MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING
HCMC UNIVERSITY OF FOREIGN LANGUAGES
AND INFORMATION LANGUAGE
DEPARTMENT OF FOREIGN LANGUAGES

GRADUATION PAPER

POSITIVE EFFECTS OF STORYTELLING ACTIVITIES
IN ENHANCING SPEAKING FLUENCY AND
CLASS ENGAGEMENT OF ENGLISH YOUNG LEARNERS
IN ILA ENGLISH CENTRE
Instructor: Nguyen Huy Khai, M.A
Student: Le Hoang Duy
Student ID: 15DH710273
Class: SA1501
Major: English Language

Ho Chi Minh City, 28 June, 2019


ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
It is impossible for this research to be completed without the support, assistance,
contribution, and guidance of these special people. The researcher would like to send
the appreciation to these followings:
Department of Foreign Languages, HCMC University of Foreign Languages and Information Technology for approving this research project to be recognized.
Mr. Nguyen Huy Khai (M.A), an enthusiastic advisor, who provided and suggested
step-by-step instruction and constructive feedback for this research to be finished in
details.
Ms. Do Dang My Tien, CCS of ILA Hoa Binh Centre, for allowing this research’s
experiment to be conducted in the campus.
Mr. Daniel James Pearson and staffs for supporting to carry out the research efficiently.

Ms. Tran Thao My, for being a friend who contributed the research method and assisted technical support while the research was being carried out.
Leaners from class H20YJ-4B-1901 for the enthusiastic participation in the study
experiment.
All family members and friends who support and encourage the author until the end.


ABSTRACT
Ability to create effortlessly communicate is crucial for people in learning a language. This study aimed to discover whether storytelling could enhance young leaners’ speaking competence, specifically fluency and promote class engagement in narratives activities. The research examines 12 primary students as English learners in
ila Hoa Binh language centre. Paired samples t-test along with class observation
process was applied to conduct the experiment with numerical measurement and statistical analysis. For 6 consecutive weeks, the data showed that there was a statistical
significance of the mean score of oral fluency indicated the effectiveness of the technique. The findings suggested that storytelling developed speaking fluency and it
could be suitable for English speaking instruction. Results from class observations
also concluded that narratives activities boosted the class participation and encouraged pupils to actively contribute in discussing and preparing the presentation.


INDEX
Table of contents
1

INTRODUCTION ................................................................................................... 1

2

LITERATURE REVIEW ....................................................................................... 2

3

4

5


2.1

Young learners’ English communicative competence ........................................ 2

2.2

The popularity of storytelling in English teaching .............................................. 2

2.3

Storytelling as an effective method to develop young learners’ verbal fluidity .. 3

2.4

Storytelling as a motivating tool for more active class engagement .................... 3

2.5

Research Hypothesis.......................................................................................... 4

METHODOLOGY .................................................................................................. 5
3.1

Participants ........................................................................................................ 5

3.2

Research methodology....................................................................................... 5


3.3

Brief description of sessions activities ............................................................... 9

3.4

Conclusion ...................................................................................................... 10

RESULT ................................................................................................................ 11
4.1

The effect of storytelling activities on improving speaking skills ..................... 11

4.2

Analysis on students’ speaking fluency in storytelling pretest and posttest ....... 13

4.3

Analysis on observation of class participation in storytelling activities............. 15

DISCUSSION ........................................................................................................ 18
5.1

The application of storytelling practice in teaching English speaking ............... 18

5.2

Advantages of storytelling in enhancing oral articulacy ................................... 19


5.3

Positive effects of narratives technique in uplifting class engagement .............. 20

6

IMPLICATION ..................................................................................................... 22

7

CONCLUSION ..................................................................................................... 25

8

REFERENCE ........................................................................................................ 26

9

APPENDIX ............................................................................................................ 31


Table of tables
Table 1 Criteria for oral fluency evaluation in storytelling activities ........................... 5
Table 2 Criteria for oral pronunciation evaluation in storytelling activities ................ 6
Table 3 Criteria for vocabulary evaluation in storytelling activities ............................ 6
Table 4 Criteria for grammar evaluation in storytelling activities ............................... 6
Table 5 The classification of learner’s speaking ability according to the total score... 7
Table 6 Participation rubric in storytelling activities .................................................... 8
Table 7 The score distribution of students' pretest and posttest ................................. 12
Table 8 Result of the storytelling pretest and posttest ................................................. 12

