Improving young learners´ listening skills through storytelling

• Autor(a) principal: Santos, Rubina Soares
• Data de Publicação: 2018
• Tipo de documento: Dissertação
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (Repositórios Cientìficos)
• Texto Completo: http://hdl.handle.net/10362/47622
• topic: Primary school; Listening skills; English; Listening strategies; Storytelling; Inglês; Competências auditivas; Estratégias de audição; Histórias

The present study aimed to verify the possible benefits of using storytelling as a means to help improve young learners’ listening skills in English language learning by teaching them listening strategies they could apply during storytelling to better comprehend the stories they listened to. There was also the intent to apply the same listening strategies to other listening activities, such as listening tasks from their course books, with CDs. Data was collected through questionnaires, storytelling activity sheets and my teaching journal. Results concluded that teaching young learners specific listening strategies that they could apply when listening to stories or CDs in class might not necessarily help enhance their listening skills. The analysis of the several research tools used in this action research did not show any evidence that young learners had in fact used the listening strategies they were taught and encouraged to use when doing storytelling activity sheets. However, results suggested that children were more confident after the first two storytelling activity sheets after realizing there were strategies available for them to try and improve their listening skills. The main conclusion of this study is that it can be helpful to share and teach listening strategies to young learners as it can give them more confidence to try new ways to improve their listening skills.