[eng] Telling stories is an essential part of being human. Our ancestors told them, our
descendants will. Storytelling is thus ubiquitous and timeless, irrepressible to
the extent that the lack of a story might indeed be troubling. Learning and
teaching a language should not overlook this human trait, this “narrative
instinct”. Conversely, because telling stories comes naturally to the human
species, foreign language acquisition should encompass learning to become a
proficient storyteller in the target language. Several studies point to evidence
suggesting that the use of storytelling in the classroom provides students from
different levels with multiple benefits. Furthermore, one of the main challenges
English language teachers in state-run secondary schools in Majorca have to
face nowadays is that of turning their students into fluent speakers of English.
The main objectives of this paper are hence firstly to supply the theoretical
buttress justifying the implementation of storytelling activities in state-run
secondary school classrooms in the Balearic Islands and secondly to elaborate
a didactic proposal based on tasks aiming at developing students’ storytelling
ability as an ancillary approach contributing to their speaking fluency in English.