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Rajapova Malika Ahmadali qizi, A teacher of the English language, Kokand
State Pedagogical Institute,
Sheraliyeva Nodirakhon Abduvokhid qizi, a teacher of the English language,
Kokand State Pedagogical Institute,
TEACHING ENGLISH THROUGH FAIRYTALES
M. Rajapova, N. Sheraliyeva
Abstract: This article describes how literature is connected with
teaching foreign languages, particularly fairy tales promote improving all
language skills. It gives useful information on choosing the right tales
according to the audience. The article emphasizes the importance and the
role of fairy tales in teaching English.
Key words: extensive reading, intensive reading, receptive skills,
productive skills, evocative vocabulary, strong phonological content.
Literature plays an important role in our life. Fairy tales could be a
valuable source for teaching English as a foreign language. It is a well known
fact that reading was one of the primary free time activities before
computers and television were invented. Stories offer the whole imaginary
world, created by language that one can enter and enjoy and learning
language as he reads. People could read hours and travel lands far-far their
minds away. Good stories provide a study of universal values and needs and
capture learners’ interest and challenge them to explore new roads of
meaning. Stories can attract people’s attention because they are fun and easy
to understand for all who have different types of characters. So fairytales
and stories can motivate and help to learn foreign language in an interesting
way.
There are several types on reading and in case of the fairy tales all types
can be applied. There are two types of reading, extensive and intensive.
There are two ways of reading: reading aloud and reading silently. People
usually start learning a language from reading aloud. Children begin their
reading experience from starting to read aloud fairy tale familiar texts.
Intensive reading involves a lot of classroom work with course book,
exercises and texts. This type of reading requires reading texts closely and
carefully with intention of gaining an understanding of as much details as
possible. This is often a stop or start kind of reading involving a lot of going
backs and reading the same text over and over again in order to make sure
that all word are interpreted. In everyday life people tend to use extensive
reading. This kind of reading is fluent, faster, often of longer texts for
pleasure, entertainment and general understanding without paying much
attention to the details; fairy tales are the good example of these kinds of
texts. Interesting and simplified texts may help initiate learners into
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extensive reading. There is a great deal of evidence that extensive reading
has a powerful impact on language learning. The more learners read, the
more they pick up items of vocabulary and grammar from the text, often
without realizing it and this widening language knowledge seems to
increase their overall linguistic confidence. Fairy tales include colorful
vocabulary and different grammatical aspects, for example the Past Simple,
the Present Simple, irregular verbs, comparisons and etc. Extensive reading
can be organized either as individualized reading, where all the people read
different books, taken from library; or as a class reading, where the whole
class reads the same book. For example a teacher can pick any well known
or absolutely unknown fairy tale and ask students to read it at home, or
teacher can ask students to pick any fairy tale which they like the most read
it home and on the next lesson share some ideas about it in front of the class.
Furthermore, teacher can show different types of pictures from varies kinds
of stories that learners can choose the pictures of characters, places and
settings of the story. In this method, students can mix different stories and
they can make up a new story themselves. As a result, this method improves
learners’ reading motivation, widens their imagination and makes easy to
learn a foreign language.
In English lessons teachers tend to develop four skills: reading, writing,
speaking and listening. These skills are often divided into two types.
Receptive skills include reading and listening. Productive skills include
speaking and writing.
It is very important to develop reading skills. Much language production
work grows out of texts that learners hear or see. The procedure for teaching
receptive skills generally starts with a lead in. It is very essential to start with
pre-reading activity in order to set up a topic, to focus their attention in what
they are going to read, activate students’ background knowledge of the topic.
Pre-reading activities involve students in reading a particular text short or
long. The goals of this stage are to create a purpose for reading; and provide
any language preparation that may be needed. Teacher could ask questions
to the related topic or show a picture which illustrates story and ask
students what they think according to this picture is going to happen in the
text.
The purpose of such guiding questions is not to check reading
comprehension, but to lead the students towards most important points in
the text. Checking for general comprehension is also very important. The
purpose is more instructional than diagnostic. Sharing the answers will help
readers make sense of story and encourage them to practice various levels
of communication.
