The weekly column

Article 12, May 2000

ONCE UPON A STORY

By Michael Berman

We often assume we know what is best for students without bothering to find out what they really want. That is why there is a strong case to be made for having a "Round" at the end of each week - a feedback session to find out how they are feeling and what they would like more or less of. You have every right to participate in this process too and to share your own feelings with the group. After these reflections, a programme can be planned for the following week taking everyone's views into account.

A point that is likely to be raised in such a session is that the learners appreciate having the opportunity to listen to good examples of authentic English. In our attempts to reduce Teacher Talking Time, we tend to overlook this and put the emphasis on the students doing all the talking. One way of taking their wishes into account is through the use of story telling. However, this does not have to be a passive experience for the learners as hopefully the material in this article will illustrate.

Considering the fact that we regularly encounter narratives in some form in our daily lives, it is surprising that such little use is made of storytelling in most course books. For some reason it only seems to coincide with work on the past tenses.

Whenever people meet, stories are told and they have been told since time immemorial. Story-telling is an oral tradition and because of the issues which have been worked through by the telling of the stories, story-telling has contributed to the creation of the great epics of the world. The storytellers themselves have been described as the bridge to other times and ancient teachings and the telling of the stories helps to keep these teachings alive. The children of future generations learn from the storytellers and apply lessons of the stories to their own lives.

The earliest stories were probably chants or songs of praise for the natural world in pagan times. Later, dance and music accompanied stories. The storyteller would become the entertainer for the community and the historian, musician and poet too. The oral tales that were passed on from one generation to the next by word of mouth included epics, myths, parables, fables, fairy and folk tales.

The art of storytelling was particularly popular from around AD400 to 1500. Storytellers would travel around visiting markets, villages, towns and royal courts. They gathered news, swapped stories and learned regional tales in the process. When popular tales began to be printed cheaply in pamphlets known as chap-books and sold by peddlers, their popularity started to wane. With the advent of the mass media, the storyteller has unfortunately become more or less extinct

It is helpful to draw a distinction between the telling and the reading of stories. The former is much more likely to hold the attention of the audience and have a greater impact. Moreover, in the language teaching classroom, you can adapt the story to cater for the level of your students by telling it instead of reading it.

There is a strong case to be made for not pre-teaching new vocabulary when story telling unless it is absolutely essential to the enjoyment of the tale. Stories are above all for enjoyment. As teachers of English we want to exploit them for language purposes, but we must take care not to milk them dry and kill the joy. Dealing with new vocabulary as it arises, gives you the chance to present it in context, elicit its meaning, and then give the students the opportunity to transfer it to another setting. It helps to break the story up into more manageable chunks and enables you to involve the class more actively in the story-telling process. Moreover, a few words unknown to the reader can add effectiveness and local colour to a narrative.

One of the justifications for the use of storytelling in the classroom is its global nature as an activity. Students are not restricted to a narrow range of potential language as can happen with grammar-focused coursebook activities. There is the opportunity to draw upon all areas of their previous knowledge of the language as well as to experiment with new forms.

Storytelling is also an effective vehicle to deliver messages to the subconscious where the "aha's" of metaphor take place. It is our ability to make metaphorical connections that allow us to learn anything at all. When something new is like something we've done before, we take what we know from the first situation and transfer our knowledge to the new situation. Metaphor instills the learning of content or process on a very subtle, often subconscious level. When the subconscious is activated or accessed, the material enters the mind with no resistance. As a result, metaphors can affect dramatic change in an individual.

Each time you ask someone to stretch their awareness of time and space you are inducing a light state of trance and each story that starts with "once upon a time" provides an example of this.

If you're shy at the thought of reading stories aloud, try the following: Record the story and play it back for yourself, climb a hill out in the forest and read it to a tree or some kindly squirrels, or tell it to yourself in the shower or in your car. If you can tell a story rather than read it, this leaves your hands free to gesture, allows you to make eye contact with your audience and to calibrate for their responses.

WAYS OF USING STORIES IN CLASS

• Have each of the students take the part of one of the characters and re-tell the story from his/her point of view. The re-telling can be written or spoken.
• Cut up the stories into paragraphs for the students working in groups to re-order.
• Invite each of the students to write a letter to one of the characters in the story - asking for advice, praising or criticising the character.
• Spotting the difference between two pictures is a classic information gap activity which can also be used with texts. Make two different versions of an extract from the tale for this purpose and use it for the post story telling stage of the lesson.
• Have each of the students write a letter from one of the characters in the story to him/herself.
• Ask the students to reflect on what they would have done if they had been one of the characters in the tale, then to work in small groups to compare/justify their hypothetical actions.
• Invite each of the students to take the part of a character in the story, then to pair up and interview each other. They answer as the characters they're playing, not as themselves.
• Instead of providing the learners with a set of questions based on the story, invite the students to work in pairs and produce their own. They can then exchange questions with another pair and answer the questions they receive. In "Implementing The Lexical Approach" (Language Teaching Publications 1997) Michael Lewis includes an activity of this type that can be used with whatever story you tell. An adapted version of the idea is presented below:

Work in pairs. Prepare a set of questions about the story. Then exchange your questions with another pair and answer the questions you receive. Use the following frames to help you:

What did you think was the most ..... thing about the story?

Was there anything in the story that really ..... you?

According to the story, what ..... ?

What reasons are given for ..... ?

What would you have done if ..... ?

Do you agree with the ideas/suggestion that ..... ?

