The Effect of Using Short Stories on Undergraduate Students' Achievement in English Pronouns

The current study majorly aims at : 1.identifying some short stories to be used as a technique for teaching English pronouns for undergraduate students. 2. finding out the effect of short stories on the achievement of undergraduate students in the various kinds of English pronouns. The aims have been achieved through verifying a number of hypotheses. A sample of one hundred 3td year students has been chosen from the Department of English at the College of Education for Humanities of Kirkuk University. The sample is divided into two equal groups and subjected to a pretest. The experimental group is taught English pronouns according to the technique of short stories whereas; the control group is taught the same instructional material according to the traditional method, i. e. without employing the technique of short stories.An achievement test has been constructed, validated, its reliability obtained, its items analyzed and then applied to the two involved groups of students at the end of the instruction period. The required data are collected and analyzed statistically. Results show that the technique of short stories is an effective in teaching English pronouns to college students. Finally, the study ends up with a number of conclusions and recommendations. © 2019 JTUH, College of Education for Human Sciences, Tikrit University DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.25130/jtuh.26.7.2019.35 ةيزيلكنلإا رئاطضلا يف ةعماجلا ةبلط ليصحت ىلع ةريصقلا صصقلا مادختسا رثأ هط ةدهان .د.أ ديجم تيركت ةعماج / ةينادنلإا مولعلل ةيبرتلا ةيلك / محمد راذب ةلهن ةصلاخلا ةيلاحلا ةسا ردلا فدهت : إ :ىل 1 ةففففصل ل ةففففي يلكنلإا ةفففف للا ر اسفففف يردففففت ةففففك ةففففيشيتك اهمادختففففسلإ ةريففففريلا تففففريلا اعصفففف عففففيرعتلا.


A B S T R A C T
The current study majorly aims at : 1.identifying some short stories to be used as a technique for teaching English pronouns for undergraduate students.

2.
finding out the effect of short stories on the achievement of undergraduate students in the various kinds of English pronouns.
The aims have been achieved through verifying a number of hypotheses. A sample of one hundred 3td year students has been chosen from the Department of English at the College of Education for Humanities of Kirkuk University. The sample is divided into two equal groups and subjected to a pretest. The experimental group is taught English pronouns according to the technique of short stories whereas; the control group is taught the same instructional material according to the traditional method, i. e. without employing the technique of short stories.An achievement test has been constructed, validated, its reliability obtained, its items analyzed and then applied to the two involved groups of students at the end of the instruction period. The required data are collected and analyzed statistically. Results show that the technique of short stories is an effective in teaching English pronouns to college students. Finally, the study ends up with a number of conclusions and recommendations. English learning means the acquisition of oral as well as written skills and learners of English as a foreign language should be competent in its oral and written aspects. They should also be given a lot of practice in the structures of the language and in the process of using them in real life situations (David, 2004:88).
Syntax, as the way words are put together in a language to form phrases, clauses or sentences, is the language's skeleton. Knowledge of syntax enables learners to be competent in producing correct grammatical, syntactical patterns and suitable pronouns which help the students in communicating with others (Varra, 1999:2).
Non-native students of English do not have the ability to communicate and produce meaningful sentences in English. They often encounter certain difficulties in writing and speaking English. As far as the researchers know, they cannot distinguish among the various types of pronouns and how they use them appropriately into real linguistic settings.
There are some factors behind the difficulties faced by our students in using various forms of pronouns to form well-arranged patterns .One of the factors is that those students are not well-trained and not well equipped with the required knowledge of using pronouns correctly. The currently applied classroom techniques may not give them sufficient opportunities to explore pronouns in contexts and let them see how and why alternative forms exist to express different communicative meanings.
Short stories as a learning technique could encourage learners to use a large amount of words since a story provides a realistic context for presenting pronouns and attracts students' attention in a way that no other technique can. Stories can elicit pronouns and can be a convenient and natural teaching tool. It may even holds and focuses students' attention best (Murcia, 1988:59). Moreover, no previous study, as far as the researcher know, has cultivated the role of short stories in teaching English pronouns to college students.
3 Therefore, the current study is supposed to fill a gap of information in this area of study as an attempt to investigate the effect of using short stories on undergraduate students' achievement in English pronouns. 3.

