论文总字数：48976字

摘 要

近年来，随着英语语言的广泛应用，我国对小学英语教育的重视日益提高。目前，对小学英语教学中故事教学法的应用研究已取得不少成果，在这些研究成果基础上，本研究试图探索故事教学法在小学英语教学中的应用。

作者采用行动研究法，以郑梁梅小学三年级6班学生为研究对象，进行2个月的行动研究,主要探讨故事教学法是否可以促进小学生课堂积极性、激发学习英语兴趣以及提高英语综合水平。根据相关数据的分析，证实了故事教学法在小学英语课堂中的运用有利于学生英语学习的积极性、兴趣及英语综合能力的提升。最后，作者对故事教学法的运用提出了中肯的建议，建议故事教学法与其他教学法如交际法、合作学习法等相结合，以提高教学效果。

关键词：故事教学法；小学英语教学；行动研究

Contents

1. Introduction 1

2. Literature Review 1

2.1 The definition of story 2

2.2 The definition of story teaching method 2

2.3 Researches at home and abroad 3

2.4 Input hypothesis 4

3. Research Methodology 5

3.1 Research questions 5

3.2 Research subjects 5

3.3 Research instruments 6

3.4 Research procedures 6

3.5 Findings and data analysis on story teaching 14

4. Conclusions and Suggestion 17

4.1 Conclusions 18

4.2 Suggestion 18

Works Cited 20

Appendices 22

Appendix 1: Pre-test Paper 22

Appendix 2: Post-test Paper 25

Appendix 3: Stories told in class 27

Appendix 4:Teacher interview records 28

1. Introduction

Some of the important purposes proposed by the New Curriculum Standards from the State Ministry of Education are to stimulate pupils’ interest, build their confidence and cultivate the preliminary communication ability in English learning. However, there is a phenomenon in primary students’ English learning: pupils’ interest in English learning decreases as they grow older. What comes with the reduction of interest is low participation rate in class and unfavorable academic performance, making English teaching and learning more time-consuming but less effective. Obviously, both the reform of state English curriculum standards and the challenges encountered in English teaching practice require scholars of incessantly thinking of an innovation method in elementary English teaching. Therefore, one can say that the heated exploration of the application of storytelling teaching method rises in response to the proper time and conditions. There are many studies on story teaching at home and abroad. But the exploration of story teaching in primary school English teaching is not thorough enough. It needs further study. Under this background, the writer carries out this study to probe into the effectiveness of applying this method in primary school English teaching.

Action research is adopted to conduct the study where the author carries out teaching practice and analyzes the data of learning lists, interviews, teaching reflection and student feedback. The subjects of the study are 54 third-grade students whose average age is 9 or 10 from Zheng Liangmei Primary School in Lianshui, Jiangsu Province. The purpose of this study is mainly to answer these questions: 1. Is the application of story teaching method helpful to raise students’ participation in primary school English class? 2.Can story teaching method arouse pupils’ interests in learning English? 3. Can story teaching method help enhance students’ academic performance?

2. Literature Review

This part begins with an introduction which includes the definition of the word “story” and the definition of story teaching method. Then it looks back on research achievements both at home and abroad, which covers the author’s findings and the status of this paper. Next, it comes to the significance of this paper. In the end, it refers to the theoretical basis of the method.

2.1 The definition of story

According to Oxford Advanced Learner’s English-Chinese Dictionary, the word “story” refers to “a description of imaginary people and events, which is written or told in order to entertain”. The definition points out the essential property of a story--imaginary, which allows narrators to adapt stories to the versions that help achieve some specific aims. It can also be seen in the definition that the basic function of a story is to entertain its listeners or readers. Therefore, stories can be used in class to help make an interesting class. Andrew Wright (1998), a British educationist, asserted, “Stories are particularly important in the lives of our children; stories help children to understand their world and to share it with others.” In the course of a narrative, listeners’ emotions and thoughts are aroused, so as to elucidate truth and values that the narrator wants to impart. Jerome Bruner (1997) once said: “telling stories is a way for people to understand their lives and experiences and we have been cruising in the story.” To conclude, it is the unique characteristics and functions of a story itself that make it a favorable material in language acquisition.

2.2 The definition of story teaching method

Professor William Mis, a famous English education expert, originated the concept of storytelling teaching method to cultivate English listening and speaking ability of Chinese students. Its implementation steps are: preparing stories, telling stories, retelling stories and discussing stories (Wu amp; Yue, 2009, 50-112). Many experts and scholars all over the world have put forward its definition. Wang Linfeng (2008) was the first researcher to define the concepts of “English teaching” and “story center” in his master’s thesis. He contended that story teaching should take stories as the starting point, the meaningful situation as basis, and real action as its core.