• As a post-reading activity, you can cut up the stories into paragraphs for the students working in groups to order. Another possibility is to omit the ending of the story when telling it to the class, then to invite the learners in groups to predict the conclusion. After listening to the various suggestions they come up with, these can be compared with the original which you can show on an overhead transparency.
• Working with fairy tales, invite the learners to rewrite the story from the bad person/character’s point of view or to change the original tale into a modern version – instead of three little bears you could have three little computer programmers, for example.
• Students listen to a story on cassette and try to describe the appearance of the speaker from the sound of their voice. You then show them a picture and they say what they got correct and where there were differences.
• Ask the students to imagine they're going to make a film version of the story. They have to cast the actors, decide on the director and perhaps make some modifications to adapt it for the big screen. They can work on this activity in groups, then present their ideas to the rest of the class.
• To ensure an attentive audience while telling a story, you can interrupt the narrative to interpolate the word shoes; and unless the learners immediately respond socks, break off the tale without finishing it! This is a distinctive storytelling convention used in certain Gypsy communities.
• Ask the learners to stand up or raise their hands when they hear a specific word or identify differences between what they hear and what is written down.
• Invite the students to work in pairs. Student A plays the part of the forgetful storyteller. Each time Student A hesitates, Student B provides the first word that pops into his/her head. Student A then adds this word to the story in a way that makes sense. The goal is to tell a complete story within a certain time limit. The roles can then be reversed.
• Go round the class and ask everyone to offer one line from a story they know. Then go round the class a second time, asking the students to add a second line to the first line from their tales. The students can then be invited to go over to the person whose lines they found the most interesting to listen to the whole story the original extract came from. It is a gentle and non-threatening way of encouraging the learners to tell tales to each other without being under the pressure of having to tell a story to the group as a whole. While the tales are being exchanged, you can circulate and make a note of any errors that crop up on an overhead transparency. This can be flashed up on the board at the end of the activity and the students can be given the opportunity to self-correct.
• One way of making use of the learners own stories is to invite students to tell you a story about themselves outside class time. Then you write up the story for them, sticking as closely as possible to the original, but making sure that it's readable and the English is correct. It is a great boost to the person's confidence to see a story of their own in correct English shared with the class. It might even be possible for the storyteller, with some prior preparation, to run the lesson in your place.
• Storytelling breaks can be provided by presenting the class with a category. Examples could be, Incredible Coincidences, The Wonders of Science, Funny & True, Embarrassing Episodes, Clean Joke of the Day, or Strange but True. Working in small circles, the learners can contribute tales based on the theme to the group. While this is taking place, you can circulate to make notes of language points that come up which can then be dealt with at the end of the session.
• Story cards can be created to facilitate storytelling too. Twenty cards can be cut out and divided into five categories - characters, events, actions, times and places. Draw a picture with a caption on each of the cards and mark the category on the back. To play the game, invite the students to choose one card from each category and then to prepare a story based on the prompts on the cards. Although games like this take a great deal of preparation, they can be recycled and are well worth the time and effort required.

Below is a story you can use in a lesson, and some activities to go with it.

Match the numbers on the left with the letters on the right to find explanations for the new vocabulary:

Long ago there was a giant who loved to kill humans, eat their flesh and drink their blood. He was especially fond of human hearts. "Unless we can get rid of this giant," the people said, "there won't be any of us left." and they called a meeting to discuss what to do.

One man said, "I think I know how to kill the monster," and he went to the place where the giant had last been seen. He lay down there and pretended to be dead.

He didn't have to wait long because soon the giant came along. Seeing the man lying there, he said: "These humans are making it easy for me. Now I don't even have to catch and kill them; they drop dead right on my doorstep!"

The giant touched the body. "Ah, good," he said, "this one's still warm and fresh. What a delicious meal he'll make!"

The giant carried the man home over his shoulder and dropped him in the middle of the floor near the fireplace. Then he realised he had no wood for the fire so went to collect some.

As soon as the monster had left, the man got up and grabbed the giant's huge knife which was hanging on a hook above the fireplace. Just then the giant's son came in, bending low to enter. He was still small as giants go and the man held the big knife to the son's throat. "Quick, tell me, where's your father's heart? Tell me or I'll slit your throat!"

The giant's son was scared and told the man everything. "My father's heart is in his left heel."

And when the giant's left foot appeared in the entrance, the man plunged the knife into his heel. The monster screamed and fell down dead.

Yet the giant still spoke. "Although you killed me and I'm dead, I'm going to keep on eating you and all the other humans in the world forever!"

"That's what you think!" replied the man. I'm going to make sure that you never eat anyone again." He cut the giant's body into pieces and burned each one in the fire. Then he took the ashes and threw them into the air.

Instantly each of the tiny particles turned into a mosquito. The cloud of ashes became a cloud of mosquitoes, and from the cloud the man heard the giant's voice laughing: "Yes, I'll eat you people until the end of time."

And as the monster spoke, the man felt a sting and a mosquito started sucking his blood. Then many mosquitoes stung him and he began to scratch himself. So although the brave man had killed the monster, the giant still had the last laugh.

NOTES FOR TEACHERS:

The story has been adapted from a Tlingit myth. The Tlingits, the northernmost of the Northwest Coast American Indian tribes, live at Craig on Prince of Wales Island in Alaska.

Pre-listening: A brainstorming session to find out how much the class already know about mosquitoes. Pin a visual up on the whiteboard and invite the learners up to the front to board associated vocabulary in the form of a spidergram with the picture in the centre.

While Listening: Now listen to the story to find out how mosquitoes came to be. While you're listening to the tale, find the answers to these questions:

a. What was the giant's favourite food?

b. Where was the giant's heart located?

c. How the giant was killed?

d. Who had the last laugh?

Post-listening: Arrange the students in groups of four to work on parallel stories.

• How Butterflies Came To Be
• How Rivers Came To Be
• How Night Came To Be
• How Women Came To Be
• How Time Came To Be
• How Thunder Came To Be

All materials © Michael Berman 2000. For more information on Michael and his writings please click here.