KALPESH
V. PATEL (M.A., M.Ed.)
Asst. Professor
AmityB.Ed.College, Bharuch
Dahej Bypass Road, Bharuch
AmityB.Ed.College, Bharuch
Dahej Bypass Road, Bharuch
Dist. Bharuch
Gujarat, India-392001
Gujarat, India-392001
The Journal of Teaching English
“Teaching Stories – without telling to the Learner”
Abstract
This paper reports the results of
an action research on the effectiveness of teaching stories in a different way
“Teaching
Stories – without telling to the Learner” carried out in the School of HansotTaluka,
District Bharuch,(Gujarat). The purpose of
this research was to justify that how interactive ways of teaching stories
enables students to perform better in the classroom, how the interactive
teaching expands the knowledge of both teachers and learners, and how the teacher, at the same time, is teaching
and drawing on and learning from the knowledge and experience of the students.
That creates an ideal teaching cycle, a self-reinforcing teaching and never
ending learning process.
Introduction
A look through the past century
of language teaching, it gives us an interesting picture of varied
interpretations of "the best way" of teaching a foreign language.
Brown (2000) has argued that language teaching today is not categorized into methods
or trends; instead, each teacher is called on to develop a sound overall
approach to various language classrooms. The teacher can choose particular
designs and techniques for teaching a foreign language in a particular context.
No quick fix is guaranteed to provide success for all classroom situations.
Every learner is unique; every teacher is unique; so every learner-teacher
relationship is build up. The teacher’s key task is, therefore, to understand
the properties of these relationships and set the classroom environment
accordingly.
In Nepal, students are taught to view
their teachers as an incarnation of knowledge, an authority and a
knows-everything person in the classroom, and this value-based relationship
hinders the learners from freely expressing themselves in the classroom. In
this firmly established teacher-centered system, as Nguyen says (2005: 2) “it
is often offensive for the students to contradict the teacher’s point of view.
This unequal classroom relationship is often seen as a cultural disposition."
I believe that this is not a new issue. Many published writings have critically
looked at it (Haemer 2003). However, a teacher can always adopt various
strategies to increase students’ participation in the classroom activities. In
order to justify this possibility, researcher used a technique that the
researcher has termed as “teaching stories without telling them”. If the
stories are carefully chosen, students feel what they do in the classroom is
relevant and meaningful to their lives (Lazar 1993). Moreover, when asked to
respond personally to the texts, students become increasingly confident about
expressing their own ideas and emotions. According to Ur (1993), the stories involve emotions as
well as intellect, which adds to motivation and contribute to personal
development. This is in particular very useful where the classroom is often
only source of English.
Researcher also has another
rationale for conducting this action research. Researcher quote Wallace
(2003:5) “Most of us tend to use wide variety of strategies for our
professional development some formal and some informal.” For the same reason,
researcher has been exploring new ways of teaching techniques to use in the
classrooms what Cohen and Manian (as cited in Wallace 2003:10) calls “inquiry”.
Inquiry in its most basic sense simply means the act to process of seeking the
answer to the most asked question what are the ways to make our language class
more interactive and learner centered or improvise learners’ talking time so
that they get maximum exposure in classroom. Researcher first attempts have
been to change teacher’s role from dominant teacher to facilitator. Researcher
certainly agrees with Brown (2001) when he defines teachers, to be
facilitators, must first be real and genuine discarding masks of superiority
and omniscience. Second teachers need to have genuine trust, acceptance and a
prizing of the other person – the student - as a worthy valuable individual.
Third, they need to communicate openly and empathetically with their students
and vice versa. With this idea in mind, Researcher carried out an action
research in his classrooms at the Campus of Yogi VidhyamandirHansot and ShreeSajodSarvajanikHigh School,
Sajod, Gujarat, India. - the outcomes of which
Researcher report in this paper.
The Procedure
In both places, Researcher began
with a pre-test in order to diagnose the learners' level of English. The
candidates were tested all their skills – first day reading and writing and the
second day speaking and listening. Later they were divided into three groups
named as Emily Bronte (those scoring less
than 50%), Anne Bronte (those scoring between 50-60 %) and Charlotte Bronte
(those scoring 60% above) according to their test results; but they were not
informed about it.
Action plan teaching process
Selecting a story : (Researcher
selected stories from books available in the market. Researcher purposely chose
books that had an appropriate level of difficulty and length.)
Briefing the students about the
different nature of class: (Researcher told his students that they would have
to read the text and be able to answer the questions Researcher would ask them
in the class. Researcher did not read the story. Researcher role as a teacher
and facilitator was to ask questions very carefully so that Researcher would be
able understand the story and students’ role was to make him understand the
story.)
Giving students the story to read
at home as reading assignment: (Researcher gave each student a copy of the same
story to read at home.)
Grouping the students according
to their language proficiency level and carrying out the class: (Researcher
asked simple factual questions to below average group i.e. 555; reflective
questions to average group i.e. 777; and interpretive and judgmental questions
to above average group i.e. 666. This actually engaged every student in the
classroom activity. Moreover, they were very attentive when someone was
speaking. This various types of questions actually motivated all level students
to participate in the classroom activity.)
Carry out discussion: (Researcher
was very careful while carrying out the discussion. Sometimes the students gave
contradictory answers to the same question researcher asked. In such situation
researcher played a very careful role – researcher gave the students equal
opportunity to justify their answers. Researcher job was to facilitate them to
come to an agreeing point.)
