Innovative+Way+1+by+Fatih+KIZILKAYA

Story Chain for young learners In this innovative way of teaching english, the teacher uses stories. As it is known that stories are liked much by the young learners, an enjoying way of story telling is used to teach english to young learners. The teacher forms a chain from the students and then starts reading a story, as the story goes on, teacher stops and asks the students to continue the story. The students think a suitable sentence or even a word and adds it to the story, one by one each student produces a word or sentence and they complete the story. This is a very enjoying game for students. It is also very efficient in improving students’ thinking and speaking skills. I think that this game can be used in Turkey in small size classrooms with easy stories. I am sure it will work well on improving language skills of the students.

http://teachingrecipes.com/2012/05/23/story-chains/

**Comments ** I like this technique, because I believe that using stories, even in the traditional way is one of the best ways to teach vocabulary items and grammar structures of English in young learners classes because they address to students’ interests and provide different contexts for them to learn English. This technique provides much more than this which means that it aims to improve students’ imagination, speaking skills and entertain them while learning. Students can come up with unusual ideas and stories may get really interesting for them, therefore they will have fun. It also makes the students listen to the teacher and their friends all the time because they are involved in the storytelling. In my opinion, this technique could be very helpful when used efficiently.

Betül İLHAN __**By Gonca DENİZ **__ I agree with Betül especially from the perspective that this technique aims to improve students' imagination because children are used to hearing or reading stories since their childhood. they like being read stories and thus they may like completing or continuing different stories as well. This idea of story chain, as Fatih also mentioned, improves the students' speaking and thinking skills. They use the target language while completing the story and thus they improve their communication skills in the target language. In addition to these; I believe this method also helps students' cooperation skills to develop as this is not an individual activity and it requires working with a group cooperatively. This creates group dynmics among the students and a more positive learning environment. **BY TUĞÇE NUR BOZKURT:** //Firstly, I want to thank Fatih for sharing this technique with us. I am familiar with this game from a different context. Our teacher in the theatre course two years ago made us a circle and wanted one of us to form a sentence and the person next to him/her would say another sentence as a continuation of the sentence before, and this went on like this. We had a great fun with this activity and I am sure if we enjoyed at this age, young learners would like it twice. We know that young learners enjoy speaking and they tend to be creative. // //This activity provides students an enjoyable context in which they will have a chance both to express themselves with the originals words or sentences they use and also to practice the target language. I also think that the class size doesn’t matter much for this activity instead this activity can be more fruitful with a big circle of students; they will wait for their turns impatiently at the same time listening to the different sentences produced by their friends. //