Using Short Stories to Develop Speaking Skill

In the present era, speaking in English without errors is a great challenge for the students of all ages and it is a long process to achieve it, perfectly. Speaking skill refers to the ability to convey one’s thought through words. It is advisable to develop speaking skill in English at the early stage because they can practice better with necessary language skills to succeed in later life. The purpose of the paper is to develop speaking skill in English through Short Stories. The researcher selected three short stories from “Arabian Nights”, and “Parts of Speech” was taught using these stories to speak without grammatical errors. The statistical analysis shows that there was an improvement among the experimental group students.


Introduction
Short stories are considered as one of the best learning tools to develop speaking skill because short stories not only motivate the learners to learn new vocabulary but also create interest in achieving mastery in a language. Short stories are the most entertaining for the students of all ages because stories are in the form of narrative with interesting incidents, and always hold the attention of the listeners for a long time. It allows students to be more imaginative and innovative. It also reduces the students' stress and their anxiety level.
The researcher selected three stories from "Arabian Night "which is an epic collection of Arabian Folk stories written during the Islamic Golden Age, and related videos from YouTube were played in the classroom to understand the stories better. Ur says that "Classrooms are ones where learners talk a lot, participation is even, motivation is high and the language is at an acceptable level" (A course 120). The objective of this study is to improve the learners' fluency level through short stories.

Research Question
Will Short Stories help the students to develop their speaking ability?

Hypothesis
There is no significant difference between the pre-test scores of the experimental group and the control group.
There is no significant difference between the pre-test and post-test scores of the control group.
There is no significant difference between the pre-test and post-test scores of the experimental group.
There is no significant difference between the post-test scores of the experimental group and the control group.

Literature Review
Nimer, et al (2016) conducted a study on how the short stories in the EFL classroom develop the students' speaking skill. He examined with 2nd -4th year students of English Major of Hebron University, Palestine. The statistic proved that short stories certainly develop students speaking skill. Ikrammuddin (2017) conducted an experiment on second -grade students at Insan Qur'ani Boarding School. The post-test result of the experiment shows a positive impact on using story stories in class to develop the speaking skill. Gangal (2012) says in his book that a simple and practical approach on students would improve the students speaking skill. He focuses on how vocabulary plays a major role in speaking English, effectively. Luoma (2004) says that language is not just words and structures, the value lies on the communication and she include that choosing appropriate words according to the context play a vital role in effective communication.
Greg. S and Baker (2011) emphasise that tasks in the classroom would improve the learners' speaking skill and the teachers should motivate the students by triggering them with words, phrases and simple sentences. Thus, all the reviews help the researcher to explore the possibilities of implementing the storytelling technique in the classroom.

Research Methodology
In this study, the researcher applied experimental teaching. The study was conducted during January, in the academic year 2019-2020. The researcher took a class of II B.Sc Zoology, Voorhees College, Vellore. The strength of the class was 66 students. The class was divided into two groups with 33 students each.

