The purpose of this study was to investigate the implementation of retelling based on storybooks in a primary English classroom, and to explore the development of children’s speaking skills and the aspects of their English speaking. To attain the af...
The purpose of this study was to investigate the implementation of retelling based on storybooks in a primary English classroom, and to explore the development of children’s speaking skills and the aspects of their English speaking. To attain the aforementioned objectives, the participants of this study, 10 primary school children, were instructed to read and retell the story in their own words. The following research questions were proposed.
1) How do children develop their text understanding and speaking skills of English through retelling?
2) What are the notable aspects of children’s English speaking based on retelling storybooks?
The data was collected from various resources including transcripts from classroom activities, worksheets, retelling checklists, children’s reponses to retelling, questionnaires, teacher field notes and interviews; all observed through qualitative analysis. The quantitative method was also used to analyze speaking fluency tests.
The data analysis yielded the following results:
The first finding is that the children developed text understanding and speaking skills of English through retelling.
By analyzing the structure of a text, children showed deeper understanding, leading to an enriched production. The teacher used various questions to assist children in identifying the five key elements that make up a story: setting, characters, problem, resolution and conclusion. Children created a holistic story map to focus on both the overall story structure and individual story elements.
Additionally, at the early stage of this class children were helped to realize that retelling was not the memorizing of a text, but the transforming of a text into their own words. The teacher modeled the retelling of a text and gave opportunities for practice. The teacher also used retelling props such as aprons, triaramas and a variety of other items to help children remember the various elements of the story. As a result, the children developed text understanding and speaking skills by voluntarily participating in retelling.
The second finding is that the children showed various aspects of English speaking when they retold the story.
First, they could restate the ideas or events of the story in their own words. They changed words and created new sentences to express the ideas of the story. They also followed some basic rules of summarizing when they retold the story. In other words, they reduced the length of a passage through deleting repeated ideas, deleting unimportant details and assembling lists into a general statement. Additionally, they showed different aspects of retelling according to the characteristics of the storybook: pattern, genre, theme and page. Through the pattern of the storybook, they had a difficulty in reconstructing the key elements, though they understood the meaning of the text easily. With one realistic storybook, they could make connections between their lives and the text. On the other hand, another realistic storybook overwhelmed the children with difficult themes and lots of pages; children were bored with reading and complained of difficulties in retelling the story.
Based on the results of this study, the following implications can be made: First, by showing the process of implementing retelling using storybooks in an EFL primary classroom, this study provides practical help to primary English - teachers planning to integrate retelling into their curriculum. Second, after reading storybooks, children can develop their integrative language skills by reconstructing and retelling in their own words.
Despite the positive outcome, this study has limitations to overcome:
First, according to each child’s fluency level, the teacher needs to choose appropriate storybooks, give supported feedbacks, and carry out an in-depth analysis of the various aspects of each child's speaking. Second, there is a need for developing objective measures to evaluate each child's speaking improvement through the retelling.
This study concluded with the following suggestions:
First, further research should be carried out in retelling using stories concerning the primary English curriculum. Second, appropriate storybooks for retelling that clearly illustrate the text structure should be provided. Third, by linking the retelling to writing activities as an intermediary step, children can develop the four skills of English language learning.