Teaching Speaking Through Storytelling: A Case Study of Tenth Grade Students of an Islamic High School in Kendari

Abstract

One of the major problems of many English as Foreign Language (EFL) teachers in Indonesia is the lack of student involvement in the learning activities. This study documented the process of teaching speaking through storytelling in which students were involved in their learning activities. This qualitative case study aimed to describe how speaking is taught through storytelling and the types of oral production that the students carried out during the process. The data were collected through classroom observation and open ended questionnaire. The study reported that teacher used learning activities before, during and after storytelling. In addition, teaching speaking through storytelling was integrated with other skills such as listening, reading and writing. The use of storytelling in the teaching of speaking enabled students not only to engage in the learning, but also to get a meaningful learning experience. The analysis shows the kinds of oral production that the students carried out, extensive (monologue), transactional (dialogue), responsive, and imitative oral production during the learning. 21 Nevertheless, it was only dominated by extensive (monologue), due to the nature of storytelling activities and the students' limited English. With reference to the findings, it is recommended to train EFL teachers to use storytelling technique in their teaching practices.

Full text

Journal of Language Education and Educational Technology Vol. 5 No. 1, 2020 20
JLEET
Journal of Language Education and Educational Technology
Volume 5 No. 1, 2020
e-ISSN: 2502-3306
Teaching Speaking Through Storytelling: A Case Study of
Tenth Grade Students of an Islamic High School in Kendari
St. Asniatih1 (sitiasniatih@gmail.com)
Afaq Ahmed2
Ghazanfar Iqbal2
Zahid Dool2
Sohail Ahmad2
Safrina S. Noorman3
1MAN Insan Cendekia Kota Kendari
2Aga Khan University Institute for Educational Development
3Universitas Pendidikan Indonesia
ARTICLE INFO
ABSTRACT
Keywords:
Teaching speaking;
Storytelling; Extensive;
Transactional;
Responsive; Imitative
One of the major problems of many English as Foreign
Language (EFL) teachers in Indonesia is the lack of student
involvement in the learning activities. This study
documented the process of teaching speaking through
storytelling in which students were involved in their learning
activities. This qualitative case study aimed to describe how
speaking is taught through storytelling and the types of oral
production that the students carried out during the process.
The data were collected through classroom observation and
open ended questionnaire. The study reported that teacher
used learning activities before, during and after storytelling.
In addition, teaching speaking through storytelling was
integrated with other skills such as listening, reading and
writing. The use of storytelling in the teaching of speaking
enabled students not only to engage in the learning, but also
to get a meaningful learning experience. The analysis shows
the kinds of oral production that the students carried out,
extensive (monologue), transactional (dialogue), responsive,
and imitative oral production during the learning.

Journal of Language Education and Educational Technology Vol. 5 No. 1, 2020 21
Nevertheless, it was only dominated by extensive
(monologue), due to the nature of storytelling activities and
the students’ limited English. With reference to the findings,
it is recommended to train EFL teachers to use storytelling
technique in their teaching practices.
1. INTRODUCTION
The transformation in education field is in the form of grappling to adapt in a global
marketplace with technology advancement. This shows a shift in graduate demand for
competencies and expertise align with the job demands that utilize professional skills
rather than routine cognitive and manual skills (Jensen, 2016). Further, Jensen (2016)
explained that if comparing today’s need with the future, education in the future tends
to focus on the learner, process and skills rather than on the system, content and
mastery. As the consequence, it brings a shift from individual learning to collaborative
one and from passive to active learning. Therefore, the need for designing the
curriculum and learning experiences that encourage learners to make things by
collaboratively solving the real world challenges will be the one really matters at this
stage.
This is the impetus that triggers the learning paradigm shift from a teacher-
centered paradigm to the student-centered one. As a result, the teacher’s role and
responsibility change. These facts brought implication in the teaching and learning
practice in Indonesia context too, particularly in English speaking classroom. In
Indonesia context, many EFL teachers strive to perform an ideal instruction to meet the
needs of students in mastering this skill. In spite of the fact that EFL has been learnt for
several years, students are still unable to master it.
Many factors can be attributed to challenges that learners face to take part in
speaking activities in educational settings. Firstly, the large number of learners
consisting 38 or more will reduce their opportunity to achieve optimally (Spallino,
2015). Secondly, learners try to conceal their mistakes to protect themselves from being
laughed at or are shy; as a result, they are reluctant to speak English. Lastly, most
English teachers prefer using their mother tongue, Bahasa Indonesia, in their classroom.
These teachers tend to use English when opening their class, give a short greeting then
switch back to Bahasa during the whole class (Mustafa, 2015). In this situation, students
do not have a model which is crucial to build their speaking style and habits, even lack
motivation in using the EFL. Last but not least, a survey conducted by Choi and Lee
(2008) in Primary and Secondary Schools in Asia, including Indonesia, attributed the
failure of the EFL learners to teachers’ lack in the teaching method and materials. As a
matter of fact, EFL teachers tend to ignore speaking in their teaching, instead of
focusing on teaching grammatical items or knowledge of syntax that discourage
students to use the target language.
Related to these cases, how to motivate students in the speaking classroom has
been consistently remained a concern for the teachers. Providing students with
something different and interesting to stimulate their motivation to speak up then to

