Abstract:

Storytelling is the original form of teaching, and constitutes a meaningful, fun tool to transfer knowledge, and a powerful ally in modern language teaching, if used in a structured and systematic way and with sound educational objectives. Most language teaching methods, starting from the obsolete grammar-translation approach to the widely used communicative method or the more sophisticated suggestopedia, total physical response, or community language learning, present the disadvantage of being able to provide a rather low immersion degree, especially in the case of online classes.

This paper argues that storytelling should not only be used as an occasional and marginal tool in language lessons, but become the core of language teaching strategies, as a red thread that connects tasks related to all competences and a key element to achieve the immersion of students. Consequently, we believe that each unit of language teaching manuals could be based on some key characters and an interesting plot to guide students into their great linguistic journey. Of course, stories should be adapted to the age, interests, needs, and culture of the participants, so that the plot would make lessons exciting and engaging. The story should also be entangled in grammar explanations, that usually lack context and seldom manage to raise curiosity and interest among students. To this purpose, the paper presents a few approaches that could help make grammar thrilling and integrate knowledge into a whole.

This method was applied in a one-week pilot project that involved 15 students studying Romanian as a foreign language (B1 level), of different backgrounds and cultures. The results were compared to previous performance, in order to establish whether this could be a reliable strategy. The outcome of the experiment was encouraging, given that the vocabulary and grammar taught during that week were well understood, and the students displayed great enthusiasm and became very involved with the story.

Keywords:

Language teaching, storytelling, immersion, interactivity.