For a teacher to plan an effective learning programme, it is crucial to understand how a child learns oral language. Thus, Opal Dunn (2013) described three stages which all children undergo to develop their spoken discourse competence in English:

I. Silent period (non-verbal phase).

This period is considered to be the longest of all and is known as a non-verbal phase since during this time young learners interact with the world around them only by using body and facial language. The significance of this stage though should not be understated as it is attributed to providing a substantial input for students in the form of knowledge of English sounds and prefabricated chunks. Therefore, it is crucial that children are given enough time to get used to the language and to work out their own individual strategies of acquiring, adjusting to and practising the input themselves (e.g. articulating sounds). While students keep silent, the teacher performs a highly responsible role of a mediator whose guidance helps children to:

· “decode and make some meaning of new language

· take understanding to a deeper level

· to discover information on a topic

· link ideas to similar or related topics” (Dunn, 2013, p. 51).

This mediation takes place in the forms of prefabricated language (songs, rhymes, chants) or one-sided spoken dialogues through which the teacher delivers an input, yet does not expect or force the students to answer, but develops children's focused and limited listening. The mediator's language may contain exaggerated gestures and rich facial language (including eye contact), “realia to support meaning”, “easy-to-copy demonstration of `how to make something'” (Dunn, 2013, p. 52), and the so-called “teacherese”, such as precise articulation, soft voice, exaggerated intonation with stress on important words, the use of simple language adapted to children's level and needs. The teacherese helps the teacher to provide students with a meaningful and comprehensible input. In their turn, young learners tend to signal understanding through a grunt or eye contact.

II. Intermediate period.

When children pass on to the intermediate stage, it means they have gained enough confidence to speak some English themselves in the form of individual words or short prefabricated chunks which they hear from the teacher and drill through constant repetition when doing various activities and playing games in class. Young learners seem to enjoy language repetition, either aloud or in a whisper, as it is reminiscent of babbling in L1 which is intrinsic to all babies. To be able to produce longer stretches of language during the next period of their oral skills development, primary students first need to work on their articulation which is practised at the intermediate stage. Thus, they learn to move their lips and the mouth in order to pronounce proper sounds and words. The most frequently repeated language, in the beginning, is survival language (e.g. `my turn', `go to the toilet', `sit down') (Dunn, 2013). Dunn (2013) pointed out, “In fact they [children] create their own English, which they are confident to use and put it together with prefabricated blocks of classroom management language” (p. 43).

The role of the teacher as the mediator remains crucial since the carefully selected input and the teacherese have the power to encourage young learners' further practice of English in wider contexts (with parents at home, with penfriends and so on). The input can be provided in the form of (Dunn, 2013):

– “a running commentary (talking aloud) about what is happening” (Dunn, 2013, p. 23);

– scaffolding;

– repetition of new language aimed at its faster acquisition by children;

– enlargement or paraphrasing and recasting of the child's language in order to introduce new vocabulary or structures;

– questions (e.g. `Can you count…?', `Ready to play?');

– commands (e.g. transactional phrases such as `Please, pass me …').

III. Breakthrough

The `breakthrough' stage marks a major breakthrough in children's development of speaking skills. As Opal Dunn (2013) observed, a child starts “using whole sentences and becomes a non-stop, chattering talker, who revels in his new skills” (p. 44). This period is characterised by learners' discoveries of their abilities to create extended prefabricated patterns which, although still stay within the topics covered in class, increase their motivation for the expansion of their language knowledge. Moreover, a child undergoes remarkable analytical processes. For instance, gaining more and more confidence in the foreign language, primary students may start comparing their parents' pronunciation (if they speak this foreign language and practise it with them) with the pronunciation presented to children as the model. Young learners' breakthrough is also detected in their interpreting skills. Thus, in everyday communication with adults, children tend to draw a parallel between their mother tongue and the foreign language by interpreting meaning from one language into the other, and vice versa.

Meanwhile, it is the responsibility of the teacher and parents, as the mediators, to always be patient and attentive listeners, to motivate children to speak and to give them sufficient time to formulate and express their ideas in the foreign language.

Evidently, it is of vital importance that young learners go through each stage of oral skills development without a rush. The more they are exposed to the foreign language, the shorter the period of each stage of development and the more confident children become in their skills. First and foremost, their practice of language happens in class. The Federal basic educational plan for schools in Russia allows 204 hours (2 hours per week) for the compulsory foreign language education in primary schools from the 2^nd to the 4^th grades. In addition, the programme allows extra time of 20-22 hours for the implementation of teacher's individual projects and new pedagogical techniques. Besides, the presence of home assistance is very helpful since it gives space and time for primary students to consolidate the material studied at school and practice using it in real-life situations with parents.