Journal of Language Education and Educational Technology Vol. 5 No. 1, 2020 22
keep maintaining it are something crucial at this stage. The most considerable choices
fall into storytelling technique. There are two main reasons why it is chosen; firstly,
story is a sample of narrative text recommended by the previous curriculum (KTSP)
and the current one (National Curriculum or K13); secondly, storytelling can be
adapted in broaden and various ways of pedagogical practice.
Both in KTSP (the enforced curriculum when this study was being conducted)
and K13 BSNP (Badan Standar Nasional Pendidikan or Board of Education National
Standard) has put that Narrative text is one of the Basic Competences (KD) that should
be mastered by students. It is put in KD no. 3.10 and 4.15 for grade 10 such as follows:
“Menganalisis fungsi sosial, struktur teks, dan unsur kebahasaan pada teks naratif
sederhana berbentuk legenda rakyat, sesuai dengan konteks penggunaannya” (BSNP,
2017, p. 2)
“Analyzing social function, text structure and language features of simple
narrative text in the form of folklore based on context” (Basic Competence no.
3.10, 2017, p. 2).
Subsequently, this study aimed to explore how speaking is taught through
storytelling and what kinds of oral production the students carried out in their learning
process.
2. LITERATURE REVIEW
Some theoretical foundation of this study covers the discussion on stimulating oral
interaction in the classroom, teaching speaking through storytelling, and kinds of oral
production in speaking classroom. A study conducted by Mu’tashim and Syafi’i (2018)
revealed that storytelling can reduce students boredom and make the hard speaking
task easier to handle, in spite of the fact that the storytelling did not seem to be
optimally used in training or exposing the students’ speaking skills. Other similar
studies that support this study are conducted by Zuhriah (2017) and Mochtar, Halim
and Kamarulzaman (2011). Both clearly portrayed the strengths of storytelling in
improving students’ communication skills. The similarities with the former study
showed the excellence of storytelling in enriching the speaking skill aspects, like
fluency, pronunciation, comprehension, vocabulary and the like. While the similarities
with the latter study showed improvement in the language, content and delivery as a
part of communication skills in the students.
2.1. Stimulating Oral Interaction in the Classroom through Storytelling
Learning to speak in a second and foreign language will be facilitated when learners are
engaged actively in attempting to communicate (Nunan, 1991). In the present study,
asking students to work in groups in order to discuss and re-create the given story and
then tell it to the class are the teacher’s efforts in reducing her centrality. In other words,
stimulating oral interaction in the classrooms can be done through the tasks and
exercises.

Journal of Language Education and Educational Technology Vol. 5 No. 1, 2020 23
Another support comes from Gebhard (2000, p. 53) who argues that “providing
chances for the students to express themselves in meaningful ways potentially
contributes to create an interactive classroom”. Hence, storytelling seems ideal to meet
the criteria.
One thing that is still problematic in many EFL speaking classrooms, particularly
in Indonesia context is that when students are unwilling to use English in the
classroom. For this case, Harmer (2001) explained that students can hardly be blamed
for the use of their native language due to the difficult tasks given. So, the stimulus and
help by the teacher are fundamental during these early stages (Zaro & Salaberri, 1990)
2.2. Teaching Speaking through Storytelling
Teaching speaking cannot be separated from other skills (Hughes, 2004). In the present
study, the teaching of speaking through storytelling was conducted integrated with
other skills – Listening, Reading, and Writing. At the first session, students need to
listen to the teacher’s story before retelling it to the class individually as the speaking
activity. At the next session, students need to read an incomplete story and then
complete it by writing the end of the story based on their own imagination. These
activities are done in groups. At the end of the lesson, students perform the storytelling
as the speaking activity.
Thornbury (2005) suggests that some criteria of speaking tasks should be met in
order to maximize speaking opportunities and increase the chances for the learners to
experience autonomous language use. Some of the criteria are that the speaking task
(storytelling activity) should be challenging, safe, and authentic, because the story
events provide them with a frame which is useful to guide them to talk about. Besides,
the story content also served as an authentic material.
Learners will also need to perform in real operating conditions, e.g.
spontaneously, unassisted, with minimal preparation, and utilizing existing resources
(Thornburry, 2005). It is in line with the condition when a student is asked to tell a story
to the class. He may feel confident when he understands the story then talk about it
impromptu. This condition may be gained if the teacher can make the classroom
atmosphere conducive for the students to explore their potency optimally, for example,
by reducing error correction during their storytelling performance.
Conversation is a collaborative process between the participants who are
engaged in negotiating meaning in order to achieve their communication goal (Brown,
2001; Nunan, 1999). The difficulties that most learners encounter are the interactive
nature of most communication, i.e., the matter of how to say what and when. In the
context of the present study, the teacher helps students through some guiding questions
in order that the students can keep on talking through their storytelling.
Another issue that underlines the speaking performance is the distinction
between accuracy and fluency. The teacher needs to determine which goals she or he
should prioritize for gaining the target skill for students when using storytelling in the
teaching practice (Harmer, 2001)

