Making Foreign Language Learning Meaningful, Memorable and Motivating through Storytelling

Master's Thesis from the year 2011 in the subject Didactics for the subject English - Pedagogy, Literature Studies, grade: 10,00, , course: Enseñanza de inglés como lengua extranjera. English as a Second Language., language: English, abstract: Speaking in a second or foreign language has often been viewed as the most demanding of the four skills. When attempting to speak, learners must master their thoughts and encode them in the vocabulary and syntactic structures and functions of the target language for a communicative purpose. This desire for speaking stems from the desire for communicating with the members of another community. Because, what is language but communication? Communication is what has allowed man to evolve and develop. It is at the heart of any relationship and forms the basis of human civilization.

Oral communication and conversation is the rock on which personal relationships are built. It is such a common part of our everyday lives that we take it for granted. From a casual conversation with a stranger at a bus stop to an intimate conversation with some friends, it would be impossible for us to go about our daily lives without being able to communicate with others.

It is not only on a personal level that oral communication is important. When we watch TV, listen to the radio, listen to a lecture at university, we are participating in an oral communication act and certainly, when we listen to a personal, short story or an anecdote.

In this study, we will look at the different factors involved in accomplishing a specific task like storytelling by setting the differences between an oral and a written story. We will also look at the intentionality of the communicative situation, at the strategies used to overcome any deficiency in language competence, the functions involved and, mainly, at the process whereby students will be able to be successful in this specific communicative situation.

This paper is divided into two main parts: the first part is a theoretical background which is necessary to build the second part, that is, the practical part, where the different activities are presented to improve progressively the students' four skills in order to develop the final task, which consists of students creating their own personal story to produce it orally in class with their classmates as their audience.