The content of spoken and written discourse used in class in the process of discourse competence development should comply with the educational aim and objectives, as well as with the interests and age specifics of young learners, and should include the following topics and problems (Ministerstvo obrazovaniya i nauki Rossijskoj Federacii, 2015):

· Acquaintance:

– With classmates, the teacher.

– With literary characters (their names, age).

– Greetings, farewells (with the help of typical etiquette phrases).

· Me and my family:

– Family members: their names, age, appearance, features of characters, and hobbies.

– My day: daily routine, domestic chores.

– Going shopping for clothes, shoes, groceries.

– My favourite food.

– Family holidays: birthdays, New Year/Christmas.

– Gifts.

· The world of my hobbies:

– My favourite activities.

– Sports and sports games.

– My favourite fairy tales.

– A day-off (at the zoo, circus), holidays.

· Me and my friends:

– Friends: their names, age, appearance, features of characters, and hobbies. Joint activities.

– A letter to a foreign friend.

– My favourite pet: its name, age, colour, size, character, what it can do.

· My school:

– My classroom, school subjects, school supplies, activities in class.

· The world around me:

– My house/flat/room: types of rooms and their size, pieces of furniture and interior.

– Nature.

– Wild animals and pets.

– My favourite season. Weather.

· Native countries of the learned foreign language and my homeland:

– General information: names of the countries, their capitals.

– Literary characters of popular books read by my peers (names of characters, features of characters).

– Children's folklore literature written in the learned language (rhymes, songs, fairy tales).

– Some forms of discourse and non-discourse norms of behaviour typical of the countries of the learned language in a number of communicative situations (at school, in the process of playing joint games, at the shop).



1.4 Benefits of Storytelling and Storytelling as a Tool of Developing Spoken Discourse Competence

As mentioned earlier, children are involved in the natural practice of listening from the first days of their lives. Taking into account all the specifics of children, particularly of primary school age, discussed in part 1.3 of the Theoretical Framework, we drew inferences that storytelling is a perfect technique for the promotion of a whole-school, holistic approach to learning seen as prominent in the Russian primary school foreign language educational system today, according to the FSES for primary school (Ministerstvo obrazovaniya i nauki Rossijskoj Federacii, 2009, No. 373). To clarify, storytelling proves beneficial for (Ellis & Brewster, 2014):

1. The establishment of cross-curricular links.

Through stories in a foreign language, children are able to gain and practice knowledge and skills in other school subjects (Ellis & Brewster, 2014):

– Maths: how to count, measure, etc.;

– Science: biodiversity, life cycles of animals, etc.;

– Geography: the countries of the learned foreign language and their capitals, their place on a map, etc.;

– The environment: nature conservation, not throwing litter in inappropriate places, etc.;

– Art/Design: drawing, making books, etc.;

– History: the evolution of animals and humans in chronological order, etc.;

– Physical education: the imitation of movements inherent to different animals, etc.;

– Music and drama: role-play, singing songs, etc.

The acquisition of this knowledge not only broadens students' horizons and contributes to young learners' cognitive development, but also adds to the comprehension of the content of stories and facilitates further speech production.

2. The development of the “learning-to-learn” idea.

Through stories children learn how to work autonomously which implies the enhancement of the strategies of making predictions, planning, reviewing, assessing, listening for gist and guessing the meaning of unknown words from the context, memorising, and so on; and the study skills of using a dictionary, planning and organising an activity, drawing and interpreting a graph, chart, etc.

3. The reinforcement of conceptual development.

Stories present to students a variety of concepts formed on the basis of similarity of features: “colour, size, shape, time, cause and effect” (Ellis & Brewster, 2014, p. 8), thereby enabling children to predict the context of stories and produce coherent narratives.

4. The teaching of 3 notions: citizenship, diversity and multiculturalism.

Carefully selected stories:

– may raise awareness of the responsibilities and rights which children and their peers from the countries of the learned language have as citizens;

– reflect the diversity of cultures and their peculiarities and stimulate cross-cultural comparison between children's motherland and other countries;

– demonstrate the importance of being tolerant towards representatives of other nations and the other gender.

Furthermore, authors of storybooks for young learners (Zaro & Salaberri, 1995; Wright, 2009; Mourão, 2009; Ellis & Brewster, 2014, and others) have agreed on the following advantages children gain from story-based courses:

· Linguistic development:

– Stories are a rich source of authentic language (the “real” language which is used by native speakers and which we wish our foreign language learners to produce);

– Via stories which present language in a repetitive way children revise and reinforce old vocabulary and grammatical structures and acquire new language through a meaningful drill when retelling the story. According to Krashen's acquisition-based methodology (1981), to boost language development, the input (i.e. vocabulary and grammar) provided should be of a slightly higher level than the one of students' expected production or understanding;

– The development of integrated skills: listening (if the story is told to children) and reading (if the story is read by children); speaking and writing which are realised in the follow-up activities;

– Young learners' concentration is enhanced via concentration through “visual clues” (Ellis & Brewster, 2014, p. 7), which aim to facilitate the understanding of the meaning, “audio clues (sound effects, onomatopoeia)” (Ellis & Brewster, 2014, p. 7), “their prior knowledge of how language works” (Ellis & Brewster, 2014, p. 7), “their prior knowledge of the world” (Ellis & Brewster, 2014, p. 7);

– By listening to stories children get acquainted with pronunciation, intonation and rhythm of the foreign language.

