Literacy and text-based teaching methodology in Primary Education [17553].

Facultad de Educacin [2012-2013]

CHILDREN LITERATURE IN ENGLISH LANGUAGE: THE USE OF STORYBOOKS

TO IMPROVE READING AND WRITING SKILLS
INDEX
1. Introduction
2. Childrens literature in the English language
3. Didactic application techniques for listening comprehension, introducing and encouraging reading habits and
appreciating the poetic function of language.
a. Why using storybooks?
b. Criteria for selecting storybooks
c. Learning to listen
d. Learning to read
e. How should reading habits be introduced and children be taught to appreciate the poetic function of
language?
f. The poetic function of language
4. Reading Methodological guidance skills: Exploiting a storybook
5. Conclusion
6. Resources

------------------------------------------------------1. INTRODUCTION
Storybooks are powerful tools that offer more than just an enjoyable reading experience. Through the use of
storybooks, teachers can effectively instruct students on basic literary elements. A well-grounded understanding
of these literary elements will help students develop reading skills that they can use to transition into higher-level
reading as they continue through school.
Our curriculum establishes two general aims that are related to this topic:
A)
Listening and understanding messages, using transmitted
information to develop tasks related to their experiences.
B)
Reading comprehensively for pleasure and to obtain
information according to a final goal
The achievement of these objectives in relation to literature is evaluated by the following criteria of assessment:
A) Getting the global idea and identifying some specific elements in oral texts, with the help of linguistic and nonlinguistic elements related with class activities and their surroundings
B) Reading and identifying words and easy sentences previously worked orally about familiar topics and their
interests, through fun and communicative activities, with visual, mimics and verbal support
According to this it is clear that we can use Literature in our classroom. In fact, childrens literature is an
inexhaustible fountain of resources for programming all sorts of language activities. It provides an extension of
vocabulary; a cultural context of the country in which language is being learnt and it gives learning an amusing
and recreational character.

2. CHILDRENS LITERATURE IN THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE

Childrens literature is a comparatively recent phenomenon, having emerged as a distinct and independent form
only in the second half of the 18th century. On the other hand, the English must be credited with having originated
or triumphed in more childrens genres than any other country. One of the earliest and most enduring classics of
childrens literature is the collection of nursery rhymes known as Mother Goose, the first edition of which

Literacy and text-based teaching methodology in Primary Education [17553].

Facultad de Educacin [2012-2013]
appeared in 1791. Other works of genius have been Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Dafoe and Gullivers Travels
by Jonathan Swift. Robinson Crusoe is known all around the world and has been translated into many languages.
Gullivers Travels still today is a masterpiece, a childrens fairy tale and a serious book for adults.
Childrens literature blossomed in the 19th century, particularly in England and in the United States into rich and
complex genre-serving children of all ages from kids to adolescents. Among the more famous 19th century works
are Alices Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carrol, Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson, and The
Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain.
Illustrations became a major part of childrens books in the 19th century and were used, as they are now, to
interest children is stories and to help them visualize the characters and the action. The first modern picture book
for children was The Tale of Peter Rabbit by Beatrix Potter. She was a genius of childrens literature (and
illustration using water colors) for small children, probably the most difficult of all genres.
Childrens literature now includes the whole content of the childs imaginative world and that of his daily
environment as well as certain ideas and sentiments characteristic of it. The population of this world is not made
up only of children but also of animated objects, toys, dolls and puppets, real and chimerical animals, myth and
legend, fantasy figures and adults seen through the childs eyes.
In the 20th century the success of childrens literature began with two fantasy books Winnie the Pooh and The
house of Pooh Corner. Other great work was Mary Poppings by P.L.Travels. From 1960s onwards there were a
lot of famous writers. One of them was William Wayne with No more School and The Fishing Party. In the
present day, childrens literature almost rivals the diversity of popular adult literature, with books for younger
readers produced in young genres such as science fiction or more classical ones such as adventure, detective
stories, animal stories, historical fiction and stories dealing with social issues. There are also non-fictional genres
such as biographies, popularized history and junior encyclopedias.
Finally we are going to describe three of the most important divisions of childrens literature:
A) FAIRY TALES: It contains a similar proportion of wishes and fears, which creates a balance, that keeps the
attention of readers and listeners. They are especially good for children between the ages of 9 and 10 which it
is when children are maturing in processes that they are afraid of.
B) ANIMALS: They are the strongest bond between fairy tales and modern childrens literature. Animals are
creatures that speak and act like human beings. They are present in most old and modern childrens stories
and are the most important source of power in the best childrens literature.
C) FANTACTISC LITERATURE OF TRAVELS AND ADVENTURES: In fantastic literature any adventure story aims to
plunge the reader into uncertainty, the most dramatic episode is generally saved for the end, thus giving the
enigma its own charm. A misadventure of some kind is the main type of plot. This misadventure can be of
different sorts; by a large, towards the end evil is transformed into good. The hero continually feels the
contradiction between both worlds: the world of reality and the world of fantasy and he is overwhelmed by
the extraordinary things that surround him.

