Tridu tisimgħu storja? : it-tisħiħ tal-ħiliet orali ta’ studenti b’nazzjonalitajiet differenti fl-ewwel sena tal-primarja

Abstract

Stories are tools that help children understand the world around them (Prentice, 1998). In turn, storytelling enables children to make use of their oracy skills – listening and speaking. Teachers in Year 1 classes have a great responsibility of developing the oracy skills of their pupils, as the language and vocabulary of the pupils is limited at this age (Tann, 1991). In a class with pupils of different nationalities, teachers face a greater challenge in developing these oracy skills. This challenge arises due to pupils having different first languages. In light of this, the researcher studied five state school teachers who teach in Year 1 classes that have students of different nationalities. Using the qualitative method, the researcher determined if and how Maltese storytelling lessons are being taught in these multilingual classes. The researcher also observed which oracy skills are being addressed by these teachers. The study shows that teachers are delivering Maltese storytelling lessons in these classes. Despite this, these teachers are reading stories from books rather than telling the stories. The results show that teachers did not prepare different activities according to their pupils’ linguistic competences of the Maltese language. However, since storytelling lessons are language based, the teachers asked different questions according to the pupils’ linguistic differences and practiced code-switching.