Storytelling Reflection

Storytelling is one of the ways to attract students in learning the language and improve their communication skills. It is good as it has the power to reduce students anxiety in practicing the language and helps to develop their talent. As a teacher I were asked to do a storytelling session at SJK ( C ) Nham Kheong. My group stoty entitled Billy and the hidden treasure. It was a good moment for me in practicing the story telling session with all the students. However based on the session I managed to spot several strengths, weaknesses and way to improve on the weaknesses. Firstly, my strength was on the originality of the story. The story was about the love between a grandmother and her grandchild. In my opinion through the originality, we managed to get the students involved in our storytelling performance. It is because they did not familiar with the story line. As a result they listened attentively to know the ending of the story. It shows that the originality of the story was able to make the students stay focus on our story telling performance by giving respond in certain parts of the story telling. Secondly, voice projection also one of my strength while performing the storytelling. It was crucial as I need to project my voice clearly so that student who sat at the back of the hall able to hear me and listen to my story. I managed to project my voice clearly, because the students were able to react to my words and instructions. For example, they gave reaction whenever I need them to find the clues for the hidden treasure.Besides that, they were also laughed at certain parts. It shows that they able to hear my voice and understand my words. When a class and its teacher all laugh together ... they become a unit ... enjoying the shared experience. If that community can be prolonged or re-established, and applied to the job of thinking, the teacher will have succeeded. (Amstrong P. 2002). Next, I was able to use questioning technique effectively. Based on the questioning session I was able to communicate and had an interactive storytelling with the students. By having this kind of situation, the storytelling becomes alive and attractive. According to Chitravelu (2005), questioning can encourage students to form and express idea based on what is discusses. Because of the all the reasons, I believed that questioning technique will help the students to stay focus on the performance. Besides the strengths, I also spot some weaknesses on the story telling session. The weaknesses were that, we were having problems in managing our stage craft. For example, we were having problems during scene transition as the freeze stage was not done properly. The inappropriate stage craft might cause confusion among the audience. It is because there were three persons holding Billys character. So as a way to overcome the problem,

we labelled Billy at our costume. It is crucial to avoid confusion among the audience. Besides that, we also wore same T-shirt colour. In my opinion, by doing this, it could help the audience to understand more about the story and also the characters. Besides that, to enhance the transition part we can also use lighting as the medium to help us. For example, we can dim the light during the transition of the characters. In addition, even though we managed to come out with our own story but at the same time we were having problem in building up a proper plot for our story. This is because even though the story managed to capture the audience, we did not have proper climax stage. As the result, our story was quite flat in certain parts. It is because there were certain parts where audience seemed puzzled and paid less attention during our groups presentation. Moreover, we can also improve this problem by doing adaptation from the reliable source. For example we may use stories that involve animal characters or fables. According to Kutiper and Wilson children most enjoy literature that contains humor, familiar experience and animals. (as cited by Temple, Martinez & Yokota, 2011). In my opinion, we may adapt those stories so that we will have strong sequence of the plot and at the same time it will attract students attention. Furthermore, in my opinion, some of our group members did not do enough preparation for the performance. It could be seen clearly as some of them do not able to blend with the characters properly. It happened because they did not memorize the script and also did not understand their role properly. The problem makes certain scene of our story were not alive and the audience did not respond to the story as they should respond. Besides that, it also makes our story did not run smoothly as they were trying hard to memorize the scripts but they were not able to do so. As a result, some of our scenes were not properly performed. In conclusion, I believed that the session help me a lot I building up my characters as a teacher and also as a performer. It is a good ability if the teacher able to teach as well as become an entertainer. I believed that the session able to equip me to become a dynamic teacher.

REFERENCES Amstrong. P (2002) You're having a laugh! Learning as fun, University of Leeds, UK, http://www.leeds.ac.uk/educol/documents/00002057.htm (Retrieved 12/09/2013) Charles Temple, M. M. (2011). Children Books in Children's Hands, An Introduction to Their Literature. America: Pearson Education Inc. . Chitravelu, N., Sithamparam, S., & Teh Soo Choon. (2005). ELT Methodology: Principles and Practice. Selangor: Oxford Fajar Berhad.

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STORYTELLING REFLECTION

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