Using English stories to increase the general school students’ internal motivation

In the foreign language learning, the stories with all of their inherent attraction help to promote the students’ internal motivation for the target language. With the internal motivation associated with the story-based learning tasks, the students are believed to gain superior understanding of the materials. Besides, using the stories can encourage the students to communicate their thoughts and feelings. The article presents the theoretical basis of the story-based English teaching and some important implications for foreign language education in the general schools. It also discusses various points of views on this teaching approach and offers a wide selection of the story-integrated methods for the teacher to choose.