The first group was considered as an Experimental
Group and the second group as a Control Group. The main focus of this study is to investigate the effectiveness of short stories in developing speaking skill. Both the groups were called and allowed to narrate any one of their favourite story and marks (Pre-test) were allotted according to their oral presentation, and the researcher followed Brown Scale (Appendix A) to assess their speaking ability. The Brown's scale has five aspects of assessment as Vocabulary, Grammar, Pronunciation, Fluency and comprehension, they were given marks according to their Pronunciation, Grammar usage, Vocabulary, Comprehension and to their fluency.
The experimental group learners received treatment by watching videos of three stories from "Arabian Nights" repeatedly. The researcher picked various sentences from the stories and explained the functions of Noun, Pronoun, Verb, Adjectives Adverb, Preposition, Conjunction and Interjection and helped them to use it correctly. Aladdin's wife took the old lamp and made a deal with the magician.
Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves.
Ali Baba's wife quickly ran to his brother-in law's house.
The Story of the Fisherman and the Genie.
Ooh! a Monster. It is scary, I should run away from here. Experimental group students were assigned to narrate any one of the above stories and marks (Posttest) were given according to their performance and she followed the traditional method of narrating the stories to the Control Group, a test (Post-test) was also conducted to know their level of understanding and speaking.
Hypothesis: There is no significant difference between the pre-test scores of the control group and the experimental group. The table deals with the comparison of the pretest scores of the control group and the experimental group. As the calculated p-value (0.908) is greater than the normal value (0.05), the groups were almost at the same level of performance in speaking and therefore any variance between the two groups that may occur after the implementation of the program will be attributed to it.
Hypothesis: There is no significant difference between the pre-test and post-test scores of the control group. The table deals with the comparison of pre-test and post-test scores of the control group. As the calculated p-value (1.000) is greater than the normal value (0.05), the hypothesis is accepted. It can be inferred that there is no significant difference in the pre-test and post-test scores of the control group.
Hypothesis: There is no significant difference between the pre-test and post-test scores of the experimental group. The table denotes the comparison of pre-test and post-test scores of the experimental group. As the calculated p-value (0.000) is less than the normal value (0.01), the null hypothesis is rejected at the 0.01 level. It can be inferred that there is a significant difference in the pre-test and post-test scores of the experimental group. Moreover, post-test scores are higher than the pre-test scores of the experimental group.
Hypothesis: There is no significant difference between the post test scores of the control group and the experimental group. The table denotes the comparison of post-test scores of the control group and the experimental group. As the calculated p-value (0.000) is less than the normal value (0.01), the null hypothesis is rejected at the 0.01 level. It can be inferred that there is a significant difference in the post-test scores of the control group and the experimental group. Moreover, post-test scores of the experimental group are higher than the post-test scores of the control group.

Discussion
The results show that the p-value of the experimental group is significantly better than that of the control group. It indicates the students speaking skill is enhanced after the training. This means that learning through short stories has enabled the learners to develop their speaking skill holistically. Novels, Poems, Essays can also be taught using short story technique during language teaching.

Conclusion
The present study tried to find out how far narrating short stories in the classroom help the students to develop their speaking skill. Result concludes that there is a significant difference between the pretest and post-test of the experiment group and this technique can be applied to developed confidence to speak English fluently without grammatical errors with their classmates and teachers.
The general conclusion is that demonstrating short stories using teaching aids like videos from YouTube in the classroom would certainly help the learners to develop their speaking skill to a greater extent than the traditional lecturing method of teaching.

Aspects of Assessment Score Description
1 Vocabulary 17-20 Using vocabulary and phrases, idioms like a native speaker.

13-16
Uses appropriate terms and/or rephrase ideas because of lexical inadequacies.

9-12
Frequently uses the wrong words, limited conversation because of inadequate vocabulary

5-8
Elementary constructions and not confident in using grammar, while speaking.

1-4
Frequent use of inappropriate words and unable to converse clearly.
2 Pronunciation 17-20 Speak like a native speaker with the correct accent.

13-16
Making errors while pronouncing is very rare.

9-12
Try to pronounce perfectly, though there is some mispronunciation.

5-8
Difficult to understand their accent and need a lot of practice.

1-4
Frequent mispronunciation and try hard to make others understand, what they speak.
3 Grammar 17-20 Speak like a native speaker without any error in using grammar.

13-16
Making grammatical errors infrequent and flawless in word order.

9-12
Good in using grammar and able to participate in formal and informal topics, occasionally vague sentence constructions.

5-8
Difficult to understand and needs the practice to rephrase sentences or allow to stick to the basic pattern.

13-16
Fluent speech, but slightly disturbed with some problems related to practice. Need more preparation to speak.

9-12
Fluency is slow because of language skills. Feel less confident to mingle in any social issues.

5-8
Hesitate to speak and often force themselves to be quiet.

1-4
Often halt and difficult to utter words. No fluency and difficult to understand their conversation.
5 Comprehension 17-20 Capable to comprehend any passage and find no difficulty in conveying ideas.

9-12
Comprehension is quite difficult and loses their normal speed, often repeat.

5-8
Very difficult to follow a conversation. Can comprehend a few social issues and frequently repeat their views.