Giving home assignment:
(researcher gave different tasks to different group – researcher asked the
below average group to write a summary of the story, researcher asked the
average group to imagine one of the characters in the story and write the story
from their own perspective. For example, imagine that you are the Brahmin in
the story, write a paragraph how these three thieves cheated you. Researcher
asked the above average group to interpret the story using their own feelings
and emotions. For example, do you think you would punish these thieves if you
were a judge? Write a very logical paragraph of your argumentations.
The students at the beginning
were little puzzled but did not express openly. However, they participated very
actively in the classroom activities.
Researcher primary aim was to promote learner autonomy, by encouraging
them to take charge of their own learning (Nguyen, 2005). This became even more
interesting as researcher purposely did not read the story to create a real
information gap. If researcher had read the story, researcher would already
have known everything and then the questions researcher asked in the classroom
would have been merely mechanical ones. For this reason, researcher claims that
the classroom language was authentic.
Classroom activity
In the classroom, researcher
asked four different types of questions: factual, reflective, interpretive, and
judgmental. It is vital that we understand the nature of the different types of
question. Researcher have briefly described what they mean and quoted some
sample questions researcher used in his classroom and their respective answers
that students gave. They are as follows.
Factual questions: the questions
are very simple and they can pick up the answer from the text very easily such
as:
T: what is the title of the
story?
S: Brahmin and thieves (they can
pick from the text)
T: How many characters are there?
S: There are four; one Brahmin
and three thieves.
Reflective questions: the types
of questions are related with peoples’ emotions, feelings and associations for
which the students have to use their won feelings to characters, event and plot
of the story such as:
T: What could be another suitable
title?
S: Brahmin and the goat (they
have to associate with the text.)
T: why did they try to fool the
Brahmin?
S: because they want the goat.
Interpretive questions: the types
of questions are related with meaning, purpose and values such as:
T: Why do you think the title
should be Brahmin and goat?
S: Because the goat also has main
role in the story.
Judgmental question: these sorts
of questions allow the students to decide their feelings, emotions and response
to the topic and discussion they have had together such as:
T: Write a very logical
description, why do you want to punish one?
S: I should judge very carefully.
We all know that if we miss judge then there is no one to help poor people. In
this case, any way the Brahmin is (sis) victim ……
In this way, every learner
participated in the class. Though the class was multilevel, the task designed
for different levels was really challenging. The classroom rule was that only
the group was supposed to answer the question, in case they did not answer then
other group would answer.
As far as the error correction
concerned, researcher did not correct all the errors they made in the
discussion. It does not mean that I ignored all the errors. Researcher corrected
only global error not the local error. Researcher agree with Brown’s (2000)
definition that the local error is clearly and humorously recognized and
recommended that they may not be corrected as long as the message is understood
and correction may interrupt a learner in the flow of communication. The global
error needs to be corrected in some way since the message may otherwise remain
unclear and rather ambiguous. Researcher has corrected the errors watching the
situation without disturbing in their attempt to produce the language.
The result
Researcher found a dramatic
change in the classroom atmosphere: all trying to say something, listening to
others what they say. In fact, Researcher had never such satisfaction in his
class before even though researcher used pair work, group work and role-play.
In this sense, researcher agree with Nunan’s (as cited in Hiep 2005) suggestion
that the teacher should use such activities that involve oral communication,
carrying out meaningful tasks and using language which is meaningful to the
learners and as well as the use of materials that promote communicative
language use. Such activities helped the learners to find the ways of helping
them to connect what is in the text to what is in their minds. One of the major
advantages of this approach is that texts can be selected based on the richness
and diversity of the language and on the relevance to the English learners who
should find them both meaningful and motivating. Researcher refers Nguyen
(2005:5) “Exposing students to varieties of stories let them experience not
only the beautiful language but also something beyond, such as sympathy with
characters and engagement with emotional situations that relate to their actual
lives." As a result, researcher found the activities vital for progress in
language learning process. Such discussion certainly enhances students’ ability
to pay attention, remember new grammar and vocabulary, process ideas and
response appropriately. Moreover, students get enough chances to express their
own ideas and opinions and discuss the opinions and ideas of other students.
Researcher agrees with Byrd and Cabetas (1991:9) ‘by discussing these
differences students learn to use English more clearly and to understand it
better.” Moreover, they learn to clarify their own ideas, values, perspectives,
and learn from others. A major innovation that researcher has noticed about
this technique is to systematically build students’ ability to present their
own ideas, opinions and feelings - both accurately and confidently. Researcher has particularly focused on
maximizing student-talking time and minimizing teacher-talking time in the
classroom setting. This action research proved the idea of Breen and Candlin
(as cited in Byrd and Cabetas 1991) that the teacher has two roles: the first
role is to facilitate the communicative process and to act as an independent
participant within the teaching-learning process; second role is that of
researcher and learner.
References
Brown, H. D. 2000. Principles of language
learning and teaching. New York:
Pearson Education.
Byrd, R. H. and Cabetas, I. C. 1991. React and interact: situation for
communication. New Jersey: Englewood Cliff.
Harmer, J. 2003. Popular culture,
methods, and context. In ELT Journal 57 (3): Pp.287-94.
Hess, N. 2002. Teaching large
multilevel classes. UK: CambridgeUniversity Press.
Lazar, G. 1993. Literature in
language class. UK: CambridgeUniversity Press.
Pham HoaHiep . (2005). Imported
Communicative Language Teaching Implications for Local Teachers. In Forum
English Language Teaching, 43(4): Pp. 2-9.
Nguyen, Thi Cam Le. (2005). From
Passive Participant to Active Thinker. In Forum English Language Teaching,
43(3): Pp. 2-9.
Ur, P. 1999. A course in language teaching. UK: CambridgeUniversity Press.
Wallace, M.J. 2003. Action
research for language teachers. UK:
CambridgeUniversity Press.
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