conference managing teaching and learning

 
Exploitation of the Right Story 
"Every accomplishment starts with the decision to try". 
A teacher should narrate a story in such a way as to transfer kids into the wonderful world 
of imagination. This can be easily done with the use of storytelling and puppets as well. 
Pederson (1995) claims that “story telling is the original form of teaching” and he claims that 
"A storyteller is always a teacher, and the teacher is always a storyteller". Yes, indeed. There 
is no single small village or area without its own story or fairy tale. People’s folklore starts 
there, in and via stories. The classroom is a natural continuation to this human activity. There 
are many ways teachers can exploit stories in class:
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First of all teachers have to select the right story for each particular group of young learners. 
Then they have to think carefully which are the best techniques / strategies to implement in and 
they have to prepare a lesson plan in Pre-while and Post story telling steps.
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It is crucial to prepare and present in class challenging, interesting, motivating and enjoyable 
activities. 
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Teachers should use comprehensible vocabulary for their learners, varying the pace, tone and 
control of the reading speed. These are important elements when teaching a story or using 
puppets.

The use of puppets, pictures, masks can be creative and helpful ideas to be used in class while 
teaching a L2 language. Also role playing contributes to a positive teaching. Teachers can easily 
find many books and fables that focus on storytelling and puppetry. The internet is also a good 
source of material. 
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In many contexts, stories have many functions. Many circumstances and incidents about 
creation and creatures are explained in stories. The human fables, weaknesses and attributes are 
best understood through stories. Stories about envy, gluttony, greed, lust, heartlessness, 
intelligence, wisdom, craftsmanship, courage and cowardice are taught to children via 
storytelling and puppetry techniques.

Stories are lessons meant to teach, excite, educate, and entertain everybody. They are natural 
ways to exposing learners to all the facets of language in terms of simplicity, interest and 
curiosity. 
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A good idea about story telling in class is to ask students to prepare the dialogues of a story 
they like, and play it in class or in front of their parents using puppets they have created 
themselves. Narrating the stories is very important and using aids while telling the story is not 
less important. It attracts the listeners who wish to be part of the story themselves.

Find stories young learners love and match their age and language level. It is important to 
choose stories with a simple structure, with positive values (i.e., ones that express joy, 
compassion, humour, resourcefulness, and other positive aspects of human nature). Teachers 
can study the selected story’s background (Pederson, 1995) and decide how to present it in 

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class. Young learners will be able to understand texts they read if they know 90-95% of the 
words. (Shin, 2007). If the story has a lot of unknown vocabulary, teachers should make sure 
that they can make it comprehensible before or during the storytelling. It really helps if the 
children know the most frequent words.