Experiential Learning of Future Teachers in Story Dictation for
Early Childhood Education
Winti Ananthia, Charlotte A. Harun, Desiani N. Muliasari and Endah Silawati
Universitas Pendidikan Indonesia, Kampus Cibiru, Jl. Raya Cibiru Km. 15 Bandung, Indonesia
Keywords: Story Dictation, Indonesian Kindergarten, Future Teacher, Experiential Learning.
Abstract: This paper is a part of a bigger on-going research. This study investigates the application of story dictation
in the context of kindergarten students learning languages. It focuses on the teachers’ perception towards the
preparation and implementation of story dictation to uncover important steps. The discussion is divided into
two main stages, the preparation stage and the teaching and learning stage. Qualitative method is employed
in the study. The research subjects are three future teachers who implemented story dictation in two
kindergarten classes. Those teachers are asked to apply story dictation to Kindergarten children in one of
Indonesian kindergartens in Bandung. The result of the study reveals some important steps about the
implementation of story dictation. The first stage contains some steps, which are, designing a lesson plan,
developing learning media, selecting story for exposure activity, designing doodle book. In addition, the
second stage includes storytelling as exposure activity, introducing doodle pages, planning story extension,
story dictation, revising the story, publishing the story. The study also reveals the challenges faced by the
teachers in implementing story dictation. To overcome one of the challenges, doodle book is employed as a
modification from the original form of the story dictation.
1 INTRODUCTION
The study is motivated by the importance of critical
thinking as one of the skills needed in the 21
st
century to establish a society with adequate ability
of communication, ICT, citizenship and
collaboration (Trilling and Fadel, 2009).
Furthermore, Wray (2013) states that critical literacy
is one of the most important skills for the 21
st
society. It is believed that the skills can be
developed since the early years (Roche, 2015). In
the context of early childhood education, story is one
of the most suitable media for children (Damayanti,
2007; Brewster, Ellis and Girard, 2002; Isbell,
Sobol, Lindauer and Lowrance, 2004; Collins, 1999)
to develop their critical literacy (Roche, 2015).
Through story, children have the opportunity to
relate the context in the story with their own real life
(Ananthia, 2010; Kuyvenhoven, 2009). The
children’s critical literacy skill can be developed
through many ways; one of them is story dictation
(Gadzikowski, 2007).
Story dictation is happened when stories are
being invented by children. Therefore, children are
not only being a loyal consumer of a story, but they
can also be the ones who create their own stories
(Christ, Wang and Chiu, 2011; Vasquez, 2014). In
this activity, teacher is the one who will facilitate the
children to invent stories. However, the presentation
of story to children is still limited to only doing the
story-reading and storytelling, especially in
Indonesian schools. Even some teachers teaching
EFL in Indonesian context tend to not include story
in their teaching (Ananthia, 2010; Harun and
Ananthia, 2013).
This study involves three Early Childhood
Education Program (henceforth it is called
PGPAUD) student teachers as future teachers on
how they apply story dictation in kindergarten
classes. It attempts to identify the story dictation in
Indonesian kindergarten from the teachers’
perspective as their experiential learning. The study
also tries to reveal challenges faced by the teachers
in implementing story dictation with young learners.
Ananthia, W., Harun, C., Muliasari, D. and Silawati, E.
Experiential Learning of Future Teachers in Story Dictation for Early Childhood Education.
DOI: 10.5220/0007167903930398
In Proceedings of the Tenth Conference on Applied Linguistics and the Second English Language Teaching and Technology Conference in collaboration with the First International Conference
on Language, Literature, Culture, and Education (CONAPLIN and ICOLLITE 2017) - Literacy, Culture, and Technology in Language Pedagogy and Use, pages 393-398
ISBN: 978-989-758-332-2
Copyright © 2018 by SCITEPRESS – Science and Technology Publications, Lda. All rights reserved
393

2 STORY IN THE EDUCATIONAL
CONTEXT
The employment of story in educational context has
been conducted across curriculum, such as
mathematic (Casey, Kersh, and Young, 2004),
science (Monhardt and Monhardt, 2006; Pringle and
Lamme, 2005; Sackes, Trundle, and Flevares, 2009),
and history (Smith, Noonan, and Guillain, 2016).