· Cognitive development:

– Stories prompt young learners to decode meaning from the text, both from its verbal part and the visual one (if the story contains pictures);

– Stories immerse children in their special world and exercise their creativity and imagination;

– The themes addressed in stories activate students' thinking processes: they think over the topics and later try to put their ideas into words.

· Socio-emotional development:

– Young learners generally feel comfortable with storytelling in the classroom as they practise this technique at home from their early years;

– Storytelling is a social activity which means students share the experience of stories together, thereby forging strong emotional bonds between one another and encouraging more communication in a foreign language.

· Aesthetic development:

– Through stories with pictures, children develop visual literacy, i.e. knowing how to interpret illustrations.

Advocates of storybooks (Garvie, 1990; Zaro & Salaberri, 1995; Gerngross & Puchta, 1996; Enever & Schmid-Scho?nbein, 2006; Wright, 2009; Mourão, 2009; Ghosn, 2013; Ellis & Brewster, 2014) have claimed that young learners love listening to stories and are “familiar with narrative conventions” (Ellis & Brewster, 2014, p. 6). It was also found out that, as listeners, primary students are good at comprehending others' speeches “relative to their current level of social and cognitive resources” (Cameron, 2001, p. 52). The clear inference is that, first of all, young learners need to reach a sufficient level of socio-emotional, cognitive, as well as linguistic development in order to enhance their discourse competence. For example, children will not be able to produce coherent and cohesive stretches of language if they do not feel confident in their oral or written skills, or if they feel uncomfortable in class, or if they are not aware of enough words and grammatical structures (for that, stories have to be accessible and adapted to children's language level), and so on. Thus, it would be inappropriate to consider discourse competence solely without drawing special attention to the aforementioned developmental processes which add to the development of discourse competence.

Storytelling as a Tool of Developing Discourse Competence

The role of storybooks should not be underestimated as they offer considerable potential for discourse competence enhancement.

Several eminent authors write about and emphasise the development of spoken discourse competence. Thus, Ellis and Brewster (2014) made an excellent remark about storytelling being “one of the most natural and effective ways of introducing children to continuous and coherent spoken discourse” (p. 3), thus simultaneously highlighting three ideas crucial to us:

1) Storytelling is a `natural' activity which children have been `tuned into' for years in L1, thus they are most likely to welcome the use of this technique in their foreign language classroom and will feel motivation for learning (motivation is indispensable at all stages of language learning);

2) Storytelling introduces children to coherent spoken discourse, which means children will listen to the language and will practise verbalising their thoughts;

3) The spoken discourse children are introduced to is `continuous', which ensures long-term language learning.

The advantages of using stories for the development of primary students' discourse competence are as follows:

1. Firstly, stories expose children to language in context and to concrete real-life examples. We already know that young learners aged 7 to 11 are at the concrete operational stage of cognitive development when they necessarily require contextualised situations to employ the rules of formal logic and reasoning, to draw analogy between objects, to classify them hierarchically, etc., that is to practise coherence, cohesion, deixis, generic and conversational structures. Pinter (2011) argued that “they can only do so if the questions and problems are applied to concrete examples and objects in real life” (p. 12). Stories belong to the genre of narratives. There exists a variety of stories which primary students may become aware of in the classroom. They are generally classified into two groups (Mourão, 2009):

A. Traditional tales - entertaining stories which have passed through generations and cultures, “embodying both the emotional and spiritual truths of mankind” (Mourão, 2009, p.19). Among their characteristic features are sequential, repetitive story patterns, elements of narration, often the presence of the number three (e.g. “Goldilocks and the Three Bears”), contrasts such as good and evil, and the theme covering the problems of the human condition, i.e. birth, growth, etc. The following narratives belong to the category of traditional tales:

· Fairy tales - folk stories in which something magical or supernatural happens (e.g. “The Tin Soldier” by Hans Christian Anderson);

· Folk tales - stories in which the main characters are often represented by animals of great wisdom;

· Myths - stories which shed light on the origins of some natural or supernatural phenomenon;

· Legends - stories which feature kings and great heroes as the main characters (e.g. The legend of King Arthur);

· Fables - short stories which often convey overt morals and include animals (e.g. the Ant and the Grasshopper);

B. Picture (or real) books - books in which the meaning is delivered both verbally (through words) and non-verbally (through pictures + body language):

· Picture books with one story - the picture books in which the visual text (illustrations) supports the verbal so that pictures serve to contextualise what is written, expressed in words.