Hypotheses of the Study: It is hypothesized that:
1-there is no significant difference between the mean scores of the control group on the per-test and that on the post test.
2-there is no significant difference between the mean scores of the experimental group on the pre-test and that on the posttest.
3-there is no significant difference between the mean scores of the control group and that of the experimental group on the posttest.
4-there is no significant difference between the mean scores of students' performance at the recognition level and that at the production level.
5-there is no significance difference between the mean scores of male students and that of female students on the posttest

Value of the Study
The value of the current study stems from the value of short stories as an important part of every culture in the world and as a suitable resource for teaching and learning a foreign Language. It is hoped that this study will contribute to EFL college faculty, school teachers as well as students' better understanding of the role of short stories as a teaching technique in side FL classroom. Thus, the value of the study could be itemized as below: 1-It familiarizes college faculty with the effectiveness of using short stories in teaching English pronouns. 3-It would be a beneficial contribution to learners of EFL through enabling them to get benefit from authentic instructional material, i.e. short stories.
4-This study may help foreign language students to improve their achievement in the various English syntactical aspects.

Limits of the study:
This study is limited to EFL third year university students who study the three short Below are the definitions of the major terms employed in the present study. -

Effect
Effect means the positive change of results that students can make in their achievement in English pronouns.

-Pronouns
Pronouns refer to a class of words which fill the position of nouns or noun phrases, and which substitute for or refer to other expressions (Leech, 2006: -Achievement It is the accomplishment or the mastery of English pronouns achieved by third year college students.
-Short Story It is "a compact concentrated work of narrative fiction that may also contain description, dialogue, and commentary (Roberts and Jacobs, 1995: 41).

5
The operational definition: it is a brief fictional work written in prose. It has a fully developed theme but significantly shorter than a novel. Such as, The Open Window, The

Black Cat, and The Happy Prince
Section Two: Theoretical Background 2.0 Introductory Note: The present section reviews the theoretical background of short stories: their characteristics, reasons behind their use, and teaching English grammar through using short stories. It also reviews English pronouns, their discourse functions, as well as their types.

Characteristics of a Short Story
A short story is a work of fiction that is usually written in prose, often in narrative format. It is usually but not necessarily short in size. It is concise and recounts a series of events with casual or temporal relationships between them. The short story has a single mood, i.e. comic or tragic. We cannot have more than one mood because it is short.
Generally, it presents no more than two characters and one significant event around which the story built (Wikipedia: 2010).
A short story has a beginning, middle and end. The end in a short story is different from the beginning. Moreover, the events might allow the listener or the reader to anticipate of predict the end. It has a double meaning, one is concerned with the particular characters and events depicted in it, and the other is transcends to the universal meaning of reality.
Many short story writers define their work through a combination of creative personal expressions and artistic integrity (ibid). Cooper (1997: 83) adds that short stories tend to contain certain elements of dramatic structure: exposition (the introduction of setting situation and main character); complication (the event that introduces the conflict); climax (the point of highest interest in terms of the conflict and the point with the most action); and resolution (the point when the conflict is resolved).
Because of their length, short stories may or may not follow this pattern. Some do not follow patterns at all, for example, modern short stories only by occasion have an exposition.
The ending of many short stories are open and may or may not have a mortal or practical lesson. When short stories intend to convey a specific ethical or moral perspective, they fall into a more specific sub-category called "fables". This specific kind of short story has been using spiritual and religious leaders worldwide to inspire, enlighten, and educate their followers (ibid).

Reasons for Using Short Stories
Telling stories has long been recognized as an important part of healing, selfknowledge, personal and spiritual vehicle for connecting us to other people. It is a means for understanding ourselves and the world that we live in (Ellis and Brewster, 2002:2).
Short stories have the advantage of creating a meaningful context for students and seem to be the most foreign language and this will help students enhance the four skills; reading, writing, speaking and listening Lazar (1993: 18) states that stories provide the teaching and learning material which is motivating, authentic and has great educational values Ellis (1997: 1) argues that story is the perfect embodiment of whole language pedagogy. It teaches higher level thinking skills and it addresses the need of students with different learning styles. It can also provide an opportunity for cooperative learning and building social skills. Most important storytelling has been shown to build intrinsic motivation and self-esteem, even in the students who are labeled hard to teach. Using the short story helps the teacher plan for the heterogeneity among students (Ellis, 1997: 11).
Stories also "develop the different types of intelligence and contribute to language learning including emotional intelligence". They allow students to play with ideas and feelings and to think about issues which are important and relevant to them. They also" provide ideal opportunities for presenting cultural information and encouraging cross-cultural comparison" .For teachers, stories allow "to use an acquisition based methodology by providing optimal input" (Ellis and Brewester,2002:2).
So it is great to use real stories in learning and teaching English language functions and structures and it is obvious that we should choose different types of stories and different topics should be chosen to enable students to create their own stories and reinforce their confidence to speak fluently and to write stories if they have the right input.

