Storytelling and language development
by Janni Wallin
March 25, 2015
This degree project represents a partial collaboration between Johanna Treble-Read and JanniWallin (the current author). We have chosen to partly write this degree project together but we have collaborated throughout the whole process. Together we have discussed different texts that we have read but we have written two separate degree projects. Johanna’s main topic is Swedish and
mine is English. My focus has been on language development
as both an ESL and L1 perspective. Despite our collaboration we have decided to write in I form to make it easier for the reader.
Abstract: The use of Storytelling as a teaching method is on the rise. Yet, not much is known about how the approach affects language development in a foreign language classroom environment. First I use interviews to examine teacher perceptions and experiences about Storytelling and its effect on language development across a variety of native language teaching contexts. I will also investigate how Storytelling is used and its effects in an ESL (English as a second language) context. Both cases are examined from both teacher directed Storytelling and student directed Storytelling perspectives. My results suggest that teachers have a positive attitude towards Storytelling since they experience that their students benefit from this in their language development and overall motivation in school.
Table of Contents
Introduction 6
Purpose and research question 8
Literature Review 9
Experimental evidence for the effectiveness of Storytelling 12
Methodology 14
Participants 14
Materials 15
Procedure 15
Result and discussion 16
Language development through Storytelling 16
Storytelling through reading out loud 18
Adapted Storytelling 19
ESL and Storytelling 21
References 28