The act of conveying events in
words, and images, often without prior preparation is by definition an act of
storytelling. It is based in everyday life and situations as in a bar chat,
coffee with friends, or even family or friends reunions. Quasi-everybody has
his own ways of re-telling an event to his immediate audience, be it private or
public.
Storytelling, in the classroom
context, can play an influential role in enhancing speaking fluency and social
skills. It can promote a less-threatening learning environment where learners
are willing to communicate and share parts of their lives. Besides,
storytellers can be very active participators and can develop a sense of imagination
and creativity, let alone the positive effects storytelling can have on verbal
proficiency and catering for individual variations. Receptive skills,
especially listening, have their own share of the whole package of the
advantages. It simply develops a good listener and interpersonal and
intrapersonal intelligences in learners (MI Theory ²).
Everyone has some story/ anecdote
to tell: teacher and learners alike. As teachers should use their own
experience as a model, learners can develop their storytelling techniques in
the target language too; thus providing further integration (Competency
Approach) of what has been learnt about the language. This article looks at how
a teacher can develop learners’ skills as conversational storytellers following
a three-step approach. It will also consider simple and practical ways on how
to make learners active listeners.
Stage ONE: Raising awareness and
implementation
At this stage, a model lesson is
suggested to raise learners’ awareness of the benefits and importance of
storytelling as an in-class activity. It focuses also on the story’s generic
structure as suggested by Eggins and Slade (1997). Learners will integrate
learnt knowledge through a follow-up application lesson where they make use of
the generic structure aforementioned and the fluency technique known as 4-3-2
(Maurice 1983; Nation 1989; Nation and Newton 2009).
Stage TWO: Developing active
conversational listeners
In which I will look into ways,
like back-channelling and other linguistic devices, that listeners can use to
show interest and empathise with the storyteller.
Stage THREE: Ways of making
storytelling an integral part of lessons
Mini-talks or stories, not
exceeding 5 minutes, are a technique that could be used in daily lesson plans.
The technique subject of this
article is better suited for pre-intermediate or lower intermediate. Learners
at this level are well equipped with enough linguistic background that can help
them become good storytellers. The introductory lesson preferably begins with a
story drawn from the teacher’s own experience/ repertoire or any story they
judge fit for the purpose. E.g.
‘’I’ll
tell you something funny that happened to me once. It was a few years ago when
I was working a junior high school teacher. It was about the middle of April
and I was hiking in the countryside with some third-year students and a couple
of teachers. Anyway, we were walking past a rice field and suddenly I saw a
snake lying at the side of the path. So I asked some of the students, ‘’is it
dead?’’ and then one boy walked over to the snake and he kicked it. Yeah,
that’s right! He kicked it just like this (mimicking the boy’s movement) and
the snake moved its head. And then the boy turned to me &and said, ‘No,
it’s not dead’ and I … I just looked at him and said, ‘What are you doing? You
just kicked a snake. Are you crazy?’ And he just laughed. ‘Hah! Hah! Hah!’ Oh
there are some crazy people in this world, aren’t there?’’
Robert E. Jones.
(2012). Creating a storytelling classroom for a storytelling world. English
Teaching Forum, V 50, N 30, P: 3.
For practicality, teachers should
try to use up a simple story containing one event leading to some emotional
reaction such as: pleasure, frustration, satisfaction, astonishment, anger,
etc. The story should contain the five generic components of conversational
stories identified by Eggins and Slade (1997): Abstract, Orientation,
Remarkable event, Reaction, Coda/Closing. Three of these latter are a must in
every story.
1.
Abstract: an introductory
sentence or phrase that signals the start of a story, and sometimes its type.
‘’I’ll
tell you something funny that happened to me.’’
2.
Orientation: It gives necessary
background information to get hold of the story and in order to be clear and
comprehensible for the listener. It usually contains answers to concept
questions like: Who was in the event? Where? And under what circumstances?
‘’It
was a few years ago when I was working as a junior high school teacher. It was
about the middle of April and I was hiking in the countryside with some
third-year students and a couple of other teachers.’’
§ Lead questions: Who?
Where? And When?
3.
Remarkable Event: What has actually happened
in the story and it includes the section extending from ‘’Anyway, we were …’’ to ‘’No,
it’s not dead.’’
§ Lead question: What
happened?
4.
Reaction: It is the overall
reaction to the event: feeling, or action or even verbal reaction.
‘And
he just laughed – ‘’Hah! Hah! Hah!’’
§ Lead question: What
did you do? How did you feel? Has the story changed in any way?
5. Coda/
closing: This
ends the story by relating it to another event or time or place. It could state
long term effects or repercussions.
‘There
are some crazy people in this world, aren’t there?’
Although these components constitute
a perfect framework to every story building, only three of them (Orientation,
remarkable event and reaction) are central and thus a focus should be placed on
them at the presentation and implementation stages. And such a scaffold of
three components with lead questions could be used in the implementation stage
as an outline to ease the task of telling the anecdote.