· Picture books with two stories - the picture books in which the visual (illustrations) and the verbal texts provide different parts of the story. The irony is a frequent lexical stylistic device in such books.

While being challenging, picture books are known to encourage discussions and children's retelling the story with their own words with the help of a visual experience (Mourão, 2009). However, to apply picture books in a foreign language classroom, a teacher first needs to develop children's visual literacy.

2. Secondly, the experience of stories stimulates young learners to reproduce their own narratives based on the knowledge of formats of different types of stories and on their own ideas.

As Cameron put it, stories offer ready-to-use dialogues which primary students may extract and practise (Cameron, 2001). Andrew Wright (2009) illustrated the role of storytelling as a stimulus for speaking since “the experience of the story encourages responses” (p. 7), so that children will naturally express their “likes and dislikes and exchange ideas and associations related to stories…” (p. 7).

Since in this research we are mainly concerned with the use of storybooks for the speaking (monologic) skills development, an essential step is to identify speaking activities which train young learners to give a prepared monologic speech. As part of such speaking exercises, primary students practise:

– Reproducing coherent utterances with some modification (changing the end or the beginning, introducing a new actor, modifying the composition of the presentation, etc.);

– Creating a story by using keywords and a plan on a given topic briefly discussed in L1, etc.);

– Describing a picture or a series of pictures (or caricatures) relevant to the topic;

– Reproducing situations in which the named figures of speech are used;

– Explaining the title (realia) in the foreign language;

– Identifying and justifying the theme of the story after listening to it;

– Dividing the recorded message (story) into semantic parts and giving them titles;

– Retelling the story (close to the original version, delivering the main ideas while using the target language and the original style of composition);

– Summarising the message heard or the story read, delivering information in several phrases;

– Making a plan of the heard story;

– Presenting the dialogue in monologic form, etc.

It is important to note that, in the early years of learning, children are exposed only to controlled practice (i.e. they use language in a limited form). To ensure young learners' progress in speaking and their proceeding to communicate more freely in L2 at the next stages of their foreign language education, speaking activities employed in storybooks (and used in general as well) should meet certain criteria (Thornbury, 2005):

· Productivity - each speaking task has to be language productive, i.e. it should require minimum time for its set-up and maximum involvement of children and encourage students to interact in L2.

· Purposefulness - each speaking exercise needs to have a tangible, possible to be achieved aim and a clear outcome. The productivity of the activity grows if young learners share a common purpose so that they inevitably get into conversation with one another when trying to complete the given task and to accomplish the aim. Besides, children generally make a bigger commitment to the activity if they face competition (e.g. if they want to finish the task faster than their classmates) or if they are asked to present the results of the discussion in front of the class.

· Interactivity - each speaking activity should be reciprocal. Although monologues have a low level of reciprocity, the speaker should anyway monitor the reactions of their listeners and adapt to them; should be ready to be asked questions and to receive feedback and comments at the end of the talk.

· Challenge - a speaking activity should be slightly challenging to children, i.e. neither too easy, nor too difficult; it has to prompt students to make use of their communicative resources in order to achieve the aim of the task.

· Safety - while being challenging, a speaking exercise has to provide a safe environment for learners to practise the language. This means that children should not be afraid of being judged by the teacher for making errors, but, on the contrary, should build up confidence in their knowledge and know that the teacher is there to assist them when they encounter difficulties.

· Authenticity - speaking activities have to be real-life-oriented, i.e. to contain `real' language and to set communicative situations close to those young learners are most likely to face up to outside the classroom. Thus, when organising speaking activities, the teacher should take into account the needs and interests (topics, genres) of primary students.

All things considered, it can be inferred that storytelling is a powerful mechanism which is able to greatly contribute to the success of primary school foreign language learning. What is more, to make storybooks facilitate the development of spoken discourse competence, speaking activities need to be carefully selected and planned in accordance with the aforementioned criteria.

Conclusions on Chapter 1

Summarising the work undertaken as part of the Theoretical Framework of this study, we have managed to carry out the in-depth review of the literature published by Russian and foreign scholars, linguists, and methodologists on the topic of discourse, discourse competence and storytelling.

To be more precise, in part 1.1, we defined the concept of discourse and identified its types. Closer examination of the spoken discourse type revealed two forms of discourse (i.e. monologues and dialogues) and their further classification into a variety of types, one of which is of particular interest to our thesis - a narrative (or storytelling).

In part 1.2, the central focus was given to the study of the concept of discourse competence. Thus, we distilled its essence by scrutinising different models of communicative competence and marking the place of discourse competence in those models, as well as by discovering the components of discourse competence and two approaches to developing discourse skills.