The using of story is also popular in the context of
developing children’s language skills and has
received big attention (for example Paquette, 2007;
Isbel, et al., 2004; and Brewster, et al., 2002).
The attempt in developing children’s linguistic
skills is usually in relevance with the need to
develop their literacy skills. Numerous research have
been conducted about developing children’s literacy
and critical thinking through stories (such as Roche,
2015; Stribling, 2014; Vasquez, 2014). Literacy and
critical thinking refers to problem solving ability
(Stribling, 2014; Wray, 2013) which recommend the
learners to have the ability to create something
(Wray, 2013). It makes creativity as one of the
indispensable skills in developing critical literacy.
This study attempts to identify how teachers can
develop children’s creativity in inventing story
through story dictation.
3 STORY DICTATION IN
KINDERGARTEN
CLASSROOM
In the implementation of story dictation, teachers
play an important role in developing children’s
creativity in making story. It means that the teachers
should be able to expose story environment in the
classroom so that the students could later on invent
their own stories. However, not many teachers are
used to the employment of story in the classroom,
especially in Indonesian context (Ananthia, 2010;
Harun and Ananthia, 2013). Teachers mostly do not
have enough self-confident in implementing story in
their classroom that makes them to have storytelling
in-service training (Groce, 2004).
Furthermore, previous research on the story
application in preschool were limited to only how
teachers present the story to the children through
storytelling and story-reading (such as Groce, 2004;
Ananthia, 2010; Harun and Ananthia, 2013;
Yuliariatiningsih, Ananthia and Yanthi, 2013).
Studies conducted by Christ, Wang and Chiu
(2011) and St. James Lutheran (2017) are among
few researches on how teacher could create
opportunity for children to invent their own story
through story dictation. Moreover, this kind of
study in Indonesian preschool context has not been
adequately examined yet. Story dictation offers the
opportunity for young children to create their own
story as soon as they are able to speak in sentences
despite their limited reading and writing skills
(Gadzikowski, 2007).
4 RESEARCH METHOD
The paper is written as a part of a bigger on-going
research on the implementation of story dictation in
Indonesian kindergarten. Qualitative research design
was employed in the study. It involved three student
teachers as the research participants. In selecting the
participants, the researchers published an open
recruitment to the PGPAUD student teachers. The
student teachers who applied to be involved in this
study were then selected based on their skills in
doing storytelling using Bahasa Indonesia, Basa
Sunda and English. From the selection process, three
student teachers with adequate Bahasa Indonesia,
Basa Sunda, and English storytelling skills were
recruited as the participants of the study. The
participants were asked to apply the story-dictation
in the teaching and learning process in the
kindergarten context. The story-dictation process
was conducted after the student-teacher participants
had delivered the storytelling as an exposure
activity. In the process of story-dictation, each of the
participants were sitting one-on-one with a child,
ready with a pen and a doodle page, to write every
word dictate by the child, until all of the children got
their turn. Therefore, the term story-dictation in this
context is not about the children writing what the
teacher dictate to them, but more like the children
dictate a story created by themselves to be written by
the teachers. Observations, field notes, reflective
notes and in-depth interview were employed as the
data collection methods. The data were then
qualitatively analysed by given coding until the
themes and key concepts were identified.
5 FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION
Having analysed the data collected in this study, two
themes emerged in the employment of story
dictation in Indonesian kindergarten, namely, the
preparation stage and the implementation stage. The
CONAPLIN and ICOLLITE 2017 - Tenth Conference on Applied Linguistics and the Second English Language Teaching and Technology
Conference in collaboration with the First International Conference on Language, Literature, Culture, and Education
394

preparation stage refers to the situation before class,
while the implementation stage refers to the process
of the story dictation in the class.
5.1 Preparing the Story Dictation
In the preparation stage, four steps were identified.
The steps are designing a lesson plan, developing
learning media, selecting story for exposure activity,
and designing doodle book. The three teachers did
not find any difficulties in designing lesson plan,
since they were used to design lesson plans as parts
of university course. As the student teachers in
PGPAUD, almost all courses in the university
require them to master how to make a lesson plan.