Journal of Language Education and Educational Technology Vol. 5 No. 1, 2020 24
2.3. Kinds of Oral Production in Storytelling Activities
Brown (2001) elaborates six categories of oral production that students are expected to
carry out during a speaking classroom. The tasks to produce such oral speaking are not
necessarily in sequence, rather than independently or integrated with one another
depending on the learners’ needs (Florez, 1999).
2.3.1. Imitative
To carry out this kind of speaking performance, students can imitate a word or phrase
or an intonation. It is a very limited portion of classroom speaking time as Brown calls it
“human tape recorder” speech, where learners can practice an intonation or pinpoint a
certain vowel sound. Drills are given to practice through repetitions.
2.2.2. Intensive
This kind of speaking goes one step beyond imitative in which students take their own
initiative to produce short stretches of oral language. It is designed to enable students to
practice some phonological or grammatical aspects of language.
2.2.3. Responsive
The language production performed by students in this stage is in the form of short
replies to teacher or students-initiated questions or comments.
2.2.4. Transactional
Students’ purpose in performing this oral language is to convey or exchange specific
information. It is more extended than responsive language. The nature of this kind of
language is found in conversation.
2.2.5. Interpersonal
Students carry out this oral language for maintaining their social relationship (Nunan,
1999; Brown, 2001). The nature of this language is in the form of personal interviews or
casual conversation.
2.2.6. Extensive or Monologue
The oral language production in this performance includes speeches, oral presentation,
and storytelling or narration. It is more formal and can be planned or spontaneous.
3. METHODS
A qualitative approach was used to observe the process of teaching speaking through
storytelling. The process of teaching speaking involves classroom activities, oral
production and interaction among individuals. In this regard, an emerging approach to
inquiry in a natural setting was used (Creswell, 2007). Additionally, a case study design
was employed to gain an in-depth understanding of the issue explored within the

Journal of Language Education and Educational Technology Vol. 5 No. 1, 2020 25
bounded system (Creswell & Poth, 2018; Merriam, 2009). Such design allows researcher
to use multiple techniques for data collection which also helps in validating the data.
3.1. Research Site and Participants of the Study
This study was conducted with grade 10 of Madrasah Aliyah Negeri in Kendari,
Indonesia. The reason for selection of school was that one of the researchers was a
teacher-staff of the study site. In this case, the researcher was familiar with school as
well as students. The researcher, being familiar with the learners and context, expected
natural performance in the teaching/learning process during this study (Emilia, 2005).
As a ‘Madrasah Model’, this school is expected to have the capacity to improve learners’
speaking proficiency. Hence, to realize this expectation, many ways and strategies have
been done, i.e. when introducing the concept of narrative text, storytelling is used in
teaching speaking skill.
The participants of the study were an EFL teacher and 31 students (aged between
14 and 16 years) of year ten class and all participants were selected through purposive
sampling. The reasons for choosing these participants were; a) students in this age are
interested in stories (Harmer, 2001; Jianing, 2007; Paul, 2003) and b) almost all students
of the class were eager to participate during the learning as was revealed in the
preliminary study. The preliminary study was conducted through open and close
ended questions. Initially, one of the researchers taught for two weeks in some of the
classes including the selected class for the study. This was done to establish rapport
between the researcher and the participants (Alwasilah, 2002) prior to the main study. It
was also done to gain optimum validity and reliability of the research (Alwasilah, 2002).
3.2. Main Study Teaching Procedure
In the instructional process of teaching speaking through storytelling, two stories were
carried out in two sessions of teaching procedures. In the first session, the teacher told
the story during the teaching process while the learners were listening. After the
learners appeared to understand the story, they were queried to identify the narrative
structures of the story and repeat it in their own words.
During the second session, learners in group of five discussed the story with the
help of pictures. The process involved every group to understand an incomplete story
through reading task. Consequently, the learners discussed and re-created the end of
story with the help of pictures, which was practiced by telling the re-created story to the
class as speaking task. Importantly, each group member was chosen randomly to avoid
dominating learners. Moreover, the teacher used the speaking format criteria designed
by Board of Education National Standard [BSNP] (2004) (see Appendix B) translated
from Indonesian into English, to monitor social interaction and performance among
learners.
3.3. Data Collection
The data was collected through classroom observation and questionnaire. Classroom
observation was conducted for five meetings as a participant observer in which one of

Journal of Language Education and Educational Technology Vol. 5 No. 1, 2020 26
the researchers was teacher (Merriam, 2009). Nevertheless, as a participant observer, it
was difficult to perform two tasks as a researcher and teacher on same time. In this case,
researcher was assisted by two assistants; a) cameraman and b) field notes taker to
reduce biases and avoid missing important events during observation (Cohen, Manion,
& Morrison, 2007). Moreover, the recording process consisted of audio and video
recording. A closed-ended and open-ended questionnaire (see Appendix A) were
delivered to 31 students after the whole teaching process, but only 28 questionnaires
were returned.
3.4. Data Analysis
The analysis of data was done through categorizing, validating and interpreting the
data (Merriam, 2009). The data analysis is an ongoing process and goes all together with
data collection, data interpretation and narrative reporting writing (Creswell & Poth,
2018; Merriam, 2009). In this regard, to provide categorization, the data was transcribed
by watching and listening to the audio and video recording several times. In analyzing
the observation and questionaire results, the coding and categorization were
constructed as follows:
Research Focus
Categories
Data Resources
1. The ways speaking is
taught through storytelling
 Activities before the
storytelling.
 Activities during the story.
 Activities after the story.
 Observation
 Questionnaire
2. Kinds of oral production
that the students carry out
during the teaching of
speaking through
storytelling.
 Extensive or Monologue
 Transactional
 Responsive
 Imitative
 Observation

