TEACHING ASIAN VALUES THROUGH STORY TELLING ACTIVITY IN ENGLISH AS A FOREIGN LANGUAGE (EFL) CLASS

Abstract

Values are the standards by which one may judge the difference between good and bad, and the right and wrong things to do. Values can vary quite a bit depending upon one’s generation, class, education, and origin. For example, Asian societies tend to be very hierarchical, in contrast to American culture, where in some cases it is not unusual to consider teacher and student, or even parent and child as equals. Further, values are able to be taught by giving story telling since in each story there are always some moral values. Story telling is the conveying of events in words, and images, often by improvisation or embellishment. Characters in nearly every children story become models in their real life.The purpose of this paper is to share the way to teach Asian values through story telling in English as Second Foreign classes. There were 22 students participated in the learning activities. In beginning of the activities, the participants were introduced with an Asian traditional story from China. In the middle of the learning activities, the participants practiced how to deliver the stories in front of the EFL classes therefore they were able to listen, remember, write and re tell the story. At the end of the learning activity, the participants summarized the story and filled in a questionnaire.In conclusion, all of the participants understand the Asian values from the story. Some of them stated that they wanted to implement the values learnt on their real life.