Using story telling supported by NLP techniques in the teaching of vocabulary to young learners

This specific study concerns itself with the teaching vocabulary to 4th grade students by using story telling and Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP) techniques to trigger their long term memories. In this respect, this study tries to find out the answers to the following questions:? ? What are the attitudes of young learners towards English and vocabulary learning?? ? Do NLP techniques and story telling activities enhance students? vocabulary knowledge?? ? Does using story telling technique with NLP aids help students retrieve the vocabularies learned when needed?? ? Does using story telling technique with NLP aids contribute to students? level of motivation, interest, enjoyment and pleasure towards vocabulary learning?The purpose of the study is to help students to improve their vocabulary learning and retention skills. Another purpose of the study is to increase students? level of motivation, interest, enjoyment and pleasure towards vocabulary learning by offering meaningful and rich input. To this purpose, NLP techniques are integrated into the existing language syllabus through story telling activities.First chapter of this study is introduction. It gives information about the background of the study, statement of the problem and purpose of the study. The second chapter presents an overview of literature, by giving information about young learners and their characteristics, learning styles and the ways to teach vocabulary best. This chapter also emphasizes storytelling and NLP techniques. The third chapter explains the methodology in detail. The fourth chapter is the data analysis and discussion. In this chapter, the results of the pre and post tests are presented on tables and interpreted. Also, the results are discussed according to research questions and sub-problems. As for the fifth chapter, it provides a brief summary of the study. It also presents general implications and offers specific suggestions. Additionally, the study has appendices; the lesson plans and example of activities, complete forms of Attitude Questionnairre, Vocabulary Knowledge Scale, and Intrinsic Motivation Inventory.As sources of data Vocabulary Knowledge Scale (VKS), Intrinsic Motivation Inventory (IMI) and Attitude Questionnaire were administered. The VKS were administered as pre-test and the post-test to examine the results of the applied tasks. The results showed that implemented story telling activities and NLP techniques were helpful for students to learn the target vocabulary items. Although the mentioned post test applied two weeks after the implementation, the students (except one student) highly remembered the target words, so it can be claimed that the implemented study was effective in students? putting the target words into their long term memory and retrieving them when needed. Also it was found that students? motivation was high after the applied techniques and activities.Keywords: Story telling, Vocabulary teaching, Young learners, Neuro-Linguistic Programming, Long term memory.