Journal of Language Education and Educational Technology Vol. 5 No. 1, 2020 27
4. FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION
4.1. Activities before the Storytelling
This part elaborates some activities performed by teacher before telling a story to
students. The activities include explaining tasks and activities that students would
perform in the next two hours of lesson period; and re-activating students’ prior
knowledge.
4.1.1. Recalling, Explaining Tasks and Activities
Through analysis of the data, we came to know, at the beginning of the teaching
process, the teacher explained the tasks and activities that the students would perform
in the class. Such activities included introduction, brainstorming and prior knowledge
questions. As (2016) regarded these activities as essential for student’s readiness as well
as to activate students’ schemata for new learning. It was observed that the teacher
during her explanation used English language. In this way, teachers promote the
speaking of English language in the classroom. Harmer (2001) pointed out one of the
hindrances to students speaking is the frequent use of mother tongue by teachers.
Therefore, using English in this situation might mean that the students were urged to
use English during performing the next tasks. However, in an open-ended
questionnaire, the majority of students (82%) regarded it as ‘clear’ and ‘very clear’ and
some students (18%) responded that teacher explanation was ‘not really clear’.
Importantly, in recalling student’s prior knowledge, the teacher used questioning
strategy. This strategy helps teachers to get ongoing feedback, which informs them
about their teaching. In addition, questions build a communicative environment
between teachers and students which enhance student’s language acquisition skills
(Yang, 2017). Below excerpt depicts above activities;
Teacher: Good. Today, you will practice speaking by storytelling. Have you ever heard
storytelling before?
Students: Yes, bercerita?
Teacher: Hmm. Do you like story?
Students: Yes, ma’am. We like very much.
Teacher : Okay, as what we had done last week, today, it’s my turn to tell a story and you
listen to it, try to understand it, and then you will retell it to the class.
4.2. Activities during the Storytelling
At this stage, teacher performed some activities during her storytelling. The activities
included using mime and gestures, intonation and clear pronunciation, guiding
students to infer meaning from the context by guessing the meaning, synonyms, and
pictures. These activities were performed in the effort of helping students understand
the story through listening activity. Hence, listening is the focus in this stage.
Teacher becoming a storyteller was one of the teacher’s efforts to stimulate the
students -through their listening experience- to perform speaking activities as the main

Journal of Language Education and Educational Technology Vol. 5 No. 1, 2020 28
goal of this study. It is in line with Marzuki, Prayogo and Wahyudi (2016) who state
that stories are a powerful means of EFL teaching, particularly to develop more fluent
listening and speaking; and that when students have heard a story several times, they
could retell it, act it out, or write a script for the story.
4.2.1. Using Mime and Gesture
The activity was performed by the teacher during her storytelling while students were
listening to her. This is one of the activities she performed in order to help students
understand the story without looking up a dictionary. The following extract shows the
activities:
Teacher : That’s right. The tree you’re just looking at has many branches, and the
branches seem like claws. Claws means er…let me give you an example. Do you
know tiger? Do you know it?
Students : Yes.
Teacher : Tiger has claws to attack its enemy like this rrraaaww (grip her fingers and then
mime as if a tiger were ready to claw its enemy).
Students : (laugh)
Teacher : (smile) the branches of the tree seem like claws (grip her fingers again) and
make everyone afraid of.
(Obs#3, 11/2/09)
When performing this activity, the teacher did not perform it in isolation from
other communicative activities. In order to show and enliven the story of a mysterious
and scary tree, she used her body language and facial expression to enable students
access the meaning more easily. Harmer (2001) considers use of mime, gesture, and
expression useful to convey meaning and atmosphere. In such case, the teacher’s
agreement is a kind of teaching aids for themselves. Besides, it might attract students’
attention. Therefore, it is possibly true that we communicate as much or more through
our body and facial movement than we do by the words we use. However, Wright
(2009) in this case suggests that the way we make use of this potential depends on the
nature of the story and the listener or the students. Therefore, the teacher performed
these activities only a few times because such performance was very contextual. This
was also supported by the data obtained from questionnaire (Que#18). There were 50%
of the students who stated that the teacher sometimes changed her expression when
coming to a character during her storytelling, and only 43% of them stated often to the
same thing.
4.2.2. Intonation and Pronunciation
Other things the teacher did to support her action when telling story was changing her
intonation and making her pronunciation clear in order to facilitate students
understand of the story more easily. Using different intonation and clear pronunciation
is important in this part as students were listening to the story without looking at the

