Reading as a problem solving activity

Reading as a problem solving activity.
Introduction
Social narratives as a way to enhance problem solving skill
Storytelling is a powerful tool to get students writing because it provides "opportunities to identify important details and dialogue, understand and recall stories and story elements, and practise oral language skills such as vocal expression and exaggeration" (p. 218).13 Over the course of our two-month study, we found that engaging in storytelling and talking about stories enlivened the process of writing for a group of junior students, most of whom were reluctant writers. We modelled storytelling, and we engaged with the students as they rehearsed, told and drafted their stories. We talked about their stories with them and listened to them discuss their stories with one another. This feedback led them to either revise their stories or to realize when they had a good story and why. Some approaches to teaching writing assign the same topic(s) to everyone in the class, regardless of individual interests or personal experiences. In contrast, our method makes use of two oral communication strategies: the traditional art of storytelling and classroom talk. These practices provide opportunities for young authors to rehearse and receive feedback throughout the writing process.
What is storytelling?
Storytelling is a skill that can be effectively directed to improve other skills, such as writing, grammar, listening and speaking. Donald Davis, a noted storyteller, teaches storytelling as a bridge between a child's 'first language' [gestures and speech] and 'second language' [writing].
Storytelling is the oldest form of education. Cultures around the world have always told tales as a way of passing down their beliefs, traditions, and history to future generations.
Storytelling in any form is a natural way for students to build literacy skills. Learning how to tell a story by writing it down, talking about it, and learning to actively listen to someone else's story. All these activities teach essential language skills in vividly meaningful contexts.
Why use storytelling in the language learning classroom?
Teachers use storytelling in language teaching for several reasons. One of the preliminary reasons is the funny and entertaining atmosphere storytelling creates in the classroom. A teacher of English needs to be imaginative, creative; and telling stories in English Language Teaching can surely assist to make the process of teaching and learning more motivating, interesting and interactive. These are some of numerous reasons for using storytelling effectively in your classroom:
Promotes a feeling of well being and relaxation.
Increases children's willingness to communicate thoughts and feelings.
Fosters awareness of one's unique imagination and creativity.
Builds verbal self-confidence.
Integrates multiple learning contexts (reading, listening, speaking, writing, grammar, vocabulary) into a single instructional input.
Builds community chemistry.
Enhances reading, listening and critical thinking skills.
Fosters teacher-learner collaboration (Fitzgibbon & Wilhelm, 1998).
Enthralls empathy.
 
What ways can we exploit using storytelling?
Storytelling provides a valuable source of authentic language materials and there are hundreds of ways to exploit it in ELT. Listening to stories can develop important skills such as prediction, guessing, hypothesizing, and message decoding, etc. There are lots of different fun activities that spin off from stories: story completion, summary writing, discussion, role playing, story experience, the narrative approach, story act-out, spinning stories, group story, story interpretation, story writing, change the story, picture story, jigsaw story, strip story, tell a story, etc.
Pros and Cons:
There is strong evidence to support the use of storytelling in the ESL/EFL classroom. This provides learners with a comprehensible input that facilitates language acquisition (Hendrickson, 1992) in a fun way. Using storytelling in the classroom has pros and cons. What are they?
Pros:
Gains the students' attention
Enables the students to be exposed to a moral dilemma
Enables the students to be exposed to a problem-solving exercise
Shares stories of success
Develops a sense of community
Explores personal roles
Makes sense of learners' lives
Contains linguistic information including vocabulary, grammar, and language sense
Reduces learners' intensity of the language-learning phobia
Invokes learners' curiosity, concentration, imagination and critical thinking
Enhances facilitation
Develops rapport and respect
Provides moral lessons
Cons:
Time (Rosen 1988)
Preparation
Proportion of session
Students require a 'safe' environment.
Topic may be threatening if it challenges personal values (Fairbairn 2002).
If students are being asked to write, they may need direction.
Previous exposure.
It requires visualisation skills.
It may not suit the learning style (Davidson 2003).
Dependant on the enthusiasm of the lecturer (Weimer 2002).
 
In Conclusion:
Storytelling serves many functions; it will always be the cornerstone of teaching. It is the task of a teacher to find out how to use it effectively, skillfully and develop student's competence. A teacher can excel and train his/her students to be good story-tellers using good breath control, careful enunciation, appropriate gestures effective pauses and other speech techniques that make a good speaker.
Storytelling can be stimulating not only to increase students' interest, motivation, creativity, critical thinking skills, imagination and verbal self-confidence in language learning, but also to maximize their authentic self-involvement, community-interaction, and prolific production. Using storytelling has always been my passion and I have always been happy, both as a learner and a teacher, to take the challenge of using it whenever possible. I would strongly recommend using storytelling in ELT as I know students will also enjoy it a lot! Good luck and have fun!
 
References:
Davidson MR. (2003) .A phenomenological evaluation: using storytelling as a primary teaching method. Nurse Education in Practice 3: 1-6
Fairbairn GJ. (2002). Ethics, empathy and storytelling in professional development.Learning in Health and Social Care 1: 22-32
Fitzgibbon, H.B. &Wilhelm, K.H. (1998). Storytelling in ESL/EFL Classrooms. TESL Reporter. Volume 31-32. P.21-31
Hendrickson, J.M. (1992). Storytelling for Foreign Language Learners. (Eric Document Reproduction Service No. ED355842).
Rosen B. (1988) And None of it was Nonsense: the power of storytelling in school.London, Mary Glasgow Publications Ltd.
Weimer M. (2002) Learner-Centred Teaching: five key changes to practice. San Francisco, CA; John Wiley & Sons.

By
Khalid M.S Masood