Page 127 - E-Modul Pembelajaran Bahasa Inggris SD

F. Choosing Stories to Promote Language Learning
We use the features of stories described so far to set out questions that a

language teacher might ask to evaluate the language learning opportunities offered
by a story in order to choose stories for the language classroom.

1) Real books or specially written ones?

In British education in the 1980 there was a move to bring what were called
‘real books‘into primary schools for teaching reading (e.g. Waterland 1985).

Real books were those written by ‘real‘authors for parents to buy for
children, and there was a so-called ‘golden age‘ of young children‘s

literature in English in the 1970 and 1980, as writers exploited the use of

color and pictures alongside simple story lines.
2) Will the content engage the learners?

A good story for language learning will have interesting characters that
children can empathize with, who take part in activities that the learners can

make sense of. The role of the pictures in combination with the text to form

the story as a whole should be considered. If the pictures are indispensable,
as is often the case, then somehow there will need to be enough copies or

they will need to be made big enough for everyone to see.
3) How is language used?

The built-in repetition of words and phrases is one of the features of stories
that is most helpful for language learning. Careful analysis of the language

of the text will reveal whether the repeated phrases and vocabulary will help

a particular class. There may be some phrases used in the dialogue that
children can appropriate for their own language use.

4) What new language is used?
In planning the use of a story, the teacher can identify language use and

make three rough groupings:

a) Language that children have already met, and that will be recycled.
b) New language that will be useful for all children to learn from the story.

c) New language that may or may not be learnt, depending on individual
children ‘s interest.

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