Storytelling and reading stories aloud are among the most appropriate approaches in early language teaching. Both reading and telling stories create positive attitudes towards literature, foreign languages, and other cultures. The aim of the present comparative study was to investigate the frequency and ways of using stories in the English classroom in the first three years of primary education in Slovenia (ages 6-8) and Croatia (ages 7-10). A questionnaire was used to gather data, with responses provided by 199 teachers of English from Slovenia and Croatia. The research results revealed a considerable difference between the participants from Slovenia and Croatia as regards coursebook use, namely, teachers from Croatia largely rely on texts offered in coursebooks, whereas teachers in Slovenia mostly use authentic picturebooks instead of coursebooks in their lessons. We also observed that stories are rarely employed to promote students’ intercultural competences and that the main challenge for teachers is to find suitable materials. In light of these findings, we recommend that teacher education programmes provide more support for teachers to develop learners’ communicative, social and cultural skills through the use of stories, and that schools are better equipped with reading materials.
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