Language, literacy, literature: Using storytelling in the languages classroom

Abstract

Stories and storytelling have been used for millennia to entertain, challenge and educate. As a shared form of language interaction, storytelling has engaged communities in developing and perpetuating common understandings of both language and culture, as critical foundations to harmonious societies. Stories and storytelling provide a rich source of materials for languages classrooms, opening possibilities for gaining insights into cultures and language use, engaging learners with the literature and texts of the target language and culture and allowing learners to become both more engaged with the use of the target language and with expressing their own stories, using storytelling modes that are meaningful to them. This paper briefly explores the significance of storytelling to language learning and proposes a few ways to approach storytelling use in the languages classroom, using examples of stories of a young Indonesian poet, Fitri Nganthi Wani. The paper is intended to open wider discussion about the use of stories and storytelling in languages classrooms.