enhanced listening through storytelling by sylvia guinan

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“Most people do not listen with the intent to understand; they listen with the intent to reply.” 

Steven Covey

In English language teaching….

What is listening?

What is comprehension?

And what about self-expression?

Heart of listening

Feel &

reply

The many flavours of English• Narrators, writers and different accent from the

storytelling listening extracts.

Extract one

Russian Dolls (A)

Narrator Michael Gyori: Germany/Hawaii

Writer Sylvia Guinan

Russian Dolls (A)

Short extract

Percival Crabtree woke up feeling anxious and agitated. This wasn’t unusual. In fact, this was how he felt whenever he had nothing to worry about. Not having problems was kind of alarming. It could mean that he was losing his memory, or worse still, that the doom-filled prophets of his mind were finally on strike.

The many flavours of English• Narrators and writers, and different accents from

the storytelling listening extracts.

Extract two

Russian Dolls (B)

Narrator Sylvia Guinan: Ireland

Writer Sylvia Guinan

Russian Dolls (B)

She’s too sunny for this shady neighbourhood, and his misery loves the kind of company that no rosy cheek can ever give him”

The many flavours of English• Narrators, writers and different accents from the

storytelling listening extracts.

Extract three

How the shiny fall

Narrator Kerstin Hammes: Germany, England

Writer Kerstin Hammes

How the Shiny fall

• When I was very new, I was the darling of the whole shop.

The many flavours of English• Narrators, writers and different accents from the

storytelling listening extracts.

Extract four

Survival

Narrator Chaouki Mkaddem: Tunisia

Writer Chaouki Mkaddem

Survivor

Once upon a time there was a n old lion

The many flavours of English• Narrators, writers and different accents from the

storytelling listening extracts.

Extract five

Get a life

Narrator Jason R. Levine: United States

Writer Jason R. Levine

Get a LifeI got to know this kid when I got to junior

high

Ideas for class

• Your course book• It can actually be a

source for story inspiration.

• The main reason why course books don’t engage us is because we don’t experiment, adapt and build upon them.

• A typical course unit:VocabularyGrammarThemes/topics

• Take the words students are learning and turn them into oral or digital story telling tasks.

Digital listening activities

• For digital activities I use ClubEFL for making listening quizzes. You can make quizzes and games from audio stories, record your own voice for the quizzes or your students can make their own quizzes and share them with other children all over the world.Here are some very short stories and verses for children.

Should you tell stories in class?

What would prevent you from telling stories in class?

How is it different from using standard materials?

Here are some extra sources for stories and pronunciation practice

Britlit

Younglearners

Mario Rinvloucri

The inner workings of the storyteller’s art

Natural English

Oral listening activities Bringing life into the classroom.

Listening through social and emotional learning.

Have different kinds of informal storytelling sessions where you pick topics and share stories in small groups or whole class, while giving student specific listening instructions.This is great for linguistic and social listening and you can use this time for relationship building or discussing problems that students may have. You can also cleverly

Encourage subconscious use of target language being learnt in a natural way.

Make belief Comix

• I’m devoting a slide to this website because it bridges the gap between digital and oral story-telling and between functional and social/emotional learning.

You can use comic prompts for amazing oral story-telling activities to enhance listening in class. You can also use lots of other listening games or communication activities with make belief comix..

Listening and speaking

Listen and express

Kids can make their own comics, listen and share.

Some voice recording tools

• Audioboo• Fotobabble• Voki• Blabberize• Vocaroo• Audacity• Screenr

Some video-making tools

• Go animate• Smilebox• Eduglogster

• With eduglogster students can video record themsleves speaking about a topic on an electronic poster they design themselves. Then they all share their stories – listening and stort-telling.