TEACHING GRAMMAR THROUGH ORAL STORYTELLING

Abstract

In recent years, the interest in teaching and learning English has increased with the developing world. Many studies have been conducted on improving language skills. But developing some English skills especially grammar skills is still very hard. Students, notably public school students, have a wide range of vocabulary, but they have difficulty to construct even the simplest sentences correctly. Ignoring the teaching or learning of grammar can be said to be one of the reasons of this. In this study, we aim to teach grammar through oral storytelling. Stories have a magical effect on people. We aim to teach grammar to students by taking advantage of this power. This study was conducted as an action research covering the first semester of the 2021-2022 academic year. Fifty-eight 9th grade students studying at Cemil Meriç Science High School in Elazığ participated in this research. 9A was randomly determined as the control group and 9B as the experimental group. While grammar parts of the curriculum were taught via conventional methods in the control group, the students were taught via the oral storytelling method in the experimental group. Before the research, a pre-test was applied to both groups in order to determine the grammar levels of the students. During the treatment, stories were told for four weeks, once a month, and pre- and post-story activities were carried out. At the end of the research, a post-test was applied to the students to see if the storytelling technique was effective in learning grammar. In addition, a group interview was conducted with the students in order to better understand the effect of integrating the storytelling technique into the English lesson and teaching the grammar via this technique on individual basis. Quantitative data for the current study were obtained from the pre-test and post-test. This data was analyzed using the SPSS data analysis program. On the other hand, qualitative data were obtained from the interviews. Findings show that oral storytelling technique has a significant effect on grammar teaching. While the pre-test results showed no v difference between the two groups, the post-test results revealed a significant difference between the two groups. As a result, in this study, it was seen that oral storytelling technique increased students' grammar learning. In this context, it was concluded that the use of storytelling in the English lesson positively affects the academic success of the students.