Table 9 Statistical analysis of students’ speaking fluency in pretest and posttest ...... 14

Table of figures
Figure 1 Distribution of speaking fluency scores in pretest and posttest .................... 13
Figure 2 The distribution of scores in group participation ......................................... 15
Figure 3 The distribution of scores in group’s participation....................................... 16
Figure 4 The distribution of scores in group’s participation....................................... 17


1 INTRODUCTION
English has become one of the most popular languages that are taught in schools
around the world. According to British Council (2013), English is known to appear
in numerous fields in economy, science, information technology, science, education
and so on. Considering the importance of learning English, Vietnam witnessed the
numerous increase of English training programme in both government schools and
private language centers in the 21st century. Furthermore, Vietnamese parents also
came to the determination that benefits from learning English would ensure and
heighten their children’s opportunity to succes in various career aspects.
(Ur, 2012, p. 117) states that among four language skills (reading, listening,
writing and speaking), oral competence has been considered naturally essential, and
proficiency in a language may turn one to be its speaker. Therefore, majority of
language learners is inspired to become fluent in verbal communication.
However, problems in learning and teaching English always hinder the students’
language ability, especially communicative skill. Firstly, students have less chance
of studying oral English due to short amount of time that grammar and vocabulary
were primarily prioritized for examination purposes. This phenomena hinders the
ability to communicate with people in English fluently even though the students may
proficiently grasp the structures. Secondly, encouragement to talk with minor errors
also prevent students from perform their discourse in class, which led ignorance or
minimal attitude toward speaking lessons.

It is believed that storytelling will become an ideal method to overcome this
problem as it is widely exercised by educators around the world (Mujiza, 2016).
González (2010) echoes the benefits of narration as one of the powerful method for
developing young learners’ language that offers students opportunities to perform
their capability of English speaking in a creative and spontaneous way. The aim of
the research is to find out whether storytelling has benefits on improving speaking
fluency and also gives a boost to the class participation in activities of telling stories.

1


2 LITERATURE REVIEW
2.1 Young learners’ English communicative competence
Mastery of a foreign language, especially the oral communication skill, is by
far at the top of any person’s wish list. Mujiza (2016) identified speaking as an ability
to verbally express things, to provide information or to state one feeling in communication. Speaking activities involve speakers and listeners to create meaningful and
communicative conversation. This is in line with Graham (2007) who describes that
one of the important goals in learning English is the ability to effortlessly maintain
an oral conversation. In other words, learners can be actively involved in the conversation regarding information exchange.
Hence, English had been introduced to become a compulsory or elective subject in primary formal schooling (Butler, 2015) to satisfy the growing need of modern
parents who have faith in their children’s early proficiency in English to gain an
opportunity for abroad study in the future or communicate with the native if they are
able to be immersed in English at the young age.
In empirical research, speaking is known as the productive and interactive skill
which makes learners have more possibility to be involved in practicing vocabulary,
grammar application, pronunciation and peer discussion thanks to the early experience to the second language environment (Derakhsan, Khalili, & Beheshti, 2016;
Tseng, 2014). Dunn (2013) also supported the opinion by presenting that young leaners have a habit of formulating the rules for themselves as the ability of pronunciation
imitation which deviates from studying about guidelines of usage.

2.2 The popularity of storytelling in English teaching

In modern English language classroom, storytelling has been considered a common teaching method by many teachers and educators all over the world in training
learners’ discourse proficiencies which are vital for students to master their English
language: fluency, pronunciation, vocabulary and grammar (Mujiza, 2016; Le,
2018). Storytelling is known as an educational technique that encourages young

2


learners to recreate the tales by their memorised language knowledge such as
vocabularies and grammar, and it also allows pupils to receive long-term immersion
in the language for an extended period of time to enhance comprehensibility and also
oral articulacy. Fikriah (2016) definined storytelling as an integrated activity which
develops writing, speaking, listening, acting and singing; therefore, students may be
beneficial from total class engagement and sharing experience through narratives.
Furthermore, this opinion is consistent with other studies from Panc, Georgescu, &
Zaharia (2015) and Soleimani & Akbari (2013).