3. DIDACTIC APPLICATION TECHNIQUES FOR LISTENING COMPREHENSION, INTRODUCING AND

ENCOURAGING READING HABITS AND APPRECIATING THE POETIC FUNCTION OF LANGUAGE
A. Why using storybooks?
As we all know children enjoy listening to stories. For this reason storybooks can provide an ideal introduction to
the foreign language as it is presented in a context that is familiar to the children. Stories can also provide the

Literacy and text-based teaching methodology in Primary Education [17553].

Facultad de Educacin [2012-2013]
starting point for a wide variety of related language and learning activities. Other reasons why teachers must use
storybooks are:
Stories are MOTIVATING and FUN
Stories exercise the IMAGINATION
Stories are a useful tool in linking FANTASY and the imagination with childrens REAL WORLD
Listening to stories in the class is a shared SOCIAL EXPERIENCE
Stories allow students to express FEELINGS in a natural relaxed atmosphere
Vocabulary in stories is used in context. Being exposed to listening to stories is a vehicle for promoting
language acquisition in a natural way
Children enjoy listening to stories over and over again. This frequent repetition allows certain language
items to be acquired
Stories allow cross curricular activities: art, history, science, drama, maths, etc
Having children listen to stories allows the teacher to REVISE or INTRODUCE new vocabulary and sentence
structures in real life situations
Listening to stories develops childrens LISTENING and CONCENTRATING SKILLS via:
- Visual clues, pictures and illustration
- Their prior knowledge of how language works
- Their general knowledge. These help them to understand the overall meaning of a story and relate it
to their personal experience
- Stories can consolidate learning in other school subjects across the curriculum
Although there are more positive than negative aspects about using storybooks, these are some drawbacks we
should also consider when using storybooks:

Working with storybooks in the classroom is not an easy task for most teachers due to a lack of
experience in the field
Using storybooks demands the teacher to be very creative, resourceful and dynamic
Teacher need to know how to integrate different skills (if the teachers use stories merely to introduce and
practice grammar, children may lose interest and will be bored)
Storybooks may be expensive
Some stories may be complex or difficult to understand depending on the students level. Adaptation is a
must in storybooks.
Preparation of activities for the different stages can be time consuming
Selecting stories takes time, so it is a must to choose them wisely using a formal criteria

B. Criteria for selecting storybooks

Once we decide to use storybooks in our class lesson, teachers should evaluate their criteria in the selection
process. This process should have a formal structure considering the following didactic elements: linguistic,
psychological, and cultural

Linguistic component
- Level: teachers will have to evaluate the vocabulary, structure and grammatical functions found in the
stories
- Pronunciation: rhyme, onomatopoeia, rhythm and intonation
- Content/subject matter: relevant, interesting, amusing and memorable
- Visuals: Use of illustrations, attractive/colorful, size
- Participation: repetitions, predictions, develop memory, build confidence

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Psychological
- Motivation
- Arouse curiosity
- Create positive attitudes (target language, target culture and language learning)
Cultural
- Language/content: authentic and appropriate for the different levels

The above classification can also be described by responding to the below questions:

Are different types of storybooks (animal stories, fantasy stories, stories with rhyming words, etc)
represented in the classroom?
Are there differences in the style of the illustrations between the books?
Are the main characters boys as well as girls?
Can children identify with the main character or with any other character?
Is the book suitable (psychologically) for the age group?
Will students have or develop links to their personal experiences and lives?
Is the book fun? Sense of humor?
How does the language match the students language skills?
Does the book match cross-curricular topics?
Can children read these books by themselves?
Is it a book children can understand without reading a text?