Journal of Language Education and Educational Technology Vol. 5 No. 1, 2020 29
text. This was done when she came to such a character which seemed mysterious and
scary, such as the tree.
Teacher : yeah, because he didn’t have any friends. John liked to daydream…all
day. So, when he stared at the tree, a big tree…er…a scary tree, a mysterious
power from the gigantic hollow of the tree seemed to call him. A mysterious
power from the tree seemed to call John’s name. “John…John, come here! Come
here John! (Changing her voice as if she were the caller)
Students : hiii….(showing their fright and then smiling)
Teacher : John then stood up from his seat, walked away from his room, comes
close to the tree without thinking anything. Do you know what happened then?
(Obs#3, 11/2/09)
This finding is supported also from the questionnaire data (Que#20) of which
57% of the students responded that the teacher often used different intonations when
coming to different characters during her telling, whereas, 43% of them responded
sometimes to the same matter. In Que#21, the data show that changing intonation while
telling the story enabled the students to understand the story more easily (89%) even though
they did not look at the story text. Some reasons for their choices were that the teacher’s
intonation and pronunciation was clear and helpful to make them understand the story.
It can be inferred from the fact that providing students with different intonations and
clear pronunciation can facilitate their understanding of the story they were listening
without text as well as provide them with language models, in this case pronunciation
models. This may be helpful for the students before they perform storytelling or
speaking task as the goal for the teaching.
In comparison to the original text of the story, the teacher made some
modification in telling it, e.g. she made up her voices as the mysterious caller. By
adding tone to the story, the teacher aimed to make her storytelling alive and to attract
the students’ attention while listening to the story. This might be to provide students
with something that they really enjoyed while they were practicing their listening skills.
In other words, the students in this stage were expected to listen not because they had
to but because they were genuinely interested in what was going to happen next. The
data indicate that presenting the story in the form of storytelling empowers the
storyteller, in this case the teacher adding tone or making mysterious voices are creative
ways to deliver it. It means that the teacher enabled to vary her language use for
example changing her voice in order to make the story interesting and attractive. This
also made the students to use the language in more independent ways. Wright (2009)
suggests strategies other than read aloud for easy understanding of storytelling:
“It is natural to repeat oneself when speaking; teachers can see the students’ faces
and bodies, and respond to their lack of comprehension, their joy, and their
immediate concerns more readily; so teachers can make use of their body more
effectively to heighten meaning and or they can use the language they know the
students know”.

Journal of Language Education and Educational Technology Vol. 5 No. 1, 2020 30
4.2.3. Giving Synonyms of Difficult Words
Giving synonyms of the difficult words was another way that the teacher did during
her storytelling. It was aimed at helping students understand the story by focusing
them on new keywords. For instance, teacher explained the meaning of ‘gloomy’ to the
students. She gave the synonym of the target word to explain the meaning. In this case,
she substituted sad for gloomy. Another way the teacher tried to do was that she used
the opposite sentences, i.e. ‘he was not happy, and he was not cheerful’. Using such
sentences, the teacher tried not only to explain the meaning but also to provide the
context and performed it in a repetitive way. It can be inferred from the extract that the
teacher used repetition in order to make her explanation understandable to the
students.
4.2.4. Drawing Picture
One way to help students guess the meaning of new words during the teacher’
storytelling was by drawing picture of the target word. Through picture, the teacher
aimed to convey the meaning of the target word without using too many words.
Teacher : …John was looking out the window, er…staring at a tree that …looked
scary. Scary means…make us afraid. The tree was very scary, and
made us afraid to look at it because the tree was very big, very old, and
the branch…you know branch?
Students : (Quiet)
Teacher : Branch means…let me draw it on the whiteboard (draw a picture of a big
tree with branches on the board).
Students : (After looking at the picture) cabangpohon!
Teacher : That’s right. The tree you’re looking at, has many branches, and the
branches look like claws. You know claw?
(Obs#3, 11/2/09)
What the teacher did in this part made it more easily for her to help students to
determine the meaning rather than let them open a dictionary to look up the words that
was possibly time consuming. Let students look up the meaning of the words in a
dictionary might be impractical since they were listening to a story. Besides, pictures
help learner to build comprehension as they get to see the words being used in context,
in this case the nonverbal cue, picture (Nunan, 1999).
4.3. Activities after the Storytelling
The teacher and students performed some activities after teacher story. The students
were given opportunities to practice retelling the story they had listened, they also
worked in group to discuss another given story to re-create and share with whole class.
The teacher also performed some activities such as guiding students to infer meaning,
assessing students’ speaking when performing storytelling, giving feedback and
motivating students.

