3.5 Procedure 12

3.5.1 Baseline 12

3.5.2. Intervention 13

4. Results and Discussion 15

4.1 Results and Discussion of Research Question One 15

4.2 Results and Discussion of Research Question Two 16

4.3 Results and Discussion of Research Question Three 18

5. Conclusion 20

5.1 Major Findings and Implications 20

5.2 Limitations and Future Expectations 21

References 22

 1. Introduction

According to the New National Curriculums, after graduating from primary school, students are supposed to have the abilities to read short stories with pictures and write short sentences by providing pictures or vocabularies hints. However, after three-year English learning in junior middle school, there is a higher demand for their reading and writing abilities. They are supposed to use different reading strategies and grasp the main idea of a long passage. As for writing, they are able to write a short passage about 120 words to express their ideas by using some common conjunctions in a logical way. On the other hand, during junior middle school, in terms of speaking and listening abilities, students also face a big challenge (中华人民共和国教育部, 2011). Obviously, there is an urgent need for junior middle school students to develop their literacy and oral skills to close the gap between English learning in primary school and junior school.

Making a general survey of English teaching among junior middle schools all over the countries, it is a common mistake to separate language skills for most of the English teachers in their teaching. They always focus on one skill and ignore the others in their class. However, just as the New National Curriculums mentioned, the ultimate goal of our English teaching is to develop students’ communicative competences. Therefore, students are asked to integrate all the language skills and teachers should pay more attentions to students’ integrated abilities of English. Finding a new way to integrate all the language skills in nowadays English class is quiet significant to cater to the requirements of the New National Curriculums. 

As we known, oral language, also named as conversational language, is the language spoken between two persons in order to convey emotions and information which is highly contextualized. You even needn’t be fully embedded in the language itself (Petersen, 2011). Conversely, literate language is decontextualized and topic centered. The key point of this problem is to find a something to connect these two different parts. According to Westby’ book, narrative discourse combines familiar dialogue with decontextualized literate language features, which can link the conversational language and literate language by making up their differences (Westby, 2005). In this study, students firstly listen to the story, and then they are asked to retell the story. During the activity, students’ listening skills, reading skills, speaking skills and even writing skills (if they are asked to write down their retelling) are practiced in the same time. So it is not hard for us to conclude that narrative retelling is a good activity to combine different language skills in English class by linking the conversational language and literate language and making up their differences. 

Reviewing the preview researches, it is not difficult for us to find that the development of narrative skills plays a critical role in later academic achievement and success, because there is a strong association among narratives, literate language and academic performance. Therefore, developing young children’s narrative skill is quiet important for improving their literacy skills. Numerous researches have examined whether offering intervention of targeting language of narratives can improve narrative skills. Most of the researches have indicated that narrative interventions on story retelling can improve native speakers’ narrative skills. (Spencer and Slocum, 2010; Adlof et al., 2014). And different language interventions in the context of narratives may have effects on different aspects of narrative skills (Boudreau, 2008; Petersen, 2011). In other words, preview researches have made a lot of effort to prove the point that narrative retelling interventions can improve native speakers’ narrative retelling skills. The effect is more significant in developing their narrative macrostructure skills. And there is a possibility for them to develop narrative microstructure skills with narrative interventions.