Page 125 - E-Modul Pembelajaran Bahasa Inggris SD

Stories are frequently claimed to bring many benefits to young learner
classrooms, including language development (Wright 1997: Garvie 1990). Stories

can serve as metaphors for society or for deepest psyche (Bettelheim 1976), and
parent-child story reading can be rich and intimate events that contrast sharply with

the linear aridity of syllabus and some course books (Garton and Pratt 1998).

C. The Discourse Organization of Stories

Story telling is an oral activity, and stories have the shape they do because
they are designed to be listened to and, in many situations, participated in. The other

key organizing feature of stories is their thematic structure. There is some central

interest factor (theme) that changes over the timescale of the story. Difficulties or
evil are overcome, or a major event is survived. Very often the thematic structure

of a story can be characterized as resolution of a problem (Hoey, 1983). Prototypical
features of stories that will be found in most versions are:

a. An opening: often formulaic in fairy tales ex: ’Once upon a time....’

b. Introduction of characters
c. Description of the setting

d. Introduction of problem
e. A series of events

f. That lead to
g. The resolution of problem

h. A closing; often formulaic in fairytales ex: ’they all lived happily ever after’

i. A moral: which may or may not be explicitly stated?

D. Language Use in Stories
a. Parallelism

This repeated pattern, or parallelism, creates a way into the story for the

active listeners, as well as providing a natural support for language learning
b. Rich vocabulary

Because stories are designed to entertain, writers and tellers choose and use
words with particular care to keep the audience interested. Stories may thus

120