First Type: Fable Story

I have chosen fable type of story entitled “The Donkey Who did not have a Heart”

originated from Arabia country to be taught to Year 3 pupils. The book is an Asian Classical

Fables. The story is about a cunning fox who tricked the lion king and a donkey. The lion is

very ill and needed a donkey’s heart to cure his illness. He ordered the fox to get a donkey.

Instead, the fox tricked both the lion king and the donkey and the fox ate the heart. The sly

fox managed to escape the lion king’s wrath by cheating. This fable is suitable to teach

taught to Year 3 pupils considering the content of the story itself and the moral value

found in the story. It has an interesting plot and storyline to hold students’ attention and

focus. The event where the fox tricks the donkey for the second time creates curiosity

among learners to further read and discover the happenings occurred later in the story.

Furthermore, the story The Donkey did not have a Heart can really help children in

language learning potential considering the content of the story. The content of the story is

clear and it is easy for the pupils to understand the story. This story has lots of vocabulary

therefore the pupils can enhance their vocabulary by learning new words in a fun way. For

example in the story, they have words like brave, adventerous, hungry, cave, quick,

firewood, escape, sword, tasty, hurt and many more. The vocabulary words are stated below

of each page. These words provides a nice way to introduce, practice, and review

vocabulary. The difficult vocabulary is highlighted

Moreover, the picture illustration in the story gives learners plenty of help with word

recognition. The colourful pictures in the story make the learners to understand the story

better. For example, the pupils can see clearly how the lion king, fox and the donkey colours.

It shows their animal traits. Besides, it develops the students imaginative thinking to

understand the animals traits. For an example, fox is portrayed to be cunning and likes to

prank in order to get his way. The lion king is described to be the strongest, bravest and the

king of the jungle. All the other animals will fear him and as for the donkey, it is described to

be weak and feeble minded. The donkey can be easily tricked by the fox and easily killed by

the lion.

Besides, the story contains about 2-5 sentences and 25-50 words each page

considering the length; neither too short nor too long. It provides them with exact information

needed to understand the story better. Regarding the exploitability of the story, various

activities can be designed to increase pupil’s’ competence. Role play, information gap, chain

drill, storytelling and guided composition tasks can be created from the storyline and

character to assess students’ language skills. Indeed, it will enhance their self confidence to

communicate and interact in English.

Second type: Legend type

I have chosen legend type of story entitled “The Princess of Gunung Ledang” originated

from Malaysia country. The book is published by the Junior Pages. It is suitable to be taught

to Year 3 pupils considering the storyline. It has an interesting plot and content to

hold students’ attention and focus. It is about a beautiful Princess who lives at the top of

Gunung Ledang. The Sultan of Malacca hears of her beauty and wants to marry her. He will

send his messenger to send his proposal to the Princess. The Princess will demand the

Sultan to give his son’s blood in order to marry her. The Sultan of Malacca will forget his

wish to marry her as he could not kill his own blood. He regretted his actions and did not

wish to marry her anymore. He wants to focus on looking after his people’s welfare. The

moral value of the story is that it is wiser to look after the people who are near and closest

to us.

Besides, the colourful, bright and large print illustrations impress learners’

to explore the story. Moreover, pictures act as conversation starter between teacher

and learners. They tend to guess and make predictions at the beginning and

throughout the story. The fonts are big enough in each page to support the diction

and clarity. Learners grasp the meaning of the story by sentence choices such as

“once upon a time”, “entourage of elephants” and “awed by her stunning beauty”.

The colourful pictures in the story make the learners to understand the story better.

Besides, the costumes in the story resembles the ancient time whereby it

develops the students imaginative thinking to understand their culture and beliefs.

For an example, in this story, the Princess was wearing the traditional type of

costume that is very beautiful whereas the Sultan is wearing the traditional Malay

costume. Other races get to see and learn the traditional type of costumes through

this story.

Furthermore, the story suits students in a mixed ability classroom. Simple

sentences and some repeated words like Sultan, Princess, messenger,and call

provide a greater chance for the low proficiency students to comprehend the

meaning and understanding of the story. The story can also be used to teach

grammar in terms of tenses. As the story occurred in the past, it is relevant to

introduce past tenses such as shocked, reached, informed and accepted to the

pupils. They will learn the tenses and differentiate between present and past tenses.

Third type: Folktale type

I have chosen Folktale type of story entitled “The Haunted Cave” originated from Malaysia

country. The book is published by the Junior Pages. The story is suitable for Year 3 pupils

as the storyline is simple and has a strong moral value.

The storyline is very direct and it uses simple words to describe the events happening in

the story. It is about a family of three who lived at the end of a village. Mak Tanjung has two

children named Pekan and Melur. Mak Tanjung wanted to eat the roe of a special fish and

she went to catch the fish. She told the children to keep the roe for her when Melur cooked

the fish. Melur remembered the mother’s wishes and kept the roe for her but Pekan who was

very hungry did not listen to his sister. He ended up eating the roe that was kept for Mak

Tanjung. When Mak Tanjung came back, Melur told her that, Pekan had eaten it. Mak

Tanjung was very disappointed with her children. She cried and ran towards a haunted cave

at the end of the village. She cried to the cave to swallow her up. The cave swallowed her

up. The two children could only look as the cave swallowed their mother. Both of them cried

and they regretted for not listening to their mother. They had lost a mother whom they loved

very much. From the storyline, the plot describes about how children should be obedient to

their parents. The pupils will learn a good lesson when this story is used. Moral value is

clearly stressed in this story.

The setting is very suitable for Malaysian pupils as they can relate it with their life

and they are aware of the existence of it. It is to describe the story when pupils are aware of

the place. According to (Miles, 2007), the content explores the setting through the

eyes of children living at the village. They see new sights such as jungle, river, fish

and cave. Pupils are familiar with the settings as it does exist until now. Thus,

authenticity of the folktale relates to readers’ real life; promoting daily life language

usage in the form of dialogues. Pupils will be able to bridge between written text and

spoken language through this story as there are many dialogues that are used to

speak between the mother and her children.

The illustrations in the book are very bright and colourful. The scenery of the

village is printed beautifully and pupils can see clearly the pictures of the characters

and their facial reactions. Fewer words are needed when pictures are used well to

express the story. Picture illustration in the story gives learners plenty of help with

word recognition. The colourful pictures in the story make the learners to understand

the story better.

TABLE OF CONTENT

BIL CONTENT PAGE NUMBER

1. LAMPIRAN 5 1

2. TABLE OF CONTENT 2

3. PAIR TASK : ACTIVITIES 3-5

4. INDIVIDUAL TASK : SHARVNI ARUMUGAM 4-6

5. INDIVIDUAL TASK :YAKEASWARI MAHENDRA RAJ

5-7

6. REFERENCES 8

7. APPENDIX 9-14

FIRST TYPE : FABLE

SECOND TYPE:

LEGEND

THIRD TYPE:

FOLKTALE

APPENDIX(YAKEASWARI)

REFERENCES