2.3 Storytelling as an effective method to develop young learners’ verbal fluidity
Beside achieving the significant amount of one language’s grammatical rules
and vocabularies, being fluent has been a top priority criterion for students in delivering accurate and comprehensible speech with excessive confidence. Fluency in a
language means speaking easily, reasonably quickly and without repeated pause or
halt pause. Vallejo & Rincón (2016) considered fluency as a vital aspect in learning
verbal English while interacting with their peers more realistic communication
environments. Rachmawaty & Hermagustiana (2010) support the opinion by stating
that learners’ speaking fluency can be improved by applying story retelling technique
among six low level students. Furthermore, it was shown that in teaching oral skills
through freely story-creating activities, students gained both fluency and accuracy
because of numerous opportunities to produce speech by imagination and inspiration
(Numpaque & Rojas, 2010).


2.4 Storytelling as a motivating tool for more active class engagement
According to many researchers, narrative has been proved to become a
successful method in uplifting students’ learning inspiration. Kalantari and
Hashemian (2016) stated that the application of storytelling “motivates EFL students
to be active learners, for they are engaged in a meaningful activity in the class”. It
was proved in previous several works that students are given as many opportunities
as possible to freely and effectively prove themselves in oral skills development

3


through peers surveying, creating the questionnaires, giving extra explanations for
contributing and supporting the ideas, assisting their classmates with prompts and
repetitive listening to complete the story (Marzuki, Prayogo, & Wahyudi, 2016;
Lucarevschi, 2016). Furthermore, through observations, it was also verified that storytelling not only generated and enhanced class’ energy in boosting the engagement
frequency among pupils, but it also brought a lesser amount of stress to the learning
environment by providing learners opportunities to become creative and have fun
while making stories. In consequence, pupils prefer joining classes that are related to
narrative activities, especially when they are allowed to create their own products
with effort to impress their peers and teachers about English speaking performance
(Yang, 2011; Kalantari & Hashemian, 2016).

2.5 Research Hypothesis
By using null hypothesis, any possibility of the study can be displayed. If the
null hypothesis is rejected, it can be concluded that the experiment works. On the
other hand, if the hypothesis is accepted, the experiment does not indicate any effectiveness. So, the null hypothesis arouses in this research that storytelling technique
is not effective in improving students’ speaking eloquence in learning English.
H0: There is no significant effect of using storytelling method in enhancing oral fluency.
Ha: There is a significant effect of using storytelling method in enhancing oral fluency.


4


3 METHODOLOGY
3.1 Participants
The research had been conducted with a participation of twelve primary school
students (4 males and 8 females) from 7 – 9 years old. The subjects have been attending ILA English courses for approximately 400 hours of exposure from beginner
level. The population was selected among Super Junior learners at ILA Hoa Binh
Centre because the main curriculum focuses on the application of narrative for teaching speaking proficiencies. Permissions were granted from parents, the academic
manager, and the centre supervisor to maintain and support the process of the research.

3.2 Research methodology
Observations were applied to every activity during the research with assessment forms. Also, cameras were set to record the subjects’ performance. Because of
their support together to help leaners gain the goal of speaking skill, pronunciation,
grammar, vocabulary, fluency are focused to appraise the progress of subjects’ performance in each task, table 1 to 4 contained the evaluation criteria for speaking
abilities which were revised from the ILA’s “Marking bands for Super Junior 4
speaking test”. Students’ performances were based on the scoring system from 1 to
5 points each components of speaking competences.
Table 1 Criteria for oral fluency evaluation in storytelling activities
Score

Criteria

1-2

Slow and uneven speech

3-4

Frequently hesitant and pauses


5-6

Maintain flow of speech but sometimes uses repetition

7-8

Smooth, effortless speech without silences

9-10

Speak fluently with little self-correction

5


Table 2 Criteria for oral pronunciation evaluation in storytelling activities
Score

Criteria

1-2

Frequent important errors; heavy accent making understanding difficult

3-4

Mispronunciation leading to misunderstanding

5-6


Mispronunciation but not hindering understanding

7-8

Some mispronunciation (3 – 4 errors)

9-10

Few to no mispronunciations (0 – 2 errors)

