Attitudes of the Students Studying at Kafkas University Private Primary EFL Classroom towards Storytelling and Motivation

Year 2008, Volume: 4 Issue: 1, 0 - 27, 01.04.2008

Gencer Elkılıç , Catherine Akça

Abstract

In order to determine their motivation for learning English as a foreign language; their preferred learning activities; and, in particular, their attitudes towards learning English through the medium of storytelling, a questionnaire was administered to 21 students from the 4^th year of Kafkas University  private primary school in Kars, Turkey. The results show that both story telling and grammar were perceived as very enjoyable by a majority of the participants, 71.43% and 52.38% respectively. Audio and visual teaching aids and comprehension questions were found to make a substantial contribution towards facilitating understanding of the stories. The participants demonstrated various types of extrinsic and intrinsic motivation towards learning English, in particular the belief that English would be useful, in some unspecified way, in the future (52.38% of respondents). The most popular learning activities were found to be first language games, second acting out the stories, and third the stories themselves. The least popular learning activities were found to be tests and writing. However, 47.62% of participants specified that they did not dislike any of their learning activities. The pedagogical implications of the findings are discussed.

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