Using Fairy Tales for Enriching the Vocabulary of Foreign Languages

Kuzmanovska, Dragana and Koceva, Vesna and Kirova, Snezana and Vitanova-Ringaceva, Ana and Ivanova, Biljana (2022) Using Fairy Tales for Enriching the Vocabulary of Foreign Languages. 16th International Technology, Education and Development Conference March 7th-8th, 2022. pp. 5261-5266. ISSN 2340-1079

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Abstract

As foreign language teachers we are constantly faced with the challenge of finding new, modern,
innovative and, above all, attractive to our students, methods and ways that will enable us to more easily
adopt foreign vocabulary and thus, of course, achieve students’ richer vocabulary. Thus, our goal as
linguists, researchers and primarily teachers is to enrich the vocabulary of foreign words in our students,
i.e., students at the departments of Macedonian, German, English, and Italian language and literature
at the Faculty of Philology, University "Goce Delcev" - Stip, the Republic of North Macedonia. For that
aim, a research team consisting of several professors from the above mentioned departments has
prepared this study based on the results of the research in which the third and fourth-year students were
included from these departments and answered the questionnaire that consisted of two parts: the first
part where carefully selected general statements were asked regarding the knowledge of fairy tales in
their mother tongue and foreign languages, and the second part contained practical exercises with which
we wanted to prove or disprove our thesis that children who actively read and retold fairy tales in early
childhood, have a richer vocabulary at a later age. Confirmation or rejection of our thesis is of great
importance for us as a research teaching staff, but also for our students, future teachers, who need to
actively transfer their knowledge to their prospective students. With this study, we want to help the
teaching professionals and, through the well-known fairy tales by the Brothers Grimm, to facilitate the
acquisition of a foreign language in a more sophisticated, easier, and more interesting manner.
The question is why fairy tales are the subject of our interest and why we propose them for easier
adoption of foreign lexicon by students from the listed language departments at the Faculty of Philology.
In response, we quote the well-known thought of Albert Einstein:
“If you want your children to be intelligent, read them fairy tales. If you want them to be more intelligent,
read them more fairy tales.”
With this Einstein’s quote we begin our work because it, in a concise way, conveys the powerful
message that is present in every fairy tale, be it in the native Macedonian language or in German,
English, Italian or another foreign language. Einstein says that wise people teach their children about
life with instructive messages presented through fairy tales. So, by learning about life and the wisdom
of life, in fact, new vocabulary of a foreign language is unconsciously adopted by the students from the
mentioned language departments at the Faculty of Philology. There is great truth in this Einstein's quote
that fairy tales really have a positive impact on the enrichment of the vocabulary both of the native
Macedonian language and of the foreign languages our students study

Item Type:	Article
Uncontrolled Keywords:	fairy tales, vocabulary, foreign language.
Subjects:	Humanities > Languages and literature
Divisions:	Faculty of Philology
Depositing User:	Snezana Kirova
Date Deposited:	17 Jun 2022 07:07
Last Modified:	17 Jun 2022 07:07
URI:	https://eprints.ugd.edu.mk/id/eprint/29840

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