ABSTRACT
Recently researchers pay more and more attention to the importance of storytelling in learning and teaching a second language. However, there are not many researches of this kind in China. Moreover, most researches have been done in universities, high schools, and primary schools; there is little research of this kind in middle school. In order to compensate for the limitation, this paper does a research on the influence of storytelling teaching on English ability of middle school students.
The paper first advances the English Curriculum Criterion in Compulsory Education Phase (for experimental use) in order to advance the storytelling and point out the influence of storytelling to the development of the English ability of junior middle school students. Then it provides four related theories of storytelling: theory of communication, Krashen’s Affective Filter Hypothesis, theory of schema and theory of constructivism. Next it offers educationalists' views on storytelling. Then it discusses the positive influence of storytelling on English ability. Next it offers a questionnaire of the situation of using storytelling teaching and provides students attitude towards storytelling teaching. Finally it draws a conclusion of this paper.
Keywords：Storytelling; Junior Middle School English; Development of English ability
Contents
1. Introduction 1
2. Related theories 2
2.1 Theory of communication 2
2.2 Krashen’s affective filter hypothesis 3
2.3 Theory of schema 3
2.4 Theory of constructivism 4
3. Educationalists’ views on storytelling 6
3.1 The research of storytelling in China 6
3.2 The research of storytelling abroad 6
4. The positive influence of storytelling on English ability 9
4.1 Listening ability 9
4.2 Speaking ability 10
4.3 Reading ability 11
4.4 Writing ability 12
5. Data presentation and discussion 14
5.1 Data presentation 14
5.2 Discussion 16
6. Conclusion 17
Acknowledgements 18
References 19