C. Learning to listen
Listening to English is hard work, especially for our youngest students. It is very important to bear in mind that our
students will concentrate more during a listening activity if this activity is purposeful. If we want our pupils to
engage actively in a listening activity they must be either interested in what they are going to listen to or they
must find it useful.
In any case they must have expectations about the content of the listening text. We must also consider our pupils
psychological characteristics. We must build up their confidence by telling them that it is OK not to understand
every single word, by using back up visual material when possible and specially by telling them what we exactly
want them to do. If we want to help them feel confident about listening activities we must also teach our children
to develop strategies for listening, to develop micro skills.
The most important listening micro-skills are:

PREDICTING: We must encourage our pupils to predict what they think is going to happen in a story. The
process of understanding the text is the process of seeing how the content of the text matches up to
these predictions
EXTRACTING SPECIFIC INFORMATION AND GETTING THE GENERAL PICTURE: These are essential skills if
we dont want our pupils to be lost in a sea of words they dont understand. In some situations
understanding the gist of the message will be enough for communicative purposes, in others, they will
have to focus more on specific details
INFERRING OPINION AND ATTITUDE: This helps children to work out what the writer or speakers opinion
and attitudes are, especially in dialogues or story telling
DEDUCING MEANING FROM CONTEXT: We must encourage our pupils to use pictures and their general
knowledge about the topic to work out the meaning of unfamiliar words

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RECOGNISING DISCOURSE PATTERNS AND MARKERS: Words such as first, then, but, and, or,
give important clues about what is coming next in a text thus helping us to understand a sequence of
events in a story.

Our job, then, is to train our pupils in a number of micro-skills they will need for the understanding of listening
texts.
D. Learning to read
Our curriculum does not place too many reading demands on our students: everything they might read must be
related to their needs and interests. Reading strategies are similar to listening strategies, as they both are
receptive skills. The strategies for getting the general idea (scanning in reading) and listening for specific
information (skimming) are as important in listening as in reading.

SCANNING: it refers to the process of reading only the main ideas within a passage to get an overall
impression of the content of a reading. We can do this process by:
o Read the title
o Read the introduction or the first paragraph
o Read the first sentence of every paragraph / and the last paragraph
o Read any headings, notice any pictures, charts, etc
o Notice any italicized or boldface word or phrases

SKIMMING: it is a reading technique to be used when you want to find specific information quickly. In
scanning you have a question in your mind and you read a passage only to find the answer, ignoring
unrelated information. You can scan by doing:
o State the specific information you are looking for
o Try to anticipate how the answer will appear and what clues you might use to help you locate the
answer
o Use headings and any other aids that will help you identify which sections might contain the
information you are looking for
o Selectively read and skip through sections of the text/passage.

As research has shown the strategies we have studied in the listening part are equally important for effective
reading. Reading practice may be derived from listening activities if lead to writing thus becoming fully integrated.
E. How should reading habits be introduced and children be taught to appreciate the poetic function of
language?
First of all, as we have remarked several times now, stories must meet students interest. If we use stories or
literary texts merely to teach, children may reject this and lose their good, natural disposition for stories, which is
an enormous potential. Reading habits can be developed and telling and reading children stories that are suitable
for them can teach the poetic function of language.
On the other hand a stimulating book will also promote a positive attitude towards reading by creating
enthusiasm among children for books, thats to say it is a very good idea to organize a book corner. Once a story
in English has been completed in class, we can put extra copies of it in the book corner. This will provide an
introduction to the written word in English.
In fact, effective organization and imaginative display of our book corner both play a vital role in helping our
young students develop a positive attitude towards books, reading and the foreign language. We should also

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involve our pupils as much as possible in the organization of the book corner and decorate the corner with any
artwork inspired by the stories read in class.
F. The poetic function of language
Language has many functions and it is part of our competence as speakers not only to know to produce
utterances but also to use them in different situations of our social life. One function of the language described by
Jacobson is the poetic function. According to Jacobson this function cannot be limited itself to the field of poetry
but it also includes other aspects such as the repetition sounds, meanings, intonation patterns and so on.
Therefore with the purpose of the students sensitise in the poetic function of language we can make use of the
oral and reading techniques explained above as well as the use of different materials: video, tape recorders,
illustrated books, tales, stories, comics, magazines.
Finally we may say that with the purpose of students sensitise in the poetic function of language, they can also act
out stories that they know and love. These may come from poems, folk tales and legends taken from published
collections as well as jokes and fairy tales. So, we cannot forget that we will work with stories that fire our pupils
imagination.