Using Short Stories in Teaching English Grammar
Stories are the best way to communicate and motivate the students because communicative teaching of EFL aims to help students acquire communicative competence more than acquiring structure and form (Ellis and Brewster, 1991: 36). Rosen (1998: 42) adds that both the teller and listeners find a reflection of themselves in stories, since stories are the best vehicle for passing on factual information. Students working in pairs or in small storytelling groups learn to negotiate the meaning of a tale.
Rosen also describes teachers who tell personal stories about their past or present lives, model for students the way to recall sensory detail. Stories can be rehearsed, the teachers modeling of a prepared telling can introduce students to the techniques of eye contact, dramatic placement of a character within a scene, gestures or role play. If the students spend time rehearsing a story, they become comfortable using a variety of techniques (Boje, 1991: 17) .
From teaching through short stories by using such a technique like role play students can acquire pronouns listening to stories when they repeatedly interact with stories, they will learn a great deal of pronouns. Learning is facilitated by the context presented by the story and subsequent mediation that may function as the scaffold necessary for learning to take place (Paley, 1990: 123) .
Incorporating role play into the classroom to teach the students adds variety, a change of face and opportunities for a lot of language production and also a lot of fun. (Gillian Porto-Ladousse,1987: 63) . Role play is learning how to best handle a situation by practising interactions and trying out different approaches. It is a very effective instructional method proven to increase self-efficacy and impact student behaviour (Johansson, 2012: 13) .
There are five steps may be followed in the classroom as follows: - Step (1) Identify the situation to put the students in complete picture. - Step (2) Add Details: so as to enable the students to grasp the aims of the lesson.

-
Step (3) Assign Roles. We assign a role for each student.
-Step (4) Act out the situation or the scenario - Step (5) Discuss what you have learned: to make the students have the ability to express what they have learned and expressing themselves.

Discourse Functions of Pronouns
The use of pronouns may be drawn up their discourse function so the most important function of pronouns in a text is to help the text achieve cohesion and coherence. Pronouns help to set up and achieve internal networks of meaning in a text. As a cohesive agent, pronouns help a text to achieve texture in that they have cohesive relationship with their antecedents. The cohesive relationship is set up since the interpretations of the pronouns are on the identifications of nominal elements in the discourse as well as the underlying semantic relation (Halliday and Hassan, 1976: 24;Brown and Yule, 1983: 191).
There are two reference types in the interpretation of pronouns: exophoric and endophoric. When the interpretation of pronouns can be achieved within a text, they are said to have endophoric relations; when their interpretation is not textually overt but lies beyond that, they are said to have exophoric relations (Ogunsiji, 2007: 86) .
The endophoric reference is further divided into anaphoric and cataphoric. The anaphoric cohesive reference tie demands that the hearer looks back into the text for its interpretation, while the anaphoric cohesive reference tie demands that the hearer looks forward for its interpretation (ibid) .
Most especially, under the endophoria co-reference, pronouns could be viewed as lexical replacement since they are used to replace nouns. Two conditions for their use are relatedness of reference and relatedness of meaning (Brown and Yule, 1983: 182-193).

Types of Pronouns
There are different types pronouns, i.e. personal pronouns, possessive pronouns , reflexive pronouns , demonstrative , pronouns reciprocal pronouns, interrogative pronouns ,  This chapter explains the experimental design adopted in this study, population and sample selection, equivalence of the selected sample, instructional materials, students' instruction, the constructed instruments, and the statistical means used for analyzing the study data.

