Beyond Chalk and Talk: Acquire English via Storyboard

INTRODUCTION

What is storyboard?

• a visual way to tell stories

• a springboard to master English language

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Why Storyboard?

•  a logical way to prove that a concept would work visually.

• pictures combined with text offer a rich synthesis of information that can entertain and inform.

Storyboard in education and language learning

• Teaching with storyboards can help instructors to quickly convey complex ideas to their students – often much faster than writing or even speaking.

• Storyboards help to remove barriers that might exist in schools where English may not be the primary language spoken by some students.

• narrating moral stories via storyboard motivated children to listen and understand stories in a more fun-filled manner.

• Research shows that ICT can enhance the learning opportunities that young children have during their early (preschool and lower primary) education (Zuniga-Dunlap & Marino-Weisman, 2006).

• Young learners with very limited language skills, find it a great challenge to understand different types of texts. Storyboarding as a type of reading activity could help learners to understand and visualise the plot of the stories. This visualisation helps to organise their ideas and gives a clear picture of the whole story (Doherty & Coggeshall, 2005).

• Storyboarding unifies what some other techniques separate. It also allows for the expression of thought-and-feeling responses.

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Our research

• This study investigated the effect of narrating moral stories using storyboard on students in two primary schools.

•  57 children aged 7 participated in this qualitative study for four weeks. Observations and semi structured interviews were carried out to elicit information. 

• Four different moral stories were used in this study. Monkey and Its Master, Baby Donkey, Be Grateful for What You Have and Twin Sisters. 

• The stories were given to the class teachers. The TRs narrated the stories using storyboard. Researchers observed all four sessions. Every session during which one story was narrated lasted for 1 hour. Video recording and photographs were taken as part of observation. Interviews were conducted with the teachers. 

• Results were positive. Storyboard with colourful illustrations made the lessons interesting and fun and motivated the children to participate in classroom activities like drawing the most liked character and identify the reasons for liking the character 

• Storyboard with colourful illustrations made the lessons interesting and fun and motivated the children to participate in classroom activities like drawing the most liked character and identify the reasons for liking the character. 

• Evidence : ‘Baby Donkey‘ succeeded to significantly increase children‘s tendency to be obedient in class and listen to elders especially their parents and teachers.
  This is evident in Excerpt 1.
  Excerpt 1: S1 (A Monkey and Its Master)
  Teacher 1 Do you like the story?
  Learner 1 Yes…. (She took the book ……and showed it to the teacher)
  Teacher 1 Why do you like it?
  Learner 2 I like the pictures.
  Very beautiful
  Learner 3 Teacher, teacher I like ….. because she is very good. My mother says that we must be polite. Can‘t talk rude to people.