4. READING METHODOLOGICAL GUIDANCE SKILLS: EXPLOTING A STORYBOOK

Storybooks offer variety and can be used to provide extra language practice by supplementing and
complementing another language course. The following guidelines provide a framework we could use to plan
story-based lessons:
Identify our linguistic objectives
We must provide a CONTEXT for the story and introduce the main CHARACTERS, and then elicit key
vocabulary and phrases and involve them in predicting and participating in the story as much as possible
We must also provide VISUAL SUPPORT (drawings, cut out figures, masks, puppets, realia, etc.)
If possible we should decide how long we will spend using the story, when we will read the story and in
which order we are going to introduce or revise the language necessary for understanding the story
If necessary, we should modify the story to make it more accessible to our pupils and easier to follow by
substituting unfamiliar words or adapting sentence structures
We also should find out if there are any rhymes or songs that pupils can learn to help reinforce language
introduced
Finally we should decide which follow-up activities would provide opportunities for pupils to produce
language from the story in different contexts, for example role play, dramatization, creative activities,
surveys, and so on
Here you have some essential methodological dispositions to take into account when preparing a storybook
lesson presentation:
A. Practice basic reading conventions
Use picture books to show students how to engage in reading. Hold the storybook up so that is facing
your students as you read. This will allow them to see the process of reading in action. To do this,
teachers can hold the storybook up to students so that they can see the process of reading in action.
Demonstrate how to start reading a book by flipping past the title page to the text, showing your students
how to find the text of a story. Move your fingers over the text as you read, that we read from left to
right, and turn to the next page when all of the words on that page have been read. As students see the
teacher actively reading, they will start to understand the basic mechanics of the reading process

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B. Explore characters
Practicing picking characters out of a storybook. Explain to students that the people (or whatever form
the characters take, like animals or objects) in books are called characters. As you are reading the book,
list the characters on the board. Allow students to point to the characters in the pictures throughout the
book or engage with the text by drawing pictures of the characters as they are described in the book.
C. Identify plot
Help students recognize the plot of a book. Tell students that the events that happen in a book are called
the plot. Read a short text to students and then ask them to draw out the events that happened. Ask each
student to draw one picture of something that happened in the book. Once students are done, ask them
to come up, one at a time, and explain what their picture is showing. After students explain their pictures,
have the class put them in the order in which they occurred in the text you read.
D. Identify the setting
Help students pick the setting out of a book by asking them to describe the time, place and environment
in which the book took place. After you read a text with your students, discuss when and where the book
took place. Ask your students to imagine how the story in the book would have been different if it had
occurred in a very different time and place. For example, if a story sets during a beach vacation had taken
place in Alaska during January, what would have been different? Tell students that the time, place and
environment in which a book is set all make up the setting
E. Transition into writing by having students compose their own picture books
After students have learned the basic principles of reading as well as the key literary elements, ask them
to make their own picture books. Divide students into groups of four or five and ask each group to come
up with a story. Depending upon your students' abilities, you can ask them to write out the story in short
sentences. Or, if you can arrange it, you can partner them with children from a higher grade and have the
elder child transcribe the story for their young partners. After the story has been written, ask the students
to illustrate it by creating pictures to accompany the text. Combine the pages into a book using staples or
a coil binding.

5. CONCLUSION
In this topic we have stated the importance of using storybooks in our classes. As we have seen storybooks can
provide an ideal introduction to the foreign language as it is presented in a context that is familiar to the child,
and they can also provide the story point for a wide variety of related language and learning activities, and all of
this in a motivating and fun context.

6. RESOURCES
v Bibliography
o Wright, Andrew. Storytelling with Children. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002
o Ellis, G. And Brewster,J. The Storytelling Handbook for Primary Teacher. Pinguin, 1991
o Brumfit C.J. and Carter R.A. Literature and language teaching. Oxford University Press, 2000
v On-line books for young learners
o http://www.magickeys.com/books
o http://www.starfall.com/
o http://childtopia.com/index.php?module=videos&func=cuentos&newlang=eng
o http://www.woodlands-junior.kent.sch.uk/interactive/onlinestory.htm

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Literacy and text-based teaching methodology in Primary Education [17553].
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v On-line video storybooks
o http://www.storylineonline.net/
v Articles
o British Council (Teaching English) - http://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/articles

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