Page 35 - Apuntes de Investigación en la Enseñanza de Idiomas

19 Apuntes de Investigación en la Enseñanza de Idiomas

Jerome Brunner (2002, p.8, as cited in Butcher, 2006) says that stories “impose a structure, a com-
pelling reality on what we experience”. On the other hand, Brady and Millard (2012) explain that in
1987, Gordon Wells had reported from a longitudinal study of 32 children followed up from their first
years of school to the age of 10, that when children know stories from an early age, it influences their
later educational achievement. Another study by Glonek and King (2014), proved the advantages of
narrative in academic communication. During an experiment, participants listened to a topic from a
video. There was evidence that people retained more information when it was presented in a narrative
style rather than expository (like PowerPoint).

Research Methodology

The research sample used for this study is one group of 16 students from the first-semester Theo-
retical Linguistics class of the English Language Bachelor´s Program at the Autonomous University
of Chihuahua, and two groups with a total of 47 students from the second- semester Discourse
Analysis class of the same program. Their ages go from 18 years old to the age of 20. This research
took place during the semester January-June, 2018 and the participants were willing to participate
as volunteers and verbal consent was obtained.

The kind of research conducted was Action Research of qualitative nature and it focused on the tra-
ditional storytelling strategy. This qualitative approach was combined with a quantitative element: the
theory elements checklist. The other form used to evaluate how storytelling as a teaching strategy in-
fluences university students learning was the traditional exam in the case of task two. The instructions
to the students when told the stories were to respond to them by writing the elements of the theory
they found in the narrative. When they had to create a story, they were told to portray the elements of
the theory through a clear sequencing of actions and representing characters’ ideas.

This research project in progress was applied in two streams: teaching and evaluation and it were
divided into three tasks. In the first task, the theory was explained about Linguistics in India for the
theoretical linguistics class, unit 1 and then a written exam was applied. This is where the need of
a strategy was detected after very low grades were obtained. The story was told after the exam to
reinforce the topic and they created their own story afterward. Active participation was observed.

In the second task, the theory of cognitive linguistics, unit 6, was explained to the same students.
After this, the students were asked to write a story. Their texts were analyzed through a checklist of
the theory elements to see the evidence of their understanding and capacity to explain them. They
were given the choice to be evaluated through this story or to take the written exam. In the case of
task three for the discourse analysis class, the theory on the Actantial Network was presented first,
and then they were asked to apply the elements, in the form of role play.

Preliminary research findings

A noticeable change was found in many students. They showed an increased understanding through
a clearer explanation of all the story features that portrayed the elements of a theory. Numerical data
recording overall improvement in grades between task 1 and 2.