Experimental Design
The experimental design is the plan according to which experimental groups are selected and experimental treatments are administered and their effect is answered (Good, 1973: 74).
It is the blueprint of the procedures enabling the researcher to test the stated hypotheses and reaching valid conclusions about the relationships between independent and dependent variables (Best and Kahn, 2006: 177).
The experimental design implemented in the current study is called "Posttest only Control Group Design." This design includes the two selected groups of students, the independent variable, and the constructed posttest, as shown in table ( 2 ).
The experimental group is exposed to the independent variable which is short stories in teaching English pronouns while the control group is taught according to the traditional (conventional) way in teaching English pronouns.

Population and sampling
The repeaters. After excluding the repeaters, the remaining number is 120 students. Twenty students have been randomly excluded from the two groups for the purpose of pilot administration of the posttest. As a result, the total number of the involved sample is one hundred students who represent 78.74 percent of its original population, as shown in  The sample has been equated in students' age, their parents' academic level, and their scores in the pretest.

Content Analysis of the Three Short Stories
The study tries to shed light on the pronouns that are included in the three short stories, as shown in table ( 4 ):

"The Open Window"
This short story "The Open Window" is full of pronouns. It includes fifty-nine personal pronouns, i.e. forty-five as subject personal pronouns and fourteen as object. It also contains thirty-three singular subject pronouns and twelve plural subject personal pronouns. As female subject pronouns, it has fourteen, as neutral consists of four and as male contains fifteen, whereas eleven singular male object pronouns are found. It also has three neutral pronouns but it has no plural object personal pronouns. As possessive pronouns, it includes twenty two as pronominal possessive pronouns; nineteen are as singular pronominal possessive and three as plural. As male singular pronominal possessive pronouns, it contains four and as a female it contains fifteen. As reflexive pronouns, it contains only one reflexive pronoun. As demonstrative, it has only four pronouns, as indefinite pronouns, it has only seven and as interrogative pronouns, it includes only one pronoun. As relative pronouns, it has only three and finally it has only three pronoun "one" and it does not have any reciprocal pronouns.

"The Black Cat"
This short story "The Black Cat" is also full of pronouns. It contains ninety-three personal pronouns, i .e. fifty-seven as subjects while thirty-five as objects and it has fiftyseven singular subject pronouns but only one plural subject. It includes forty-seven as male and eight as neutral and only two as female. It has thirty-two as singular object pronouns and only three as plural object pronouns. It consists of twenty-two as male object pronouns and ten as neutral but it does not have any female object pronouns.
As possessive pronouns, this short story has fifty-eight, i .e. fifty-seven as singular pronominal and only one as plural. Also it contains fifty-one male singular pronouns and five neutral and only one as female. It includes nine singular reflexive pronouns, fifteen relative pronouns, only one interrogative pronoun and three indefinite pronouns. The pronoun "one" appeared only two times, there are seven demonstrative pronouns (two as singular and five as plural). It does not have any reciprocal pronouns.

"The Happy Prince"
This short story "The Happy Prince" is also full of pronouns. It includes ninety-seven pronouns as personal: sixty-nine as subject personal and twenty-eight as object personal pronouns. As male, there are fifty-five, six as female and only two as" neutral. Whereas eighteen pronouns are as male singular object and six as female singular object and only four as neutral, but there are no plural object. As possessive, it has twenty-nine pronominal pronouns, twenty-four as singular male pronominal pronouns and five as female singular pronominal pronouns. This story includes seven relative pronouns and only four pronouns" one". It contains seven interrogative pronouns, eight indefinite pronouns, five reflexive pronouns, and only one demonstrative pronoun. The story has no reciprocal pronouns at all.

Students' Instruction
The two groups were taught English pronouns for a period of twelve weeks by using the three selected short stories, at a rate of three lectures a week. The experimental group is taught according to the steps of the technique of short story as mentioned in 2.3. Whereas, the control group is taught according to the traditional way, as follows:

Teaching the Experimental Group.
After organizing students' seats into circles or semi-circles, the experimental group has been taught English pronouns according to the following steps:

Steps of Presentations:
1st step: Initiating the lesson by giving the students a general viewpoint about the presented texts of the involved short story, referring to the various types of pronouns as well as their functions .The required charts, gestures, postures, and facial expressions are used in order to enable students to understand well the presented material.
2nd step: Read the texts for two or more times and discuss with the students their meaning, (concentrating on the involved nouns), guess how they could be substituted by using appropriate pronouns and explaining the functions of those pronouns.

