EXAMPLE RELECTION: STORYTELLING

Storytelling is an activity to pass the information from person to person and from one generation to  the next generation. Storytelling is simple and practical because stories, which are used as the  media, are easily obtained. (Hence, the use of storytelling as a teaching tool has been conducted in  the areas of teacher education, higher education, early childhood education, and nursing education.

Challenges and Selection:

This study found eight benefits of implementing storytelling in teaching literacy. The benefits cover  using two languages as the medium of interaction, the provision of suitable learning materials and  various media, using dramatization to show a character’s expression, asking moral value of the story  as an evaluation instrument, developing students’ literacy skills, arousing students’ imagination,  helping students to share their experiences, improving students’ vocabulary mastery, and increasing  students’ reading awareness and interest. The aforementioned benefits are described below.

In implementing storytelling in teaching literacy, there were two challenges that can disturb the  effectiveness of teaching program. The challenges had something to do with students’ proficiency  and length of texts as described in the following subsections.

Applications:

All students admitted that the lack of language proficiency, such as vocabularies, grammar, and  pronunciation, was their obstacle in implementing this teaching program. Consequently, it made  students hard in comprehending the text comprehensively and in expressing their opinions, as  stated by student below. I found some difficulties, when teacher asks me to write a sentence that  read by her, for example I still confuse with the meaning of those words. (To facilitate students in  understanding difficult words, the teacher should let them to write their stories in Indonesian first  before they translated the story into English. After that, teacher also facilitated students to use  English-Indonesian or Indonesian English dictionary to make them easier in writing a story and in  comprehending a text. It is supported by interview result of student below. From storytelling, I do  not like writing, because I do not know yet the words. Luckily, teacher asks me and my friends to  read the story first, after that we understand the story using dictionary so that, I easier in writing a  story. The students’ reading and writing results in the beginning also indicated that the students  with better language proficiency were able to have higher score. It was because the students with  better language proficiency can comprehend the text better and write their own text properly. Thus,  this challenge should be considered by teacher in selecting teaching materials to facilitate all  students’ English proficiency levels.

Insight and Approach:

Based on data of classroom interview, the data indicated that although there are some restrictions,  the incorporation of storytelling to the teaching program had assisted students to increase their  reading comprehension ability and to develop their writing skill. On the basis of the data obtained,  this research revealed that the teaching program spawned some benefits. Firstly, in the process of  implementing storytelling, it was found that students’ literacy skill was developed. Secondly, the  selection of story and quality of book also gave an impact on arousing their imagination. Moreover,  students’ vocabulary, reading awareness, and interest also increased. Nevertheless, the attainment  of those benefits might be constrained by some challenges found in this teaching program. The  challenges had something to do with students’ proficiency and length of texts. Accordingly, it can be  concluded that the result of the research confirmed possibility of the teaching program which

incorporates storytelling in supporting junior high school students to have good awareness in  literacy, both reading and writing. It indicated that storytelling can be applied in EFL junior high  school in Indonesia, especially in suburban area, because there are limited facilities that can support  students learning. Furthermore, the use of media and teacher as an actor can help students to  develop their literacy skill which is highly required in facing globalization era. Based on the findings,  it is suggested to implement storytelling that has been proved to have various positive impacts on  students’ learning. Nonetheless, this teaching program will be more effective when applied in the  regular teaching using classroom action research. It is suggested to obtain deep data of the research  and to modify new teaching practice. By considering the suggestion, it is expected that the teaching  process can optimize students’ reading and writing ability. At last, this program should be tried out  in a variety of level of education, especially young learners to check whether it can develop students’  literacy skills or not.

