The effect of foreign language teaching through stories on 5th and 8th grade students' vocabulary knowledge, reading comprehension and attitude

The purpose of this study is to investigate the effect of teaching English through stories on reading comprehension, vocabulary and students' attitude towards English lesson. The experimental study, using pre-test - post-test control group research design, was carried out with 5th and 8th grade students studying in 2015-2016 educational year. The students in experimental groups read stories, determined according to subjects and attainments of lesson, in addition to reading texts in course books. In this process, the students in control groups continued their lesson only with the reading text in course books. As data collection tools, reading comprehension and vocabulary tests prepared by the researcher and Baş (2012)'s attitude scale toward English lesson are used. Achievement tests and attitude scales were applied to all study groups before and after experimental procedure. In the analysis of the collected quantitative data between the groups, independent and paired samples t test for achievement tests and Mann Whitney-U test and Wilcoxon Signed Ranks test for attitude scale were used. The results of the study can be summarized as follows: 1. Teaching English through stories has significantly positive effect on students' reading comprehension skills at each grade level students. 2. Teaching English through stories has significantly positive effect on students' vocabulary knowledge at each grade level students. 3. Teaching English through stories didn't reveal any significant differences on students' attitudes towards English at each grade level students. Keywords: Attitude, Reading Comprehension, Teaching English through Stories, Vocabulary Knowledge.