Another aspect that teachers
should take care of before all is the linguistic knowledge learners must be
have, or else appropriate through practice; namely the use of appropriate
grammar and diction. One grammatical notion which is particularly crucial here,
besides the past tense, is the past continuous tense in its function of
describing the atmosphere/ background information (the where part of the story).
That is relevant to the orientation part where listeners require information to
help them have a clear picture of the story and self-guide through it. In this
respect, any activity or formal teaching of the past continuous is mostly
conducing to better building of the story as a whole; be it in the form of
restricted use practice activities, focus and clarification or even authentic
use of it. It all depends on how well students are ready.
Putting
all in action
After raising learners’
consciousness, and preparing them through language focus activities, the
teacher can start up by brainstorming and sifting topics for learners’
consideration akin to: Trips’ memories, happy childhood memories, small
accidents and misfortunes, friends’ adventures, etc. Once a topic is selected
through majority agreement, learners can use the three essential elements
outline and lead questions to plan their story.
Learners should be invited to
keep their outlines short in the form of bullet ideas rather than full fleshed
texts. The aim after all is developing their speaking fluency and not writing
skills. Upon finishing the notes making, learners can be invited to review
their notes taking into consideration the generic framework. They can use the
4-3-2 fluency technique with three partners. In that, learners take turns to
tell their stories to three different partners at three different time frames:
4’, 3’ and 2’. Although this latter could be demanding on the part of foreign
language learners, it considerably enhances speaking fluency through its time
intervals and changing tempos engendered. Likewise creativity is triggered
through the stages when learners try to reflect and reformulate their stories
while the teachers can respond to their consequent and spontaneous linguistic
needs.
The 4-3-2 technique can be used
in its purest form or be modified by allowing more time in each frame without
announcing it openly for practicality and time.
Groups, of six, in a pattern of
three facing three are to be chosen by the teacher and students’ strengths are
to be considered in the election process. Upon finishing the first time frame,
students can then rotate anti-clockwise for their next practice opportunity.
Teenagers tend to be less
self-confident in telling their personal stories and to remedy that teachers
are invited to choose carefully the themes that students can choose from and
feel confident to talk about. Gender should be taken into consideration in that
girls shy away from talking about their awkward experiences with males.
Adventures, first time at school, a friend’s anecdote where they were present,
or any topic they can tell about in an impersonal way. The teacher can even opt
for picture prompts wherefrom students can draw topics to which they feel connected,
yet they stick the topic selection to the pictures and not to their own
experience. Thus it provides them with an emotional shield that will not raise
their affective filter to the task of storytelling.
Language
Focus
After the first output students
produce using the 4 minutes time-frame, they could be introduced to a couple of
elements to enhance the quality of their stories such as: Extreme adjectives,
exclamatory sentences and direct speech. It might be vital to revise some
tenses especially the present continuous for setting the scene and the past
simple for retelling past events. A simple matching activity of a set of
adjectives and their extreme equivalents might do the job.
Extreme adjectives activity
Task 1: Match the normal
adjective with the extreme adjective.
1.
Angry
2.
Tired
3.
Funny
4.
Small
5.
Ugly
6.
Interesting
7.
Dirty
8.
Beautiful
9.
Hungry
10. Surprising
a.
Furious
b.
Gorgeous
c.
Exhausted
d.
Starving
e.
Hideous
f.
Hilarious
g.
Fascinating
h.
Astonishing
i.
Filthy
j.
Tiny
Task 2: Complete the extreme
adjectives that mean:
1.
Very
big: e………………, h……………….
2.
Very
good: f………………, w………………
3.
Very
bad: t…………………, a………………..
Exclamatory sentences activity
Task 1: choose the correct words.
1.
Someone
stole my wallet yesterday
What/
how a
nightmare!
2.
My
aunt was rushed to hospital last night
What/
how
terrible!
3.
Why
don’t we organise an end of term party?
What/
how a
great idea!
4.
My
mobile keeps ringing every time I start my work.
What/
how
strange.
5.
My
parents are going to pay for my holiday.
What/
how
wonderful.
Conclusion
Turning storytelling from a
fugazi to a concrete experience is no hard of a task. It might confuse students
to deal with the structure and how to integrate it in a story; yet the 2-3-4
technique is meant to make their tries more precise every time. It all comes
down to how a teacher engages his students and motivates them through the
framework suggested.
References
Robert E. Jones. (2012). Creating a storytelling classroom for a
storytelling world. English Teaching Forum, V 50, N 30, P: 3.
Eggins, S. and D. Slade. 1997. Analysing casual conversation. London:
Cassell.
Maurice, K. 1983. The fluency
workshop. TESOL Newsletter 17 (4):
29.
McCarthy, M. 1991. Discourse analysis for language teachers.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Nation, I. S. P. 1989. Improving
speaking fluency. System 17 (3):
377-84.
Slade, D. 1986. Teaching casual
conversations to adult ESL learners. Prospect
2 (1): 68-87.
Thornbury, S., and D. Slade.
2006. Conversation: from description to
pedagogy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Tim Falla and Paul A Davies.
2008. Solutions: Intermediate Level.
Oxford: Oxford University Press.
