The Potential of the Storyline Approach in Croatian ELT Classrooms

Banas, Sandra. (2018). The Potential of the Storyline Approach in Croatian ELT Classrooms. Diploma Thesis. Filozofski fakultet u Zagrebu, Department of English Language and Literature. [mentor Geld, Renata and Ahlquist, Sharon].

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Abstract

The Storyline approach is a communicative and social constructivist approach to teaching a foreign language in which learners create their own, unique story that provides them with a meaningful context for the use of the target language and an opportunity to cover curricular objectives from the syllabus. In a typical Storyline project, learners work in groups, and by following the story framework previously designed by their teacher, they construct the characters, setting and all events in the story. Since the approach puts emphasis on pupils’ creativity and makes use of their various talents, pupils’ work is visually displayed on a classroom frieze. Teacher designs the line of Storyline episodes depending on the desired learning outcomes and curricular aims which need to be covered, and pupils have an opportunity to develop all four language skills by participating in the activities which they find meaningful and interesting. Since the Storyline approach is generally unknown in Croatian educational context, the aim of this thesis is to provide information about the crucial features of Storyline, as well as to present a study conducted for the purpose of this paper. The primary aim of the study was to investigate novice teachers’ perceptions on the Storyline method and to examine their opinion on the feasibility of Storyline in Croatian ELT classrooms. The author expected that participants would recognize the teaching potential of Storyline and that they would be willing to incorporate it in their classrooms. Those hypotheses proved to be correct, and results show that the majority of novice teachers think that it would be possible to implement some of its aspects to their classrooms, even though they are also aware of its possible drawbacks and obstacles.

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