Getting students to speak in the class can sometimes be extremely easy.
In a good class atmosphere, students will participate freely and
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enthusiastically if we give them a suitable topic or a task (Harmer, 2007).
Fairy tales are good provider of topics for discussion and thus help to
develop students’ speaking skills. Any topics which involve the discussion of
varying points of view may be re-enacted in a role play. According to the
topic which is touched in the fairy tale the teacher can prepare a
questionnaire. Students in pairs or in small groups discuss answers to the
questions and then students share their ideas to the class. This kind of
activity is very useful because students have time to discuss and prepare
answers. Students may move further from the text to dramatize an interview
between characters of the text. Teacher can set up a task for example:
Imagine that you are a hero. Talk about yourself as a hero or work in pairs
and make a dialog between heroes.
Writing skills can also be thought through fairy tales. Inspired by the
text, teacher could set up some kind of creative writing tasks. For example,
students may write their own fairy tale or an alternative ending, answer the
question
what if…
Students can write a modernized version of a well known fairy tale, for
example A
New Cinderella Story, or summarize familiar tales. During the
writing task students will practice traditional fairy tale beginning and
ending (e.g.
Once upon a time...), stock characters (e.g. witches, princes,
princesses, fairies, trolls and etc…) comparatives and superlatives (e.g. the
youngest, the smartest…)
Grammar also can be introduced in a number of ways. There is a great
opportunity of using a “real texts” to understand and experiment with a “real
language”. Children have an innate sense of interest in stories that portray
heroes, personify animals and actions, take place in castles and enchanted
forests. Fairy tales will interest pupils and bring them into a natural rhythm,
flow and picturesque language of the text In fairy tales two main uses of
language can be distinguished: for a narrative and for a dialogue. A narrative
text concerns the series of events:
Hans started to pull out his finger; little
brother ran for help. A dialogue is type of language as if it is spoken by the
characters:
“Run! Go to the town and tell the men there's a hole in the dike!”
. The teacher can point out the use of the Past Simple in narratives and the
Present Simple in dialogues.
Moreover, Fairy tales help children to notice language areas such as past
tenses, adjectives, comparatives and etc. Teachers could use passages from
the fairy tale to point out grammatical features. For example, to ask students
to find irregular verbs, to write down all adjectives or to locate the words
and phrases that indicates position in place or time. Texts with continuous
meanings are more authentic than the connected sentences which are often
used as examples in grammar books. Story books often contain extended
examples of dialogue that use a wide variety of punctuation marks, in more
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natural context than is possible in grammar exercise books. Word-order can
be taught through reading fairy tales as well. When working in groups,
students can ask and answer content-related questions and learn the word-
order of questions and affirmative sentences
One of the purposes of fairy tales is to entertain, so writers and tellers
choose and use words with particular care to keep the audience interested.
Fairy tales include unusual words, or words that have a strong phonological
content, with interesting rhymes or sound that are onomatopoetic. In fairy
tales there is used evocative vocabulary, the language of the fairy world,
memorable language such as metaphors, alliteration, rhymes, and the
spoken language of the common people. The built-up repetition of the words
and phrases is one of the features of fairy tales that is very helpful for
language learning. The context created by the story, its predictable pattern
of events and language, pictures, all act to support the reader’s
understanding of unfamiliar words. Children will pick up the words that
they enjoy and in this way stories offer space for growth in vocabulary.
All in all, the use of a fairy tale as a pedagogical instrument can be very
important way of teaching because they are fun, easy to understand and get
learners’ attention easily.
References:
1.
Zhukov V.P. Dictionary of Russian proverbs and sayings // Library of
Russian dictionaries, 2000.
2.
Zhalgasov N.V., Usenova V. "Some features of the translation of
proverbs and sayings from English into Russian" [Electronic resource] -
Access mode. - URL: http://znate.ru
3.
Kunin A.V. Phraseology course of modern English.
4.
Komissarov V.N. Translation and interpretation. // Notebooks of the
translator.