Table( 4 ) The Total Kinds of Pronouns of the Three Short Stories
3rdstep:Play the recorded texts and ask the students to listen to them carefully,.
concentrating on the discussed nouns and pronouns. 4 th step: Let the students read the given text in a loud voice.

th step:
To end the lesson, ask the students to wear clothes like the characters and act the events by asking them to take their roles as they are in the story. The teacher asks them to bring pictures of the characters in the next lesson.

Teaching the Control group
The conventional techniques are used to teach the pronouns to the students by applying the instructions stated in the included short stories.

Steps of presentation:
The control group has been taught English pronouns according to the following steps: 1 st step: Read some texts from the intended short story for two or more times.

nd step:
Refer to some of the important nouns and pronouns which are involved within the presented texts.

rd step:
Ask some of the students to read the texts in a loud voice.

th step:
Discuss with the students the existed pronouns, their kind, and functions, as they are seated into their separate rows chair.

Construction of the Posttest
An achievement test is constructed to be applied at the end of the experiment for

Scoring Scheme and Final Administration of the Posttest
Testees' responses are scored out of 100. Two marks are specified to each correct response and zero to each wrong response on each item or blank of the first four questions which are related to the recognition level. As for the other four questions which are related to the production level, question ( 5 ) is scored out of twenty and each of question ( 6 ), ( 7 ), and ( 8 ) is scored out of ten. So one mark is specified for each correct response.
The constructed test has been validated, its reliability obtained and its items analyzed. Then it has been administrated at the end of the period of the experiment to both groups, simultaneously. The testees are asked to read the instructions of the given questions carefully and state their answers clearly within the limited time. Later on the answer sheets are collected to be scored.

Introductory Note:
The obtained data have been collected and analyzed statistically in order to formulated hypotheses and achieve the aims of the study as follows:

Comparison between the Performance of the Control Group in the Pretest and that on the Posttest.
By comparing the mean scores of the control group in the pretest which is found to be 63.9 with that in the posttest which is found to be 62.4, the t-test formula for one independent sample is applied in order to find out whether there is any significant difference between the two mean scores. The computed t-value is found to be 0.59 whereas the tabulated t-value is only 1.66 at the degree of freedom (98) and the level of the significance (0.05). This indicates that there is no significant difference between the mean scores in the pre-test and that in the posttest. Hence the first hypothesis is accepted, as shown in table ( 6 ) :

Group in the Pretest and that in the Posttest.
Test

Comparison between the Performance of the Experimental Group in the
Pretest and that in the Posttest.
By comparing the mean scores of the experimental group in the pre-test which is found to be 67.94 with that in the post test which is found to be 69.2, t-test formula for one independent sample is applied in order to find out whether there is any significant difference between the two mean scores . The computed t-value is found to be 1.98 whereas the tabulated t-value is only 1.66 at the degree of freedom (98) and the level of the significance (0.05). This indicates that there is a significant difference between the two mean scores.
Hence the second hypothesis is rejected, as shown in table ( 7 ):

Comparison between the performance of the Control Group and that of the Experimental Group in the Posttest.
By comparing the mean scores of the experimental group in the posttest which is found to be 69.4 with that of the control group, which is found to be 62.6, t-test formula for two-independent samples is applied in order to find out whether there is any significant difference between the two mean scores.
The computed t-value is found to be 2.46 whereas the tabulated t-value is only 1.66 at the degree of freedom (98) and the level of significance (0.05). This indicates that there is a significant difference between the two groups, i.e. the achievement of the experimental group which is taught by short stories is better than the achievement of the control group which is taught according to the conventional method. Thus the third hypothesis is rejected, as shown in

Comparison between Students' Performance at the Recognition Level
and that at the Production Level.
By comparing the mean scores of students' performance at the recognition level which is found to be 30.20 with that at the production level which is found to be 33.2, t-test formula for oneindependent sample is applied in order to find out whether there is any significant difference between the two mean scores .The computed t-value is found to be 1.94 while the tabulated t-value is found to be 1.66 .This means that there is a significance difference between students' performance at the two levels, at the degree of freedom (49) and level of significance (0.05), as shown in table( 9 ). The obtained difference is for the benefit of the recognition level, i. e. students' performance at the recognition level is better than their performance at the production level, thus the fourth hypothesis is also rejected.