Table 3 Criteria for vocabulary evaluation in storytelling activities
Score

Criteria

1-2

Inadequate vocabulary for even the simplest sentences

3-4

Limited vocabulary

5-6

Sometimes inaccurate choice of words

7-8


Adequate vocabulary

9-10

Broad and precise vocabulary

Table 4 Criteria for grammar evaluation in storytelling activities
Score

Criteria

1-2

Constant errors preventing communication

3-4

Frequent errors causing irritation and misunderstanding

5-6

Occasional errors causing but not cause misunderstanding

7-8

Errors but not cause misunderstanding

6



9-10

No more than two errors

Table 5 indicates the classification regarding levels of ability from “Fail”,
“Poor”, “Average”, “Good”, which were categorized from their total score of the
“Marking bands for Super Junior 4 speaking test”.
Table 5 The classification of learner’s speaking ability according to the total score

SCORES

CATEGORY

0-10

Fail

11-20

Poor

21-30

Average

31-40

Good

Table 6 aimed at evaluating the students’ engagement during the research.

The population was divided into 4 groups of 3 students. The performance of each
group was graded from 1 to 4 points regarding the mentioned conditions which were
based on the criteria: the effectiveness of students’ participation in group and interaction with the group members; how well their preparation for the products and the
responsiveness to teacher’s instruction through two activities.

7


Table 6 Participation rubric in storytelling activities
Score

Criterion

Discussion
and
collaboration

Excellent

Good

Average

Poor

(4pts)

(3pts)

(2pts)


(1pts)

• Actively sup-

• Makes an ef-

• Some effort

• Limited in-

ports, listens

fort to inter-

to interact

teraction

and responds

act with

with peers

with peers

to peers.

peers


• Minimal par-

• Rarely par-

• Participates

• Some active

ticipation in

ticipates in

actively in dis-

participation

discussions.

discussions

cussions.

in discus-

• Stays on task.

sions.
• Sometimes


• Sometimes
deviates

• Does not
stay on task.

from task

deviates
from task.
• Arrives fully

Preparation

• Arrives

• Rarely or

prepared at

mostly, if not

mostly pre-

never pre-

every class

fully pre-


pared.

pared.

session.

pared.

• Consistently

Attention

• Arrives

• Mostly at-

• Sometimes

• Frequently

attends to in-

tends to in-

attends to in-

disruptive

struction


struction

struction

during in-

• Pays atten-

• Pays atten-

struction

• Always pays
attention.

tion most of

tion some of

the time.

the time.

8

• Rarely pays
attention.


After each session, the recordings were collected to review and score calculations were conducted based on the criteria from students’ fluency and activity contribution. Paired samples t-test was employed for data evaluation to prove whether

storytelling activities could notably develop the students’ speaking fluency competence and also heighten students’ partaking in storytelling lessons. Spreadsheet software Microsoft Excel was applied to tabulate and calculate the test score; meanwhile,
statistical analysis software IBM® SPSS Statistics 20 was applied to compute complex numerical data: mean, standard deviation and so on.

3.3 Brief description of sessions activities
The subjects participating in the 8-week research which was divided into eight
sessions which were piloted in one hour on every Monday. Furthermore, the activities were instructed by only one British teacher who was teaching the pupils’ main
course so the students would feel comfortable and eager to join the class because of
the acquainted teaching techniques and class management. The materials were taken
from “Collins Cambridge English Qualification: A1 Movers – Three practice tests”
and “The A1 Movers Word List Picture Book”. The instructions were explained in
English and Vietnamese to inform about the purpose of the tasks, the difficulties,
requirements to complete the product of the course. English was required to be compulsorily spoken classroom language. Stickers were also rewarded at the end of each
session to create a competitive study environment and boost the students’ effort in
attending the class.
In session 1, the participants were required to take a test to check their abilities
of telling a story by a 5-minute individual examination with a foreign examiner. The
students were asked to prepare the story within one minute. A set of A5 papers and
pencils were prepared for the children to take notes if necessary. Similarly, the posttest adapted the same assessment from Pretest after the subjects had completed all
the sessions. The tests used the similar marking scheme for evaluating and grading.
The experiment began with two storytelling-based tasks. Each of the following tasks was conducted in three sessions which lasted one hour of exposure. In the

9


first task the participants were handed the vocabulary sets acquired from the “Collins
Cambridge English qualifications: A1 Movers three practice tests” (see Appendices
E.1, E.2, E.3), and they were given 20 minutes to create a story using 9 vocabularies
in the each set. Useful expressions, structures and prompts were delivered for each
group. When the participants finished their preparatory task, they had 10 minutes for
rehearsal and orally performed their stories in front of the class.