Journal of Language Education and Educational Technology Vol. 5 No. 1, 2020 31
4.3.1. Retelling the Teacher’s Story
The data obtained from questionnaire shows that 50% of the students are excited to retell
the story in their own words, 29% are excited to retell the story to answer the teacher’s guiding
questions; and only 21% feel excited to listen to the teacher’s storytelling without retelling it.
This indicates that the students realized benefits of retelling the story. It is
supported from Que#11 which shows 82% students agreed that they could practice
developing their speaking skill through storytelling; and Que#12 in which 64% of them
regarded that they could also learn many vocabularies through storytelling. Therefore, as
suggested by Doyon (1999) and Brandi-Muller (2005), it would be better to let students
develop their language skills through telling and retelling story for several time to make
them more customary.
Since the teacher did not point them to perform storytelling, some students
retold the story voluntarily and enthusiastically to take a risk of making mistakes. The
extract below shows this evidence:
Teacher : Now, we move to the next session, kita ke sesi berikutnya. It is to retell the whole
story, karena tadi kita sudah memilah-milah ceritanya dalam orientasinya,
komplikasinya, dan reorientasinya. Who will be the volunteer at the first time, to
retell the whole story, who will try? (one student, a boy rises his hand). Will you
try?
Student : (nodding) John is a gloomy boy. He lived (mispronounce the word) in a town.
He always…always look out to...to the window He see, er, a big tree. He see a
big tree, ehm…he, he was afraid when..when he…he saw the tree because,
because the tree…er, er have…er have branches like claws, like claws. Er…then,
John, John want…John want to run away to the tree, but, er, he
pull…pull…what’s the meaning pull ma’am?
(Obs#3, 11/2/09)
The student seems enthusiastic to retell the story as student raised his hand
when the teacher invited the volunteer. From his performance of using many
repetitions during his telling, it seems that he was eager to convey all information he
knows about the story even though he told it haltingly. It means that this student is a
risk taker whose potency might be best exposed through the activities like storytelling.
It is in line with Aiex, (1988) who stated that student’s participation in storytelling
provides not only novelty to stimulate his curiosity, but also enough familiarity to allow
him or her to experience success at using language.
Above all, the students’ willingness and courage to retell the story was due to
their comprehension and curiosity to practice their speaking ability despite their limited
English. It was in line with the finding of a previous research conducted by Trostle and
Hicks (1998) and Isbell, Sobol, Lindauer, and Lowrance (2004). Both researches
compared the effect of storytelling and story reading and found that storytelling
significantly increased vocabulary and comprehension rather than story reading.

Journal of Language Education and Educational Technology Vol. 5 No. 1, 2020 32
Further, storytelling was found to be engaging while story reading was found to be
more of a passive experience (Trostle& Hicks, 1998; Isbell et al., 2004).
4.3.2. Working in Group
Group work enabled the students to express their ideas freely. Giving students
opportunities to work in group is indication that the teacher employed the learner-
centered approach, besides providing them with the opportunities to practice speaking
through storytelling and story retelling. This is proved by the data from questionnaire
which show that 36% of the students preferred working in group.
However, during the group discussion, almost all students used Bahasa Indonesia
when communicating with each other. They used English only when asking questions
to the teacher. Related to this fact, Harmer (2001) clarifies that there are some
understandable reasons why students used their mother tongue; one of them is when
performing pedagogical tasks, especially when one student is explaining something to
another to share their understanding of English. However, it will be pointless if the use
of L1 is when they are doing an oral fluency activity. In this situation, Harmer suggests
teachers to promote English as much as possible particularly in oral production activity,
be more relaxed about it especially at the lower level students.
Whereas the teacher allowed the students to use their mother tongue in the
process of discussion and re-creation of the story, she strongly encouraged the use of
English, rather than other languages, when explaining difficult words or when
reporting the discussion results or telling stories.
4.3.3. Guiding Students to Infer Meaning from the Context
While the students were working in groups to discuss the story, teacher was assisting
the students to understand the story given. Understanding the content of the story must
be achieved before the students recreated the end of the story. The following extract
shows the evidence:
Student : Ma’am, what’s the meaning wet and undercover?
Teacher : wet and undercover?...Do you know water?
Student : (Trying to look up the word in a dictionary)
Teacher : No! no! don’t open it. Try to guess what’s the meaning, okay? I’ll explain
it, try to guess, please! Now, do you know water?
Students : Yes.
Teacher : If you play with water, you will be wet.. understand?
Students : Yes, basah!
Teacher : that’s right. Now, undercover means…it’s raining outside the class, okay?
(It was raining when this study was conducting).
Students : Yes!
Teacher : It is raining outside the class, we are in the room. We are not wet
because we are undercover. If you go outside the class and play under

Journal of Language Education and Educational Technology Vol. 5 No. 1, 2020 33
the rain, you will be wet; but…if you stay and sit in this class, do not play under
the rain, you will be undercover, you will NOT be wet. Do you understand what
I mean?
Students : (nodding and smiling) yes!
(Observation 4, 12/ 2/09)
The extract shows some students asked questions from teacher during group
work. The questions were about new words they found in the story. It indicates that the
students preferred to understand new words instead of story and the teacher then
decided to explain the words through the given context. Besides, the teacher introduced
the words with the context. The teacher let the students guess the meaning of the new
words through the context she created. The teacher used English in explaining the
context to achieve the teaching goal. It means even though focus of teaching is on
listening skill, the teacher tries to promote the English language in context to make
students customary of speaking English, particularly for the next activity when they
perform storytelling as a speaking task.
4.3.4. Telling the Story
This activity was performed in session two of the teaching program after group
discussion. Each group discussed a given unfinished story with a picture in order to re-
create the end of story. Students were randomly called to present the stories after the
group discussion. The activity of telling story has a challenging impact on the students
as they make efforts to achieve a ‘success’ of telling the story in various ways based on
their capability. For such a case, Thornbury (2005) claims that when a speaking task
compel the learners to draw on their available communicative resources to achieve the
outcome, this helps them to experience the sense of achievement, even excitement, as
part of autonomous language use. From the questionnaire, 89% of students regarded
that learning speaking through storytelling was interesting and 11% not really interesting.
It can be presumed that students preferred to learn speaking through storytelling.
4.3.5. Assessing Students’ Speaking Performance
In this part of the lesson, the teacher performed activities of assessment and gave
feedback as well related to the students’ performance. In this case, the assessment was
done simultaneously with feedback provision, during the two sessions of the teaching
program, namely, the session in which students were retelling the teacher’s storytelling,
and the session in which they were telling the story they had recreated in group.
However, assessment was conducted implicitly without the students being aware of it,
so that they can perform the speaking activities as naturally as possible, and also reduce
nervousness during their performance.
When designing the speaking assessment, a teacher should have some criteria or
principles that underlie it. In this case, Croker (1999) explains that the criteria must be
relevant, clear, and practical. In this case, teacher had used the speaking assessment
criteria that have been designed by BSNP (Badan Standard Nasional Pendidikan) (2004) or