Comparison between Males' performance and that of Females'
Performance in the Posttest.
By comparing the mean scores of males which is found to be 26.44 with that of females which is found to be 36.69, t-test formula for two-independent samples is applied in order to find out whether there is any significant difference between male and female students' performance . The computed t-value is found to be 4.45 whereas the tabulated t-value is 2.68 so there is a significant difference between the two groups, at the degree of freedom (49) and level of significance (0.05) , as shown in table (10). The obtained difference is for the benefit of females, i. e. the performance of female students is better than that of male students in the posttest, thus the fifth hypothesis is rejected.  The improvement of students' achievement in English pronouns by using the technique of short stories could be attributed to a variety of factors, such as:

Groups
1. Short stories technique helps students to reduce their shyness, anxiety and embarrassment.
2. It makes students active, participants inside the classroom through motivating them to take part in classroom activity 3. Teaching by using short stories is enjoyable and desirable by all students, i. e. students showed their enthusiasm and anxiety to act the characters of the presented stories 4.

Introductory Note:
In terms of the obtained results some conclusions and recommendations are stated as follows:

Conclusions
According to the results of the current study, it is concluded that: 1. Teaching literature, by employing short stories technique helps students to improve their achievement in English pronouns.
2. Teaching by using short stories creates an enjoyable atmosphere and breaks classrooms boredom.
3. Teaching students by using short stories encourages shy and weak students to participate actively in the lessons and practise the language skills. 4. A kind of interaction between the teacher and the students is made when students ask questions, act out dialogues, give responses to teacher's questions, etc.
5. Students have developed their ability to comprehend short stories, summarize them and discuss their events inside their classes.
6. It helps students to become more aware of English pronouns and how they are used correctly.
7. The students are enjoyable in teaching them once more as well as they can understand them well.
8. The short stories could be used as a brief, easy and an efficient technique of teaching as well as they are full of pronouns.
9. The students enjoyed both activities. They like to speak about their roles every time and like to bring pictures of some important characters.
10. The students found it an interesting time to practise acting the presented story and get benefit in recognizing how to use pronouns in different places.

Recommendations
In the light of what has been presented in this study, the following points are recommended: 6. Teachers should do their best to make their classrooms suitable places for the students to share and discuss different stories. (the swallow, the narrator , the happy prince) Q2/ Fill in the blanks with the suitable pronouns given below.

Bibliography
(whose, he, who, we, me, his , which) (10m) 1. You may wonder why ____________ keep that window wide open on an October afternoon.
2. The doctors agree in ordering ____________ complete rest, an absence of mental excitement, and avoidance of anything in the nature of violent physical exercises.
3. Could only talk about ____________ illness and dashed off without a word of good-bye or a flag when you arrived.
4. Ask a sensible mother of her little boy____________ was crying for the moon.
5. Upon its head with red extended mouth and solitary eye of fire, sat the hideous beast ____________ craft had seduced me into murder.

Q3/ Match the underlined pronouns in list ( A) with their kinds in list (B). (20m)
A B 1. Little boy who was crying for the moon.
2. I am glad there is someone in the world who is quite happy.
3. I delight to have allayed your suspicious I wish you all health and little more courtesy.
4. I admit that she is domestic.
5. "I have golden bedroom" she said softly to herself.
6. His face was beautiful moonlight that the little swallow was filled with pity.  Q5/ Re-write the following sentences and replace each underlined words by its equivalent pronoun. (20m) 1. The young man had his head buried in his hands, so he did not hear the flutter of the bird's wings.
2. My sister was staying here at the rectory.
3. Why cannot you be like the Happy Prince?
4. My husband and brothers will be home directly from shooting, and they always come in this way.
5. The cat followed me down the steep stairs, and, nearly throwing me headlong, exasperated me to madness.
6. The eyes of the Happy Prince were filled with tears.
7. The King is there himself in his painted coffin.
8. Bring me the two most precious things in the city.

9.
A beautiful girl came out on the balcony with her lover.
10. Once again I breathed as a freeman.