In this research, with reference to researchers’ perspectives at home and broad, the author gives storytelling teaching method a definition: a teaching method in which the instructor needs to combine teaching content and teaching objectives with a story and then present or consolidate target knowledge through storytelling, so that students can learn it directly or master relevant skills in a situation or scene intentionally created. While a story is being told, students cannot necessarily be passive listeners but active participants.

2.3 Researches at home and abroad

Many precious achievements have been made in the field of story teaching research, therefore some theories and methodology are formed and being put into the practice of story teaching research. All of these help construct the solid basis of this paper.

According to the literature, some educational researchers in the late twentieth Century began to lay emphasis on the research of teaching method. In January 2002, Roger C. Schank (2002) proposed “Story-Centered Curriculum” in his article Every Curriculum Tells a Story. He suggested that curriculum design should focus on the “story” that students might face in their future work, rather than focusing on the goals defined by managers. By simulating the real situation, the teaching mode enables students to complete the story through autonomous learning courses in the situation. Being an original mode of situational language teaching, it emphasizes the importance of context in teaching. The story teaching method is a unique teaching method firstly mentioned by Professor William Mis, a famous English education expert, to cultivate the English listening and speaking ability of Chinese students.

While in China, story teaching method has also stirred profound interest, and quite a lot in-service teachers and researchers have spared no effort to do research on it. In the last decade, major findings have been achieved. Chen Ruli (2004) pointed out that story teaching method is practical and effective; the four basic practice steps are Warm-up, Presentation, Drills and Follow-up. Lin Hong (2006) expounded how to choose suitable stories for primary school English teaching from five aspects: the theme of the story, the difficulty of language, the time of reading or telling, the reoccurrence rate of the teaching knowledge and the promotion of the interaction between teachers and students. Cheng Xiaotang (2008) illustrated the significance of story teaching method at length. He believed that a story is a language material with a comparatively complete situation, which appeals to pupils’ psychology and appetite, thus stirring their learning interest and receiving more language input. Wang Miaozhi (2008) held that integrating story listening, reading and performing into English teaching is helpful to enhance students’ spoken English, vocabulary and cross-culture communication ability. And four principles in storytelling teaching practice were put forward. Jiang Xuehong (2013), in terms of her teaching experience, made a conclusion on specific practice of story teaching. Firstly, introduce new words before a story is told; secondly, encourage students to guess what will happen next while telling the story; thirdly, ask students to retell the story. Mao Xiubo, Zhang Wei, Libi (2015) and some other scholars focused on the correlative study of whether it is a new method to improve students’ listening, speaking, and reading skills.

On the basis of sorting out and analyzing documents and researches, by comparing the relevant researches at home and abroad, the author finds that most of the prior researches on story teaching method are within the scope of teaching practice. The focus is mainly laid on the significance and teaching strategies of story teaching. And their findings reflects that the significance of story teaching mainly works in the development of students, teaching effects and the relationship between students and their teacher. Teaching strategies about implementation and principle of the method are also discussed. By the integrated use of these teaching strategies, the author finds that they are effective in promoting teaching effects. For example, Chen Ruli’s four basic practice steps (Warm-up, Presentation, Drills and Follow-up), which the author adopts, helps construct the basic steps in her class. What’s more, Li Hong’s views on how to choose stories are very helpful to highlight the focus, especially her proposition of the reoccurrence rate of key words and sentences. To conclude, these researches focus on the method itself. And this research will mainly discuss whether story teaching can promote pupils’ classroom enthusiasm, stimulate their interest in learning English and improve their language proficiency.

2.4 Input hypothesis

The story teaching method is based on Stephen Krashen’s input hypothesis that learners progress in their knowledge of the language when they comprehend language input that is slightly more advanced than their current level. Krashen (1994) called this level of input “i 1”, where “i” is the learner’s interlanguage and “ 1” is the next stage of language acquisition. The hypothesis is based on the findings that when people learn a language in infancy, listening and speaking promote the improvement of speech and writing ability. When the information obtained through listening and speaking achieves qualitative change through quantitative change, the child can naturally express his own meaning in the use of language. Therefore, in practicing the story teaching method, the author will provide the pupils with as many chances of listening and speaking as possible to bring about this qualitative change.