Journal of Language Education and Educational Technology Vol. 5 No. 1, 2020 34
Board of National Education Standard for assessing speaking competence (See
Appendix B).
In relation to the assessment procedures, the teacher used ongoing assessment in
which she did this activity continuously from the second meeting to the last during the
process and performed it in the secret way (see Appendix C). From the assessment
result, it was seen that there was an increase in the students’ participation. For instance,
in meeting two, the students who took part in telling the story were only three, then
increased to seven in meeting three.
4.4. Kinds of Oral Production during the Teaching of Speaking through Storytelling
In this part, the discussion focused on the kinds of oral production which the students
produced, either when they interacted with the teacher or when they performed
storytelling. According to Brown (2001), there are six categories applied to the kinds of
oral production that students are expected to carry out in the speaking classroom. They
are imitative, intensive, responsive, transactional, interpersonal, and extensive. Some of
the merging kinds of oral production in this are discussed below.
4.4.1. Extensive or Monologue
Extensive is a kind of extended monologue which is carried out by students at
intermediate to advanced level in the form of oral reports, summaries or short speeches
(Brown, 2001). According to the data from observation, it was the salient oral
production which was produced when the students were telling and retelling the story.
The following extract displays an example of the evidence:
Teacher : okay, the next performance will be presented by group five, head
number…two!
Students : thank you very much for this time. Now, I will, I will tell you my ending story.
After they know the name of the soldier, then…then…then, they want, they want
to give them a hard voice. He, he was very discipline. So that, the soldier very
afraid. Although they like that, er…the soldier trying, er…trying diligent and
serious in order er...in order to, er, they be a good soldier. Thank you!
(Obs#4, 12/2/09)
The extract shows that the student used repetitions, pauses, and was hesitant
when telling the end of the story. Despite that he reported what he and his group
members had discussed and planned before. It appears that he carried out a monologue
spontaneously since there was no interruption from the hearer. Connected to this fact,
Brown (2001) clarifies that the presence of many performance variables such as
hesitations, pauses, or repetitions can either help the speaker to process the thinking or
hinder comprehension of the hearer.
The case depicts that student was hesitated, took pauses, and repetitions in his
narration which implies that he made a great effort to convey information to the hearer
(both teacher and students). What the student carried out in this stage may generate a
meaningful interaction. This is propped up by Gebhard (2000) who argues that

Journal of Language Education and Educational Technology Vol. 5 No. 1, 2020 35
providing chances for the students to express themselves in meaningful ways
potentially contributes to creating an interactive classroom.
4.4.2. Transactional (Dialogue)
Transactional language was carried out for the purpose of conveying or exchanging
specific information (Brown, 2001). The nature of this kind of language is found in
conversation (Brown, 2001). As a kind of dialogue, there must be two or more speakers
who are involved in an exchange in order to produce such oral language (Brown, 2001;
Nunan, 1999).
In the context of this study, students have an opportunity to interact with the
teacher and between each other. The interaction between the students and the teacher
are the most salient activities that happened during the process. Moreover, the
interaction occurred only when students worked in groups and used Bahasa Indonesia
during the interaction.
From the observation, it was seen that this kind of oral production was carried
out during and after the students told and retold the story; when the teacher clarified
what the students had said or told as shown in the following extract:
Student : John is one kid er, in the town. He is…he is look sad and…he is a gloomy boy.
He is…he’s haven’t, eh, he’s have not er, any friends. Er, one day, usually
(mispronounce the word)…
Teacher : Usually! (Correct the pronunciation).
Student : Usually, he is sitting in the chair, on the chair, and…(ask the teacher) apa
‘sambil?’
Teacher : while or by
Student : er..by daydream, and he, he look at the tree, and one day, he feel…
Teacher : how is the tree?
Student : he feels the tree has a mysterious power, power mysterious.
Teacher : mysterious power!
Student : mysterious power.
Teacher : how do you know if the tree has a mysterious power?
Student : because he feels…the tree seemed to call his name.
Teacher : hmm, so?
Student : so, he…he come close to the tree, but he wants to run away, er…unfortunately,
the power pull him, so, now, he…he…never come back. He disappeared. Now,
no one knows he, him and…no one cared him.
(Obs#3, 11/2/09)
Smooth interaction between students and teacher is evident from the extract.
However, Chastain (1976) claims that speech occur when the students actively
incorporate the components of language into their cognitive network and communicate
their ideas to each other. Unfortunately, students carried out such oral production
interacting with the teacher only.