For the second task, each group chose a chain of pictures from the printed
materials. The task for them was to work in group of three, create a story based on
the selected picture set, create dialogue for the characters and practice role playing.
Useful expressions were written on the board and the students were encouraged to
ask to spell words and raise questions in groups or to the teacher. At the end of the
task, they were told to perform their work.
The subjects’ handouts and video recordings were collected for analysis. It was
confirmed that the instructor was carefully following the direction provided, the instruction was given clearly and no students was absent during the procedure.

3.4 Conclusion
Quantitative method was applied in the research to assess the positive effect of
classroom storytelling among primary schoolers on English oral fluency and class
contribution in 8 weeks. Observations with narrative materials and recording equipment were administered to collect data from 12 primary pupils in ila Hoa Binh English centre. Permission was obtained from the centre manager and also the subjects’
parents to ensure the performance of the study.

10


4 RESULT
4.1 The effect of storytelling activities on improving speaking skills
The objective of the research was to find out students’ fluency enhancement in
speaking after eight weeks of partaking storytelling activities. Pretest and posttest
were delivered to the population at first session and the final session to assess the
progress of the subjects’ performance in application of narratives to enhance speaking competence. This part shows the general description of the students’ scores in
both sections: pretest score and posttest score with descriptive data analysis.
The pretest regarding oral competence in storytelling showed that the classification of score had no sign of failed student; moreover, it witnessed half of the population gained the “Poor” category which was ranged from 10 to 19 points. Furthermore, the remaining proportion of participant (50%) was classified into “Average”
level. From that result, it could be concluded that students’ ability in speaking in the
pretest was considered acceptable.
On the other hand, results of the posttest showed that the speaking implementation of the subjects had a significant rise. The final speaking scores demonstrated
a rise by 4 students in a range score of 20-29 which was classified average verbal

competence in narrative assessment, enhanced the number of “Average” proficiency
pupils to 10 (83.33%); meanwhile, 2 leaners (25%) achieved the highest qualification
as they possessed the same result of 30 points in overall.

11


Table 7 The score distribution of students' pretest and posttest

Pretest
Scores

Posttest

Category
Frequency

Percent

Frequency

Percent

0-9

Fail

0

0.00


0

0.00

10-19

Poor

6

50%

0

0.00

20-29

Average

6

50%

10

83.33%

30-39


Good

0

16.67

2

16.67%

Table 2 gives information about the comparison of the subjects’ performance
in the pre-test and post-test. The result indicated the experiment group illustrated
achievement in mean scores relating to speaking capacity of the participants. The
mean of preliminary and final exam correspondingly values of 18.75 and 27.33,
which show a noteworthy development in the participants’ speaking ability; moreover, according to the mean difference (8.58) of the fore test and the terminal test of
this group, it is clear that the result from final test compared to that of the initial
assessment may signifies the positive enhancement in learners’ oral proficiency.

Table 8 Result of the storytelling pretest and posttest

Score

Mean

N

Std. Deviation

Std. Error Mean


Pretest

18.75

12

4.515

1.303

Posttest

27.33

12

2.535

.731

12


4.2 Analysis on students’ speaking fluency in storytelling pretest and
posttest
Figure 1 shows the findings on the speaking articulacy performance; furthermore, it provides the results of pretest and posttest, the difference between two results
to show improvement of storytelling activities. In the pretest, the overall scores were
relatively at a low level. Most student’s fluency scores fall into 4 and 6 points which
were indicated by 4 (33.33%) and 6 students (41.67%) on each category; besides, 2

students (16.667%) scored the lowest classification of speaking fluency. Regarding
the assessment after the treatment, the table below showed an increase in proficiency
progress as all students gained “Fair” to “Very good” level. Moreover, it is evident
that the majority of the students gained the fluency score of 7 (58.33%), and 3 (25%)
student reached the highest criterion of 8.