3. Research Methodology

This paper employs action research method, which is a scientific research method that teachers or researchers study and act to solve problems in teaching. The characteristics of teaching action research are the connection between theory and practice, the combination of research and action, and the improvement of action in research.

The research lasted for 2 months, from September to November in 2017. This part shows the methodology of this study, including research questions, subjects, instruments, procedures as well as data analysis and discussion.

3.1 Research questions

This thesis aims to examine the benefits of story teaching method in primary school English teaching. The following three questions are waiting to be answered in this paper:

1. Are the applications of story teaching method helpful to raise students’ participation in primary school English class?
2. Can story teaching method arouse pupils’ interests in learning English?
3. Can story teaching method help enhance students’ academic performance?

3.2 Research subjects

The subjects of the study are 54 students in Class 6, Grade 3 at Zheng Liangmei Primary School in Lianshui County, Jiangsu Province. The author took the post of an English teacher during her internship. Therefore, the author, who also played the role of the performer, had an easy access to direct research materials.

Table 1: Basic information of the experiment subjects

3.3 Research instruments

There are four instruments being used for data-collection and analysis: the pre-test and post-test, teacher interviews, teaching reflection and student feedback.

3.4 Research procedures

To begin with, a pre-test was carried out in class to investigate the students’ English levels before the experiment. Then the teaching practice based on the guidance of storytelling teaching method was conducted. During this period, the number of the class participation was monitored. After that, the author interviewed some experienced English teachers to get the suggestions after reflection on her own teaching practice. Students were asked to complete learning lists and give feedback to the teacher. Last but not least, students would be given a post-test and their scores, which can be seen as their current language proficiency, will serve as a contrast with the original one.

3.4.1 Pre-test

Before the implementation of the English teaching method, the author carried out a pre-test in Class 6, Grade 3 at Zheng Liangmei Primary School. In the pre-test, the total score is 100 and the time is 60 minutes. There are two parts in the pre-test paper. The first part is listening comprehension accounting for forty grades. The second is the writing test which accounts for sixty grades.

3.4.2 The teaching practice

This study lasted for two months, taking the class 6 in grade 3 of Zheng Liangmei Primary School as the research objects. As a second language learner, classroom input is the main source of students’ acquisition of knowledge. The most important part of implementing story teaching is the teaching process. In this study, the researcher and teacher, carried out story teaching and finished the teaching task of 4 units in the textbook from Yilin Press. The four units are Happy new year, Where’s the bird, What time is it, and On the farm.

The author applied some stories into teaching activities. Some of these stories were from the book ( eg. Happy New Year, Where’s the bird ) but the teacher would adapt them to make them fit for some teaching content. The researcher also created some new stories to help herself present teaching content and assist pupils in memorizing target language points. For example, in What time is it, the teacher created a story of Hello Kitty, where Hello Kitty’s so looking forward to tomorrow’s fishing that she doesn’t want to sleep and keeps asking her mother “what time is it” but finally fails to wake up in the morning and misses the fishing; in On the farm, the author told a story of a newborn duck, who tries to find his mother and asks many animals including a cow, two pigs, and a chicken he meets on the farm but finally finds that he is a swan, not a duck. According to the class observation, the author found that these colorful stories greatly aroused students’ interest in learning and they tended to join in story narration willingly. In this way, the storyteller built a favorable climate where interaction and communication were encouraged.

Moreover, it is also a good way to increase the pupils’ language input and output. Because children are interested in these stories, they desire to share their ideas with classmates and their teacher. Limited by the length of the research, this part mainly takes Happy new year as an example. Teaching procedures mainly included four steps:1) Warm-up. Songs and games were used to warm up and lead to the topic. 2) Presentation. Present the teaching content by vividly telling the story designed before. Ensure the reoccurrence rate of some key words and expressions. 3) Practice. Some questions about the story can be asked. Some exercises such as True or False, Fill in the Blank, Match and so on could help check and understand the story. An outline of the story can be provided to help students remember and recite it. 4) Follow-up. Activities such as discussion, role-play and story rewriting could be employed to consolidate the teaching content.

