Abstract:

Stories are an inextricable part of any culture and as language learners, our exposure to stories starts in early childhood. In the classroom, we often witness language learners demonstrating a higher level of engagement when they do not just passively read the story or listen to it but respond to it with their own narration and input. Psychologists believe that one of the reasons for telling each other stories is that our brain mostly thinks in narration and enjoys listening to stories, as in the process of the storytelling the speakers’ and the listeners’ brains synchronise and start thinking in the same way (Hasson: 2010).

There are many different definitions of stories as a type of conversational genre, but in general they all revolve around the idea that stories dwell on a specific topic, last a few minutes and afford a variety of uses, including personal narratives, the recounting of historical events, or educational stories conveying instructional material in diverse content areas (Lambert, 2003:7).

Ours is the age of "Homo Zappiens" learners (Veen, Vrakking 2007) , people who learn things differently than the older generation, feel free to scan the presented information and would rather think in images than words. For Homo Zappiens learners, learning compares to playing and we, as language teachers should acknowledge this need by fashioning our teaching with new media tools and gadgets.

It has been noticed that students at Yerevan State University in Armenia get more engaged and interested in the classes of analytical reading when a storytelling session is not administered in its traditional form dating back to the Soviet Union with the teacher lecturing in front of the class but is built through the creative input of students themselves, includes many guessing activities and involves the use of learning technologies.

The present research addresses ways of helping English language learners in Armenia integrate the development of their receptive and productive skills through interactive storytelling. The authors have chosen the term ''interactive'' to refer to a storytelling session that is administered both through technological tools and face-to-face classroom interaction and involves the use of visual and auditory stimuli, participants’ creative input based on prediction activities, jigsaw reading and text reconstruction exercises.
The paper outlines the main techniques and activities used in interactive storytelling and identifies their relevance in relation to adult learners.

Keywords:

Storytelling, interactive storytelling, integration of language skills, language learning.