Journal of Language Education and Educational Technology Vol. 5 No. 1, 2020 36
4.4.3. Responsive
Responsive is short replies to teacher- or student-initiated questions or comments.
These replies are usually sufficient and do not extend into dialogues (Brown, 2001). The
following extracts are represented as the examples:
Teacher : I believe you are familiar enough with narrative text. What do you know about
it?
Student : narrative refers to er…the process of telling a story at a particular place, time
and particular experience.
(Obs#3, 11/2/09)
Teacher : okay, in which town?
Students : no town.
(Obs#2, 5/2/09)
Student : what’s the meaning ‘there will be trouble’?
Teacher : there will be trouble? There will be problem.
(Obs#4, 12/2/09)
Evident from excerpt, most of the questions initiated by the teacher made the
instruction to be one-way direction. In this case, the teacher asked a lot of questions and
the students only gave answers or responses, although the questions and comments
were asked to invite them to take part in the learning process.
What the teacher did in this stage proved the fact that the teacher used direct
strategy. In some circumstances, direct strategy might be more appropriate to be used,
for example, when students are introduced to a new concept, it may be useful to
develop their basic knowledge and skill (Davis, 1993; Richard & Lockhard, 1994).
Similarly, Killen (1998) explained that when using this strategy, teachers aim to deliver
academic content in a highly structured way, direct the students’ activities, and
maintain a focus on academic achievement. In this case, the use of questions may help
students to receive oral information, process it and then respond it. It means that, the
frequent use of question and answer sessions in direct instruction may not only help in
subject matter development, but also support the development of the students’ oral
skills.
4.4.4. Imitative
According to Brown (2001), imitative is a kind of speaking performance which is
designed to practice some phonological or grammatical aspects of language. It is a very
limited portion of classroom speaking time as Brown calls it “human tape recorder”
speech, where learners can practice an intonation or a certain vowel sound.
In this study, there was a moment where the teacher asked students to perform such
speaking as shown in the extract below:

Journal of Language Education and Educational Technology Vol. 5 No. 1, 2020 37
Teacher : John disappeared, and? Nobody knew. He disappeared. Say, ‘disappeared’!
Students : disappeared!
Teacher : disappeared!
Students : disappeared!
Teacher : what does it mean?
Students : menghilang!
Teacher : yah, menghilang. Now, gigantic hollow! Repeat after me!
Students : gigantic hollow.
Teacher : gigantic hollow!
Students : gigantic hollow.
Teacher : gloomy!
Students : gloomy.
(Obs#3, 11/2/09)
By asking students to imitate what she said, the teacher aimed to pinpoint the
new words and the pronunciation to the students in order that they can use it when
telling or retelling story appropriately. Asking them to imitate such words is not for the
purpose of meaningful interaction, but for focusing on some element of language form
(Brown, 2001).
The use of these words in most of the students speaking performances was due
to the repetitions in every performance of the student when retelling the same story.
This enabled other students to use the same words when his or her turn came. Related
to this fact, Yuling (2004) has stated that through storytelling, the learner is got to hear
new vocabularies many times before repeating it, and that the repetition of new items is
a crucial element in the process of input. Similarly, it proved the fact that through
storytelling, the students can learn the words through the context rather than bits and
pieces (Deacon and Murphy, 2001), and the previous findings that storytelling can
increase vocabulary and comprehension (Trostle & Hicks, 1998; Isbell et al, 2004).
5. CONCLUSIONS
The findings of this study showed how speaking is taught through storytelling through
activities before, during and after the storytelling. In addition, the findings illustrate
kinds of oral production that the learners carried out during the learning process.
Teaching speaking through storytelling is assimilated with other skills such as reading,
writing and listening. This means that story-telling cannot be separately taught to
learners from other skills. Importantly, learners speaking skills were stimulated by
teacher through storytelling and retelling. In addition, activities like group discussion
and recreating story helped students to enhance their reading and writing skills. In this
case, despite limited vocabulary, the learners enthusiastically performed storytelling
and retelling. It might be due to the insight on story content that build their motivation
to talk. However, the role of teacher is vital in such teaching process for instance,
teacher role is to provide language models, design suitable activities, motivate learners
to speak and so on.

Journal of Language Education and Educational Technology Vol. 5 No. 1, 2020 38
The study has also inevitable limitations. In this view, the focus of teaching was
limited to fluency instead of accuracy. As was seen, teacher did not correct much of the
grammatical mistakes. Besides, learners used their native language, Bahasa Indonesia,
during discussions. It may be due to limited vocabulary as well as unfamiliarity of
using English in communication. Thus, speaking being the focus, interpersonal oral
production in which learners interact with each other naturally was not gained.
Although, oral production in the storytelling included monologue, transactional,
responsive and imitative whereas productions such as extensive and transactional were
produced saliently. It seemed that speaking was produced due to teacher initiative to
ask questions from students, which made instruction to be in a one-way direction.
Nevertheless, the learners availed the opportunity of speaking. This indicates the
student-centered approach in teaching speaking through storytelling.
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