Part 1.3 of Chapter 1 was devoted to the description of the nature of primary students, the developmental processes inherent to primary school age and the specifics of primary students' discourse competence development (including discourse skills young learners are expected to develop, the stages of speaking skills development and the content of spoken and written discourse).

In part 1.4 we pointed out the benefits of the storytelling technique as a whole and as a tool of enhancing discourse competence, presented a variety of speaking activities which can be implemented in a story-based lesson and defined criteria for selecting speaking activities.

To conclude, the profound knowledge gathered in Chapter 1 serves as the basis for the Practical Part of this research.



2. Practical Part: Procedure Design

2.1 Primary Students' Textbooks Analysis

From the previous chapter, we know that storytelling corresponds to the nature of children and has great potential for the development of their discourse competence, as well as for their cognitive, socio-emotional, linguistic development and other developmental processes. The practical part of this research is aimed at working out the procedure for using stories with primary students in order to enhance their speaking skills (yet listening and reading will also be developing since they are means of developing speaking).

To prove the need for designing the procedure for enhancing young learners' spoken discourse competence via storytelling, we decided to analyse a series of popular primary students' textbooks called “Spotlight” by Evans, Dooley, Bykova, & Pospelova (2013, 2012, 2007) on their use of storytelling, and whether it is used effectively, for the development of children's speaking (monologic) discourse skills. To measure the effectiveness of storytelling exercises, we set the following criteria:

1) Phasing: the technique of storytelling is used in cycles, and each story cycle follows three stages (pre-, while-, post-storytelling), with the previous stage being the base for the next, so it is crucial that all three stages take place;

2) Aim: each activity has to have a specific aim, to form the base for the next task and to be connected to the story;

3) Content: primary students should be competent in perceiving and producing discourse on the topics (see part 1.3) specified by the Ministry of Education and Science of Russia (Ministerstvo obrazovaniya i nauki Rossijskoj Federacii, 2015), thus the story-based activities should be planned around those themes (and problems).

The series of textbooks comprises “Spotlight 2” (Evans et al., 2013) for the second year of primary school, “Spotlight 3” (Evans et al., 2012) for the third year and “Spotlight 4” (Evans et al., 2007) the fourth year. Each of the textbooks contains rhymed episodes of a traditional tale with follow-up activities supposed to help children work on lexical material and the text of the story.

The first to undergo examination was “Spotlight 2” (Evans et al., 2013) in which storytelling is based on a folk tale “The Town Mouse and the Country Mouse” presented in five rhymed episodes with pictures. Below is the review of storytelling activities from this textbook:

Task	Content	Phasing
Episode 1: pp. 40-41, 131 (ex. 1-2)	The world around me (My house: types of rooms, pieces of furniture).	- Pre-stage: · With the help of pictures, the teacher introduces the words `town' and `village' (aim: to introduce the new topic and provide the ground for the story); the teacher then introduces the main characters of the story, i.e. Town Mouse è Country Mouse; children repeat the names of the characters after the teacher; · Children play the roles of the main characters and greet each other (aim: to practise greetings and speaking skills; · Children are asked to describe the pictures; the teacher asks students leading questions to help them “read” the pictures (aim: to practise speaking skills (description); to predict the context of the story episode; to develop visual literacy); - While-stage: · Children listen to the episode (pp. 40-41); · The teacher checks content comprehension; - Post-stage: · Children complete two exercises (p. 131): 1) they match four words or word-combinations to pictures (aim: to check understanding of the target words/word-combinations from the story); 2) they finish sentences by filling in the words/word-combinations from the previous exercise (aim: to consolidate the target language); · Children read the story in roles (aim: to practise reading). No speaking exercises are given afterwards.
Episode 2: pp. 58-59, 132 (ex. 1-3)	My Favourite Food.	- Pre-stage: The same tasks (see Pre-stage in Episode 1); - While-stage: The same tasks (see While-stage in Episode 1); - Post-stage: · Children complete two exercises (p. 132): 1) they match four words to pictures (aim: to check understanding of the target language from the story); 2) they copy two sentences from the book into their notebooks filling in the missing letters in the target words (aim: to consolidate the target language and practise writing and accuracy); · Children read the story in roles (aim: to practise reading). No speaking activities are given afterwards.
Episode 3: pp. 76-77, 133 (ex. 1-2)	Types of rooms, pieces of furniture; Food.	- Pre-stage: The same tasks (see Pre-stage in Episode 1); - While-stage: The same tasks (see While-stage in Episode 1); - Post-stage: · Children complete two exercises (p. 133): 1) they match three words to pictures (students are given a multiple choice of pictures) (aim: to check understanding of the target language from the story); 2) they read a short text, finish sentences by filling in the target words from the previous exercise and to draw the Town Mouse's bedroom (aim: to consolidate the target language and to check understanding); · Children read the story in roles (aim: to practise reading). No speaking activities are given afterwards.
Episode 4: pp. 94-95, 134 (ex. 1-2)	Appearance; Types of rooms, pieces of furniture.	- Pre-stage: The same tasks (see Pre-stage in Episode 1); - While-stage: The same tasks (see While-stage in Episode 1); - Post-stage: · Children complete two exercises (p. 134): 1) they read sentences and fill in the gaps with one word (Comments: it is not indicated, though, to which parts of speech the missing words belong (our guess is that they are either adjectives or cardinal numerals; moreover, no options of missing words to choose from are given, so students have to recall the words themselves (what if they do not know or remember them?) (aim: to practise the target language from the lesson, not from the story); 2) they are given pictures with corresponding sentences, children read the sentences, choose the appropriate preposition (between two options) in each sentence (aim: to consolidate the target language and to check understanding of the pictures, again not the story); · Children read the story in roles (aim: to practise reading). No speaking activities are given afterwards.
Episode 5: pp. 112-113, 135 (ex. 1-2)	House; Animals.	- Pre-stage: The same tasks (see Pre-stage in Episode 1); - While-stage: The same tasks (see While-stage in Episode 1); - Post-stage: · Children complete two exercises (p. 134): 1) they match names of objects to pictures (p. 135) (aim: to practise the target language from the story); Comments: this activity could perfectly fit in the while-stage so that children listen to the episode and match the names to the pictures; 2) they are asked to draw a sign for their own house (aim: not identified); · Children read the story in roles (aim: to practise reading). No speaking activities are given afterwards.