Therefore, as it was confirmed from the in-depth
interview, all of the future teachers as the
participants of the study conveyed that the step of
designing the lesson plan could be handled easily.
However, the next three steps were considered as
quite challenging.
In the step of developing learning media, the
teachers were asked to deliver a story as an exposure
for children before the story dictation activity. The
teachers had difficulties in selecting suitable stories
to be presented in accordance with their context.
Unlike in the more developed English speaking
countries (such as USA or Australia), the discussion
about children literature in Indonesia is not well-
researched yet.
There are myriad researches discussing about
children stories based on numerous classifications in
the context of Western (USA and Australia)
children’s literature. For example, the themes about
gender roles (Peterson and Lach, 1990; Anderson
and Hamilton, 2005; Hamilton, Anderson, Broaddus
and Young, 2006), character building and good habit
(Cooper, 2007; Zeece, 2009; Almerico, 2014),
science learning (Pringle and Lamme, 2005;
Monhardt and Monhardt, 2006; Sackes, Trundle and
Flevares, 2009), mathematics learning (Casey, Kersh
and Young, 2004) and language skills (Isbell, Sobol,
Lindauer and Lowrance, 2004; Paquette, 2007).
Those researches could be used as a reference for the
teacher in selecting appropriate story books
relevance to their children’s conditions, in term of
cultural and ability. Besides those themes, the
discussion of abstract concept and what books to
choose is also available, such as the concept of
cross-cultural understanding (Al-Jafar and Buzzelli,
2004; Ghosn, 204) and how to develop children’s
imaginative skills (Hislam, 1995). Therefore, when
particular teachers need a particular book to develop
their students’ skill and ability, they just can easily
refer to those research to choose the right children’s
story book.
However, different situation was found in
Indonesian context. There is not yet a
comprehensive research about childrens’ literature in
Indonesian context. Besides schools in Indonesia are
mostly considerer as under resourced regarding the
children’s literature collection (Damayanti, 2007),
they are still few research in classifying the
Indonesian children’s story books. Thus, more often
than not, the teachers in Indonesia also used the
Western references in selecting the right story for
their students in Indonesian context. After they
found the right stories, they still had to adapt them to
make them relevance with their students’
characteristics. Hence, they arranged the story to be
presented in the form of their-handmade-storybook
as the learning media.
The last step of this stage was designing a doodle
pages. According to Gadzikowski (2007), teacher
only needs a piece of blank paper and a pen or pencil
in doing the process of story dictation. However the
student teachers as the participants of this study
were aware that the children would face difficulties
in creating their own stories if they began out of
nowhere. Therefore the student teachers decided to
consider the story dictation as a continuation activity
from the storytelling to the story creation by the
children. This modification was conducted in our
context to make it easier for children to invent their
story since this activity is a novel one for them.
Besides, there is no wrong way to do the story
dictation (Gadzikowski, 2007, p. 3), which makes us
possible to have any changes to fit into our
condition. Based on the in-depth interview, it was
revealed that the participants did not face any
significant difficulties. The challenge in this step
was more to the technical problem of making the
doodle page layout so that the students understood
how it worked to stimulate their ideas in creating the
story.
After all of the steps in the preparation stage
were conducted, the teachers were asked to do a
simulation, to practise their storytelling skill. Two of
the teachers said that it was the most challenging one
for them since they are not used to doing
storytelling. This simulation is important since
teachers are expected to be a storytelling role model
for the children (Gadzikowski, 2007, p. 13). In This
step, the participants were asked to conduct a mini
simulation in front of the researchers and the other
fellow participants. Afterwards, feedbacks of the
mini simulation were given to the participants from
the researchers. From this step, the participants
Experiential Learning of Future Teachers in Story Dictation for Early Childhood Education
395

difficulties in implementing storytelling were
identified. Most of them still have lack of self
confident in doing storytelling which affect to their
whole performances, such as intonation, clarity,
fluency, gesture and facial expression, speed and
the volume of the voice.