12

Number of students

10

8

6

Pretest
Posttest

4

2

0
1

2

3


4

5

6

7

8

9

10

Score

Figure 1 Distribution of speaking fluency scores in pretest and posttest

13


A paired samples t-test was conducted to illustrate the comparison in the
amount of enhancement of the subjects’ performance at the pretest and post-test. As
displayed in Table 3, there was a significant difference in the preliminary check-out
(M=4.667, SD=1.58) and the final assessment (M=7.083, SD=.669) conditions;
t(11)=5.562, p = .0002. The results suggest that application of storytelling does have
positive effect in promoting speaking fluency.
Table 9 Statistical analysis of students’ speaking fluency in pretest and posttest

Fluency


M

N

SD

Std. Error

t

df

-5.562

11

Mean
Pretest

Posttest

4.667

7.083

12

12


1.58

Sig. (2tailed)

.449

.669

.193

14

.0002


4.3 Analysis on observation of class participation in storytelling activities
Statistical data in Figure 2 evaluated the progress of how the students interacted
with their classmates in task completion and discussion. Overall, there has been an
improving progress through 6 sessions. Groups 1 and 4 showed high achievement in
group interaction and cooperation by scoring 3 and 4 scores over the sessions. On
the other hand, result from group 2 showed the notable progress; whereas, the third
group levelled at the medium score of 3 during 5 sessions.

Discussion and collaboration
5
4
3
2
1
0

Group 1
Session 2

Group 2
Session 3

Group 3

Session 4

Session 5

Group 4
Session 6

Session 7

Figure 2 The distribution of scores in group participation

15


The analysis in the subjects’ preparation for the assigned tasks was indicated
in Figure 3. It is clear that all groups saw the increase in score of task accomplishment. From the lowest start of 2 scores, 2 middle groups shared the same steady but
significant progress before reaching a peak score of 4; meanwhile, the first and the
last group showed better score in task completion ranged from 3 and 4. Sessions 6 and
7 tend to have succeeded in spurring them to be engaged in the lesson, with 4 points in task
accomplishment.

Preparation

5
4
3
2
1
0
Group 1
Session 2

Group 2
Session 3

Group 3

Session 4

Session 5

Session 6

Group 4
Session 7

Figure 3 The distribution of scores in group’s participation

16


The statistical data provided in Figure 4 the information regarding the concentration
level of 4 groups in 8 sessions. Overall, it is obvious to see that two first sessions are likely

to be least focused by 4 groups. In particular, the concentration score which was graded in
session 1 obtained by groups1 and 4 tends to centralise around 3 to 4. This figure in group
1 then rose and reached a period of stability with 4 points in the remaining 5 sessions while
group 4 had a moderately mixed scoring distribution compared to the other 3 groups since
their outcome varied depending on different sessions. In sessions 2 and 3, group 2 obtained
2 scores for their concentration level in the first 3 sessions. After that, they paid more attention to the other parts, especially in session 7, in which reached 4 scores. Group 3 had a
similar pattern to group 2 as their focus in sessions 1 and 2 was relatively low with only 2
marks. The next sessions then drew their interest with the obvious increase in scores. Session 5 is likely to be the most enthralling part to them, with 4 out of 5 scores acquired.

Attention
5
4
3
2
1
0
Group 1
Session 2

Group 2
Session 3

Group 3

Session 4

Session 5

Group 4
Session 6


Figure 4 The distribution of scores in group’s participation

17

Session 7


5 DISCUSSION
This part discusses two major aspects in the research: (1) the positive effects of
storytelling activity in promoting English oral competence of primary students, and
(2) the effectiveness of narrative activities in boosting class partaking and contribution of students.

