Storytelling as a technique of teaching English vocabulary to the first grade of elementary school children

Learning English as a foreign language is quite difficult especially for children in the elementary school, whose characteristics are different from adults and kids in the higher level. Children in the elementary school are usually taught practical things (Wadsworth in Shrum and Glisan, 1994:58). They usually become bored very easily when they are taught theories. Therefore, the teachers should be creative enough in developing their material, so that it will be interesting for the children to follow the lesson. So far, the English teachers who teach in the elementary school usually use textbook. The vocabulary is usually presented by pictures in the book. What teachers do so far is only finishing the material in the textbook without any creativity to adjust to the nature of children. Storytelling is believed by the writer as an interesting technique in teaching English vocabulary to the elementary school children. This method meets children characteristics that they love and enjoy stories very much. Children likes to listen to stories even when they have already listened to them for may times. In stories, there are many vocabularies that can be taught to children. This activity includes Suggestopedia and TPR method. In the storytelling activity, the teacher makes the children to participate actively in doing demonstrations and games. Hudelson says that children in language classes need to be active rather than passive (Hudelson, 1991 :2). In doing the storytelling activity, the teacher tells the story while he/she is emphisizing the vocabulary taught. In this thesis, the writer includes a lesson plan as an example of how storytelling can be used to teach English vocabulary to the elementary school students, those are children whose characteristics are very special. The writer concludes her study at the end of her thesis that storytelling is an interesting method of teaching English vocabulary to the elementary school students, because this method meets the characteristics of children in elementary school, which one of them is getting bored easily. This method helps the teacher to create a stress-free atmosphere of learning English vocabulary. By having an enjoyable experience in learning and studying English vocabulary, the students (i.e. children in the elementary school) wil be able to remember the vocabulary easier than when they learn it in the ordinary daily classroom situation. While they enjoy the story, they also learn English vocabulary that is new and different from the native language