5.2 Implementing the Story Dictation
The second big theme that emerged in the story
dictation activity is the implementation stage. Six
steps were identified in the implementation of story
dictation, there are: storytelling, introducing doodle
pages, planning story extension, working on the
story dictation, revising the story, and publishing the
story.
The first step of the stage was storytelling. The
teachers were doing the storytelling based on the
selected story prepared beforehand. The theme of
the stories was friendship that was presented in the
form of fable stories. The teachers confessed that
they were quite nervous doing this in the first week.
Moreover, it was the first time the children were
with the participants (data from the field notes).
Hence, the participants not only faced the challenges
in implementing the storytelling techniques, but also
keeping the classroom management. However, they
started to enjoy this activity in the remaining weeks.
The next step was introducing doodle pages.
Doodle pages, derived from doodle book, are set of
unfinished pictures that should be completed.
Doodle pages were included in this study as a part of
modification toward the story dictation to make it fit
with the situation. Although it is said that in story
dictation children could start their own story from
nowhere (Gadzikowski, 2007), but it was difficult
when the activity has not become a routine yet.
Therefore, doodle pages were employed since it
could give context and stimulate children’s
imagination, fluency and originality of thinking
(Dziedziewics, Oledzka and Karwowski, 2013). In
this study children were asked to complete the
doodle pages. They were given some choices on
how they wished to complete their doodle pages.
Some of the were given small pieces of pictures to
be sticked on their doodle pages, and the rest of
them decided to draw their own pictures on the
pages. After that they were asked to create their own
story based on the completed doodle pages.
The third step was planning the story extension.
In this step children were given some time to think
and plan the story extension based on the teachers’
storytelling and their doodle pages. In the first week,
this step was the most challenging for the children.
They mostly did not understand what to do.
However in the second and third week, they were
used to this activity.
After planning the story, the next step was the
heart of the activity, which was the story dictation
itself. Teachers were working with children, having
one on one interaction. In this step, when a teacher
was working the story dictation with one child, the
other children had to wait their turn. Therefore
teachers had to be ready with another activity for
children while they waited for their turn. The most
challenging thing from this step was when children
were reluctant to speak telling their story. When it
happened teacher could give stimulus by asking
several question, such as, “how does your story
begin?” (Gadzikowski, 2007, p. 42).
Having the story ready from the story dictation,
the next step was revising the story. In this step all
the doodle pages were gathered. Therefore everyone
in the class gave the contribution to the book making
from their individual doodle pages. The sequences
of the pages were negotiated. After that the teacher
and children check the pages and discuss whether or
not they want to revise the story. The last thing from
this step was giving title to the children work. Two
of the teachers stated that this step was one the most
challenging steps. Most of the children did not
understand the concept of a title for a written work
(book).
The last step of the implementation stage was
publishing the story made by the children through
the story dictation. In this step the teachers compiled
the children’s doodle pages into a form of a book
and read the story to them. This step was the most
wonderful one since everyone in the class were
happy and proud of themselves that they could
create a storybook.
6 CONCLUSIONS AND
RECOMMENDATIONS
The study has identified the employment of story
dictation in Indonesian kindergarten from the
teachers’ perspective. The process of implementing
story dictation is subject to the context and situation.
Therefore different context could apply different
stages and steps.
The teachers’ experiential learning has also
revealed that employing story in the classroom is
still a big challenge for the teachers. Therefore,
teachers’ pre-service and in-service training on
CONAPLIN and ICOLLITE 2017 - Tenth Conference on Applied Linguistics and the Second English Language Teaching and Technology
Conference in collaboration with the First International Conference on Language, Literature, Culture, and Education
396

presenting story, doing storytelling and story
dictation is recommended.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
This study was funded by UTU UPI in the
programme of Hibah Penelitian Pengembangan dan
Pembinaan Kelompok Bidang Keahlian (HPPKBK)
PGPAUD LPPM UPI year 2017. We are grateful to
the student teachers of PGPAUD UPI Kampus
Cibiru who became the model teachers, and also to
the students of Insan Unggul kindergarten who were
involved in the study.
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Conference in collaboration with the First International Conference on Language, Literature, Culture, and Education
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