| Summary: | The objective of our thesis arose from the lack of interest we have noted in young adolescent learners when doing reading and listening tasks in English. What we want to prove in our research is that reading and storytelling are good tools to learn English as a foreign language. Our experience as teachers have demonstrated to us that most stories in textbooks are not meaningful to them because these characters have sketchy, uninteresting fictional lives which contrast with young adolescent learnersï own lives and interests. Consequently, we have divided our thesis into two main parts. First, we mention the following theories: Meaningful Learning Theory by David Ausubel and Cognitive Theory of Adolescence by Jean Piaget. We lean on these two theories because they both state some important aspects to take into account when teaching young adolescent learners. Meaningful learning in reading is seen as an active cognitive process in which the reader's background knowledge plays a key role in the creation of meaning. Next, we referred to the TPR-Storytelling language teaching method by Blayne Ray and Contee Seely. This method is further founded on the language acquisition hypotheses of Stephen Krashen. Another aspect we mention in this thesis is motivation. Students are intrinsically motivated when they are interested in learning tasks and outcomes for their own sake, and that results in internal feelings of self-determination and competence. On the other hand, the new approaches in teaching EFL/ESL recognize that affective considerations are of vital importance for the acquisition of a foreign/ second language; they suggest teaching methods and techniques that help learners acquire the language in an anxiety-reduced environment
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