The textbook for the third-year primary students “Spotlight 3” (Evans et al., 2012) comprises a course based on a fairy tale “The Toy Soldier” which consists of eight episodes supported by pictures. We can illustrate the storytelling course in the following way:

Task	Content	Phasing
Episode 1: pp. 18-20	Clothes; Appearance, features of characters; Toys; Colours.	- Pre-stage: · Children revise the lexical material on the topics of “clothes”, “appearance”, “toys”, “colours” (aim: to revise the target language); · With the help of visual support, the teacher introduces the word `doll', shows one of the pictures/toys to students and asks them questions concerning the appearance of the toy (colour of hair, eyes) and the clothes it is wearing (aim: to practise the target language); Comments: the focus of the activity is on the practice of the target vocabulary through the description; meanwhile, we need to remember that storytelling is a narrative, i.e. the record of a series of events, the dynamics of actions, the presence of several `images', etc. Instead of describing the toys, children could try to predict what is happening in this episode of the story by using the pictures provided; · The teacher asks children to tell about their favourite toys in pairs (aim: to practise speaking skills and the target vocabulary); · The teacher introduces characters from the story and children repeat their names aloud (aim: to prepare the ground for the story); - While-stage: · Children listen to the episode (pp.18-19) and follow the text (aim: to practice listening skills); Comments: if they follow the text of the story, they are not going to be focused on listening, thus the listening activity makes no sense. Instead, children could listen to the story and complete exercises such as T/F statements, multiple-choice questions, etc. · The teacher asks questions to check content comprehension; - Post-stage: · The teacher reads the episode line-by-line, children listen and repeat after the teacher in the forms: whole class - individually (aim: to practise pronunciation; to memorise the text); · Children read the episode in roles (aim: to practise reading skills); · Children complete two exercises (p. 20): 1) they read statements and answer Yes or No (aim: to check content comprehension); 2) they rewrite the “Thank you” letters in their notebooks and finish them filling in the words from the story (aim: to consolidate the target language and practise writing); they read the letters aloud (aim: to practise reading). No speaking exercises are given afterwards.
Episode 2: pp. 18-19, 34-36	Toys; friends; Greetings; Presenting yourself; Acquaintance.	- Pre-stage: · Children are asked to describe the pictures from the previous episode (aim: to practise describing pictures and to consolidate the target vocabulary); Comments: there are no intermediate speaking stages; they did not make any plan of the talk at the previous lesson, had no actual speaking practice; moreover, the instructions are not specific enough, i.e. `To describe the pictures' is too broad, apart from this, the teacher could mention the length of the description and the need for the use of the target language (e.g. `Describe the pictures in 3-4 sentences based on the previous episode. Use the keywords' (the teacher should write them down on the board or somehow show which words are meant to be used as children might have forgotten them). Otherwise, without clear specific instructions children may not produce any monologue at all. · Then children listen to that episode again and read it in roles (aim: to practise listening and reading); · The teacher moves on to the new episode, asks students to look at the pictures and asks questions concerning the illustrations (aim: to predict the context of the story episode and to develop reading skills (reading the visual text); - While-stage: · Children listen to the episode (pp. 34-35) and follow the text (aim: to practice listening skills); Comments: again, if they follow the text of the story, they are not going to be focused on listening, thus the listening activity makes no sense. Instead, children could listen to the story and complete exercises such as T/F statements, multiple-choice questions, etc. · The teacher asks questions to check content comprehension; - Post-stage: · The teacher reads the episode line-by-line, children listen and repeat after the teacher in the forms: whole class - individually (aim: to practise pronunciation; to memorise the text); · Children read the episode in roles (aim: to practise reading skills); · Children do a role-play: they play the roles of the toys from the episode and present themselves (aim: to practise formulaic language, to practise the key structure `Hello, I'm…', to practise speaking); · Students complete two exercises (p. 36): 1) they match five names of the characters to pictures (aim: to check content comprehension); 2) they copy two sentences from the book into their notebooks filling in the missing letters in the target words (aim: to practise the keys structures from the episode `My name's …', `Hello, everyone!', `How do you do?', to practise writing and accuracy). No speaking activities are given afterwards.