5.1 The application of storytelling practice in teaching English speaking
It is clear that after the application of the treatment, the mean score of speaking
ability for the posttest signifies a gradual increase as can be seen from the pretest as
19.1667 and 28.583 respectively. The result from the research’s posttest in evaluating students’ speaking competence gave real evidence that applying narrative technique was an appropriate and effective way to enhance English verbal proficiency.
This result was in line with other research projects conducted by researchers, for
example that of Mokhtar et al. (2010) and Mall-Amiri & Ghanbari (2014). Those two
research projects and many other studies agree that storytelling has numerous benefits in classroom learning.
Ability to apply vocabulary considerably advanced among four components
which is clearly seen from the test scores. The storytelling activities have created a
language rich environment in which the students can be beneficial from vocabulary
acquisition. Moreover, because the given task was involved in choosing words from
the lists to create stories, it stimulated and guided the subjects to reasonably manage
and carefully pick the suitable main words for the context in their products. By
providing opportunities to reutilize the pre-set vocabulary flashcards, the chosen vocabularies from previous sessions were known to appear in the latter meetings.
Therefore, it is concluded that storytelling activities possibly enhances the vocabulary range and supports the efficient application in real context. In accordance with
Soleimani & Akbari (2013) and Al-Dersi (2013), their study projects established
similar results of the learning shows the significant increase in student’ vocabulary

mastery. More importantly, it reveals that vocabulary acquisition could be improved

18


through storytelling, furthermore, it provides opportunities for students to achieve
vocabulary in context.
On the other hand, the assessment scores concern the usage of grammar in narrative texts. The storytelling activities focused on the grammatical structures which
related to past continuous (affirmative and negative sentences), regular and irregular
verbs in past simple (affirmative and negative sentences). The findings revealed that
the subjects had ability to practice the essential structures in their tales; moreover, it
is true that some low proficient students could make considerable effort of employing
the correct grammatical items to fulfil their task. Although there were still some imprecisions such as subject-verb agreement, irregular verb forms or tenses of past simple and past simple continuous, their stories were still comprehensible.

5.2 Advantages of storytelling in enhancing oral articulacy
Pretest and posttest were conducted to evaluate whether the implementation of
storytelling could benefit the ability to become fluent in English. The posttest assessment scores indicated that speaking fluency was not only the highest average score
but also saw the significant change amongst the components.
In addition, the difference between students’ verbal fluency scores before and
after treatment indicated a significant level by paired-samples t test analysis technique. Based on the calculation of t-test, it is known that the result of t-observation
is 5.562 and the degree of freedom (df=11) is used in the significance level of 5% =
2.20 (See Appendix G). The comparison between the value of t-observation and ttable can be known that the result of calculation of t-observation is higher than ttable; therefore, the null hypothesis is rejected and the alternative hypothesis is accepted. Thus, there is significant different between the students’ score in speaking
test that using storytelling technique.
In the pretest, the students were divided into 2 groups: Low proficiency group
(6 students) and High proficiency group (6 students) regarding their performance
score. The Low proficiency group demonstrated their stories with a great deal of
hesitation, slow speech and frequent pauses to recall vocabularies or adjust the

19



grammar; meanwhile, the latter group performed the test with better results, but they
still did not show the effortlessness due to occasional pauses and fillers.
By implementing and drilling the narratives activities in the classroom, students were given opportunities to widen the vocabularies through tasks and consolidate the grammar points through rehearsal. Therefore, they were more confident
about the word choice and improved the expressiveness in speech. As in the similar
method in (Zare-Behtash, Saed, & Sajjadi, 2016), they support and strenghthen the
effectiveness of narration, which is considered more reliable and applicable than the
traditional speaking instruction.
The performance in communicative articulacy also progressed considerably
in both groups. Because of the opportunity to language exposure of continuing
speaking environment and the interaction with different groups, each student had
chance to reuse, recycle and replicate the language in narration to become more eloquent; moreover, they were beneficial in receiving correction and constructive feedback from peers to build self-confidence and effortlessness in assignments. The more
the learners effortfully support their teammates to accomplish the task, through recalling a great amount of vocabularies, the more fluent they perform in verbal competence. The obtained outcomes of the research correlated with the existing studies
in the literature which portrayed that storytelling-based teaching method could improve learners’ fluent discourse (Erdiyanti, Delfi, & Masyhur 2018; Rachmawaty &
Hermagustiana, 2010). Hence, the results of mentioned studies advanced the idea of
benefits of storytelling in learning process of speaking ability.

5.3 Positive effects of narratives technique in uplifting class engagement
Data analysis in this study revealed the implementation of narration which
aimed at developing oral competence according to their level, and inspiring how students contribute and collaborate in classwork. The study reveals that cooperation and
communication gained by the subjects increase considerably during the study. The
collaborative manner among pupils in delivering vocabularies for their friends to
maintain the flow of speaking impressively benefits themselves in memorizing

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