Storytelling in the Language Classroom: A Proposal for the enhancement of Majorcan Secondary School students’ speaking fluency in English

Abstract

[eng] Telling stories is an essential part of being human. Our ancestors told them, our descendants will. Storytelling is thus ubiquitous and timeless, irrepressible to the extent that the lack of a story might indeed be troubling. Learning and teaching a language should not overlook this human trait, this “narrative instinct”. Conversely, because telling stories comes naturally to the human species, foreign language acquisition should encompass learning to become a proficient storyteller in the target language. Several studies point to evidence suggesting that the use of storytelling in the classroom provides students from different levels with multiple benefits. Furthermore, one of the main challenges English language teachers in state-run secondary schools in Majorca have to face nowadays is that of turning their students into fluent speakers of English. The main objectives of this paper are hence firstly to supply the theoretical buttress justifying the implementation of storytelling activities in state-run secondary school classrooms in the Balearic Islands and secondly to elaborate a didactic proposal based on tasks aiming at developing students’ storytelling ability as an ancillary approach contributing to their speaking fluency in English.