Episode 3: pp. 50-52	Toys; friends; numbers (from one to ten).	- Pre-stage: The same tasks (see Pre-stage in Episode 2); - While-stage: The same tasks (see While-stage in Episode 2); - Post-stage: · The teacher reads the episode line-by-line, children listen and repeat after the teacher in the forms: whole class - individually (aim: to practise pronunciation); · Children read the episode in roles (aim: to practise reading skills); · Children complete ex. 1 p. 52: they have four short sentences and they need to arrange words in them in the right order (aim: to practise the commands `Count to three!', `Swing your hands!', etc., from the episode); the teacher asks children to perform little dialogues saying their partner what they can do, e.g. `Student A: I can swing my arms! What about you? Student B: I can count to 10'; Comments: the teacher should emphasise which parts of the sentences can be replaced with their own information; a model dialogue could be given as an example; · Children play a game called “Follow the leader”: the teacher assigns one student to be the leader who needs to give the commands, while the rest of the students carry out the commands (aim: to practise the target structures (commands). No speaking activities are given afterwards.
Episode 4: pp. 66-68	Toys; Pieces of furniture; Weather; Drinks.	- Pre-stage: The same tasks (see Pre-stage in Episode 2); - While-stage: The same tasks (see While-stage in Episode 2); - Post-stage: · Children read the episode in roles (aim: to practise reading skills); · Children complete two exercises (p. 68): 1) they read four sentences and choose the appropriate word in each of the sentences (aim: to practise the target language from the heard episode); 2) they read a sentence and fill in two words naming the toys (a car, a ball) they see in the picture; then they draw the missing toy (it is mentioned in the sentence, but not in the picture (aim: to practise the target language from the previous lesson(s), not from the episode of the story; to develop visual literacy); Comments: there is no real speaking practice of the language, hence no output. No speaking activities are given afterwards.
Episode 5: pp. 82-84	Nature; Friends.	- Pre-stage: The same tasks (see Pre-stage in Episode 2); - While-stage: The same tasks (see While-stage in Episode 2); - Post-stage: · Children read the episode in roles (aim: to practise reading skills); · Children complete an exercise (p. 84): they read four sentences and fill in the gaps with the words from the text (the words are given in the task) (aim: to practise reading for specific information; to practise the target language from the heard episode); Comments: this exercise could perfectly fit in the while-stage: children could listen to the episode and fill in the words from the recording. No speaking activities are given afterwards.
Episode 6: pp. 98-100	Toys; Nature; Pieces of furniture; Weather; Animals.	- Pre-stage: The same tasks (see Pre-stage in Episode 2); - While-stage: The same tasks (see While-stage in Episode 2); - Post-stage: · Children read the episode in roles (aim: to practise reading skills); · Children complete two exercises (p. 100): 1) they match the rhyming words (aim: to practise pronunciation and the target language from the heard episode); Comments: this exercise could perfectly fit in the while-stage: children could listen to the episode and match the words; 2) they play a game called “Where's Sam?”: students are divided into two teams, and the leader is chosen. The leader “hides” Sam at any place in the picture. The teams take turns trying to “find” Sam by asking questions with prepositions of a place, as in the model questions. The winner is the team that first “finds” Sam (aim: to practise asking questions with the preposition of a place; to practise speaking); No speaking activities are given afterwards.
Episode 7: pp. 114-116	Favourite activities or hobbies (dancing, playing, shouting).	- Pre-stage: The same tasks (see Pre-stage in Episode 2); - While-stage: The same tasks (see While-stage in Episode 2); - Post-stage: · Children read the episode in roles (aim: to practise reading skills); · Children complete two exercises (p. 116): 1) they read sentences aloud and say, for example, `No, the dog's name is Becky' (aim: to practise reading aloud; to practise the target language from the heard episode); 2) they play the game: the leader is chosen to give commands, the rest of the students carry out the commands only if they begin with `Mark says…', e.g. `Mark says, “Clap your hands”' (aim: to practise focused listening, speaking and the target language, to encourage students' participation and to check their attentiveness); No speaking activities (production of monologues) are given afterwards.
Episode 8: pp. 130-132	Toys, Playroom	- Pre-stage: The same tasks (see Pre-stage in Episode 2); - While-stage: The same tasks (see While-stage in Episode 2); - Post-stage: · Children read the episode in roles (aim: to practise reading skills); · Children complete two exercises (p. 132): 1) in pairs, they take turns asking each other and answering questions (aim: to practise speaking skills (dialogues); to practise the target language from the heard episode); the teacher monitors their work and helps as necessary; 2) Children draw their favourite toy and present it to the class (aim: to practise speaking skills (monologue-description); Comments: although it is required of primary students to practise describing an object/a picture/a character based on the story, we aim to demonstrate the use of storytelling for the production of narratives, not descriptions; No other speaking activities are given afterwards.