3.4.2.1 The establishment of teaching concepts

Students are the main body of learning and play the main role in class. That is to say, a student-centered class should be set up. Learning interest is the premise of students’ active participation in English learning. According to Ernst Von Glasersfeld (1989), sustaining motivation to learn is strongly dependent on learners’ confidence in their potential for learning. So class performance and academic grades ought to be emphasized. Story teaching helps attract students’ attention and urge them to participate in the whole teaching process. When they use what they’ve learned to say what they want to express to others, their confidence is built. When it happens in every English class, their confidence is constantly strengthened, thus sustaining motivation is formed. In addition, teachers need to provide as many opportunities as possible to develop students’ ability of listening, speaking, reading and writing. In order to attain this goal, teachers must carefully design the lesson plan.

3.4.2.2 The selection of stories

Story is a relatively complete and contextual language material. Teachers use meaningful contextual language materials to teach English so that students can easily understand the meaning of language and use it in a real situation (Wang, 2008). The selection of a story should follow the principles of Vygotsky’s (1978) zone of proximal development where learners are challenged within close proximity to, yet slightly above, their current level of development. By experiencing the successful completion of challenging tasks, learners gain confidence and motivation to embark on more complex challenges. As to story content, it should cover as much teaching content as possible. Moreover, stories chosen by teachers should be conducive to extra-curricular extension.

This study selected the pupils’ textbook as the teaching material that is close to daily life, which fully took pupils’ physical and mental characteristics into consideration. Of course, stories to be told in class could be the ones in the book, the ones adapted and the ones from other resources. To conclude, they must meet the needs of pupils’ physiological and psychological development. Take Happy new year as an example. The setting of this story is Mike’s home. Uncle John and children are celebrating the New Year. He brings new year"s gifts to the children and they are very happy.

The third grade English teaching aims at cultivating and maintaining students’ interest in learning English. At this stage, the students’ learning needs have been transferred from simple imitation to creative learning, from words and sentences to paragraphs, texts and chapters, from simple reading to more difficult reading, and they are eager to do more in English (Zhang, 2012, 46-48). Since the Story Time in the textbook is the core part of each unit, where concentrates not only on vocabulary but also on sentence patterns that needs to be grasped, teachers should make full use of the content to develop students’ language learning ability. Cartoon time is an extension of Story Time. The whole textbook uses interesting stories which are centered on cartoon characters like cute little mouse Bobby and the cat Sam in order to review the knowledge of this unit in a pleasant atmosphere, to train the students’ language skills, and to improve the reading comprehension ability of the pupils.

3.4.2.3 Teaching objectives

In this study, the corresponding teaching objectives are drawn from three aspects: knowledge and skills, processes and methods, emotions, attitudes and values.

Table 2: Teaching objectives of Happy New Year! (Story time)

3.4.2.4 Warm-up

In the unit of Happy New Year, the author first chanted the song “Happy New Year” together with the kids, and gave students some gifts to activate the classroom atmosphere and arouse children’s interest in learning.

3.4.2.5 Presentation

After chanting, the researcher guided the students learn the sentence pattern “Happy New Year” through the display of a new year’s card, and asked the students to express the festival greetings to others in English, feeling the atmosphere of the new year and the fun of learning English. With the help of some pictures, such as new year gifts, new year parties, new clothes, and delicious food, the author could direct students to imagine the new year scene so that students could enter the scene of the story more easily.

T: Today, I’ve got another red thing. What’s this?

S: It’s a card.

T: Is that a card too?

S: No. It’s a red packet.

T: Yes, it’s a red packet. Look, here is a card. Here is a red packet. Guess, what holiday is coming?

S: New Year!

T: Yes, New Year is coming. Now let’s see. On the New Year’s day, we can say...Happy New Year! Happy New Year! Boys and girls.

S: Happy New Year! Miss Li．

Then the author showed the new year gifts. The students learned the new words like CD, doll, car and ball in the lesson, and consolidated them in the form of chanting and conversation. At the same time, students knew that giving gifts is a kind of etiquette and they can share happiness together in this activity.

Next, the teacher used gestures, body languages, different tones and rich expressions to tell a story (The story can be found in appendices.) and let students watch cartoons.

T: Oh, here comes Uncle John. Uncle John brings some presents for children. Let’s

say “hello” to him．

Ss: Hello, Uncle John!

T: What are the presents? Please listen and tick! Listen and look, what gifts do Uncle John give to the children?

T: Who do Uncle John’s presents for ?

S: They are Helen，Mike and Tim.

T: Who are the presents for? Now open your book and turn it to page 50. Read the

story and talk with your classmates. Let’s check the answers．

S1: The doll is for Helen.

S2: The robot is for Tim.

S3: The ball is for Mike.

T: Yes, very good! Now let’s enjoy the flash. I have a question for you. Is the present nice?

S: Yes.

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