The textbook “Spotlight 4” (Evans et al., 2007) allows students to immerse in the world of a British traditional fairy tale “Goldilocks and the Three Bears” presented in the Student's Book in a set of eight rhymed episodes. Since, as we have already noticed, the activities in the pre- and while-stages are repeated from one episode to another without modifications in structure, it seemed reasonable not to review all the episodes but to rather focus on the first three of them because they show the greatest variety of exercises among all. Thus, here is the excerpt from the story-based programme in “Spotlight 4”:

Episode 1: pp. 18-20	Appearance, features of characters; Nature (trees, flowers, birds); Habitats (villages, woods).	- Pre-stage: · With the help of visual support, the teacher introduces the main characters of the story (i.e. Mother, Goldilocks), children repeat their names frontally and individually (aim: to introduce the new story with new characters); · Children describe the characters and pictures (aim: to predict the context of the story); · The teacher explains the meaning of new words and phrases (e.g. on my way to, in a hurry, golden, etc.) by using the pictures/mime/translation (aim: to introduce new vocabulary); - While-stage: · Students listen to the episode (pp.18-19) and follow the text (aim: to practice listening skills); Comments: if they follow the text of the story, they are not going to be focused on listening, thus the listening activity makes no sense. Instead, children could listen to the story and complete exercises such as T/F statements, multiple-choice, etc. · The teacher checks content comprehension; - Post-stage: · The teacher reads the episode line-by-line, children listen and repeat after the teacher in the forms: whole class - individually (aim: to practise pronunciation); · Children read the episode in roles (aim: to practise reading skills); · Children do three exercises (p. 20): 1) they complete the sentences with a word from the recorded episode (aim: to practise reading for specific information; to practise the target language from the episode); Comments: this exercise could perfectly fit in the while-stage: children could listen to the episode and fill in the gaps with the words from the recording; 2) they read sentences and correct the underlined words replacing them with the correct ones from the text (aim: to practise reading for specific information; to practise the target language from the episode; to check content comprehension); 3) they study the pictures, read the words given and choose the words which match the pictures (aim: to practice reading skills (non-verbal texts); No speaking activities are given afterwards.
Episode 2: pp. 34-36	Food (porridge), cooking appliances (pots); Pieces of furniture; Animals (bears);	- Pre-stage: · With the help of visual support, the teacher introduces other characters from the story (i.e. Baby Bear, Daddy Bear, Mummy Bear) (aim: to introduce new story characters); · The teacher explains the meaning of new words and phrases (e.g. to break the rule, porridge, etc.) by using the pictures/mime/translation (aim: to introduce new vocabulary); · The teacher asks children to pay attention to the pictures and describe what they see in them (aim: to predict the context of the episode; to practise speaking skills (description); - While-stage: · Students listen to the episode (p. 35) and follow the text (aim: to practice listening skills); Comments: if they follow the text of the story, they are not going to be focused on listening, thus the listening activity makes no sense. Instead, children could listen to the story and complete exercises such as T/F statements, multiple-choice questions, etc. · The teacher checks content comprehension; - Post-stage: · The teacher reads the episode line-by-line, children listen and repeat after the teacher in the forms: whole class - individually (aim: to practise pronunciation); · Children read the episode in roles (aim: to practise reading skills); · Children listen to the teacher singing a song (p. 34) line-by-line and repeat after the teacher, then they sing the song (and support it with gestures if possible); · Children do three exercises (p. 36): 1) they read the episode, match adjectives to nouns (aim: to practise reading for specific information; to practise the target language from the episode); Comments: this exercise could perfectly fit in the while-stage: children could listen to the recording and, meanwhile, match the words; 2) they rewrite the sentences in their notebooks completing the sentences with the correct prepositions (aim: to practise reading for specific information; to practise the target language from the episode); 3) they work in pairs, they take turns asking each other questions (aim: to check content comprehension, to practise speaking skills (dialogues);

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