elt and storytelling

Pearson ELT Professional Development

TWENTY

Nick Dawson


ELT and Storytelling

By Mario Herrera

Although storytelling is as old as humanity, contemporary storytelling has increasingly been used to achieve educational objectives. As stories and language go hand-in-hand, there’s no better-set scenario to enrich with them, than the world of language learning. They provide teachers with countless instruments to expose students to practicing narrative, covering all kinds of strategies and skills, from simple descriptions of what students see, to the application of more complex cognitive processes needed to express the emotions touched, or the imagination awakened.

It is fair to say that storytelling is probably one of the best instruments available to English language teachers, and yet possibly one of the least used. Teachers who might see it as a one-direction process and therefore not worthy of our cognitive times, fail to see its broader reach into the interaction, reactions and emotions it elicits, as for every storyteller, there are many story-listeners likely to react. In times when communication objectives have broadened and now call for oral presentations, storytelling is a unique jewel that can give variety and develop more interest and knowledge of the language.

When it comes to cognitive skills, storytelling follow-up activities have proven to dig deep into emotions, connections with students’ lives, and most importantly, their creativity. No story should really end with “The End,” as there are so many easy activities students will find appealing and that can serve for language development purposes. One of the best educational benefits of storytelling is that as long as teachers are capable of keeping all students up to speed in terms of meaning, students’ linguistic and communication responses can be accepted at all levels, from simple smiles that show understanding, written compositions showing interpretations, to incredibly well drawn pictures that illustrate the story. Storytelling also has a lot of compensation and empowering potential. As it can be linked to practically every form of linguistic and communication manifestations, students with deficiencies in some areas, can shine in others, giving them the emotional balance and security

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required to help them keep the sense of belonging and satisfy their emotional need of showing achievement.

Comic strips as stories to read, tell and work with.

In ELT, stories provide a tool to transfer language knowledge into a social context, which is otherwise not available. In recent months, I have been experimenting with short stories presented in the form of comic strips, as an example of using new language in a fun context, that appeals to children and at the same time serves the purposes of engaging students and streaming their reactions towards language learning activities. The results are very promising. These are stories children want to read and work with… and it shows on how they react!

What makes a comic strip worthy of ELT?

Comic strips are an effective format for breaking down large chunks of information into easily understood groupings that can be used as a learning tool. Different panels are used to express different moments or situations of a story, supporting learners in their comprehension process. Action is portrayed in each panel, but it flows from one to the other, allowing students to sense the passage of time and a connection of the story through the panels.

There are lots of different ways to use comic strips in class for storytelling purposes. They could be used with the text they already have, or students could write simple dialogue between the characters to tell a story of their authoring. Students could think of a good joke, or a story they heard, and illustrate it. Other strips could be used to create interviews with famous people from history or characters that are already part of the book units students are using in their English class. They can also recreate scenes from classic stories using their own words, even if limited, and give those classics a more down-to-earth feeling.

The following comic strip comes from my new ELT series for children, Big English. Pearson Education will publish it in early 2013. The models are 6-picture, cartoon-character comic strips, with language presented in two dimensions: Speech bubbles containing dialogues, and a concluding sentence for each picture, carrying the summary of the story. Both language features could stand alone, and serve the purpose of narrating in a funny way what the pictures show, but at the same time, both complement each other, giving the narrative a more comprehensive


reach. With this double feature, comes a great amount of potential for language learning activities that can span through the different prior knowledge levels that students could have.

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Turning al ELT lesson into storytelling

For this comic strip to become an ELT lesson and storytelling at the same time, teachers must follow the cognitive methodology steps we are now accustomed to plus add a bit of Assessment for Learning, which is a new hot term in ELT methodology:

Warm-up

After showing the students a cardboard clock set to the time the teacher wakes up, he/she can invite students to come change the clock to show the time they wake up in the morning, and perhaps joke a bit about the fact that they all wake up before school. Students could be invited to make a list of the things they do before school, other than waking up, such get dressed, brush their teeth, etc. They can write such activities on index cards and mix them up and pass them on to a partner, challenging them to put them back in order, by asking questions such as “Do you get dressed before or after you brush your teeth?”

Involve

Students must understand the objective of the lesson, so they should listen to and read it, answer question about it, and discuss related ideas, by looking at the pictures in the story frames.

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Monitor

The idea is to make sure students understand the meaning of the language being used, and they got the gist of the story, and the essence of the comic strip’s fun involved, even if they have to go frame by frame. Teachers ask questions to check for understanding using complete sentences, not just the language involved in the story. This is what makes learning possible. It’s not about social interaction language, but about the language needed for all the information transactions involved. Therefore, we must include procedure instructions such as “Look at frame 2, what is Brenda doing?” “Look at frame 6, what happens?” etc. We are not to just read the story text, but discuss and analyze the story frames using language that students can understand, or that one can get its meaning across in the teaching circumstances we have at the moment.

Tell the story to the students:

“Brenda has many things to do”

“Brenda’s clock says 7:15. She is making a list of things she has to do before school”

“Brenda is thinking. Her sister comes in her room.” etc.

Assist

We can replay the audio as necessary. Pause after each frame and use simple language to explain unfamiliar words. Play only the characters’ words without the story narration, and have the students repeat assigned characters, and later do it in pairs.

Students will be ready to show their comprehension:

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Challenge

We should remind students that Brenda’s clock was not working. We should ask “How can you tell if a clock has the right time?

Students will be ready for some more challenging questions:

21st Century Skills connection

Once you have your students at this stage, it’s tempting to take on other extensions, such as incorporating a couple of 21st Century Skills activities (in this case, for Social Studies.) We can ask: What time does school begin? What happens if you are late? We should point out that it’s important to be on time. Everyone can work together when students arrive on time. Getting to school late can cause problems to other students.

Taking the story to the next level of storytelling

Students can interview one another about what they have to do before school, asking questions such as: Do you have to walk the dog before school? Do you have to eat breakfast before school? Do you have to do homework before school? It might be useful if they take notes, or even register the answers they get in a chart. They can later tell the class what their classmates have to do before school, such as feeding their pets, etc.

In the end, they can tell and retell their own story or someone else’s by narrating it, and including any anecdotal events they could have remembered about themselves, family members, or learned about their classmates. Students can later draw a comic strip showing specific moments of the routine chosen, and after retelling it to other classmates by pointing at each frame, all comic strips can be exhibited on a class or school bulletin board, for others to see and read. Students can ask other

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classes to read and retell their comic strips, as a way of making sure they have been able to convey the right meaning. The important thing is that students realize that stories can be told or read, and that their choice of words is just as important as their drawings, to make sure the story portrays the message intended.

When students are the storytellers

Because comic strips are very visual they allow a variety of effects and options for students who can’t use expensive media to “show” a story, such as when they want to represent non-realistic elements. They can “go wild” with concepts just by drawing at any quality level, without having to worry about costs, and still make it look “cool.” As long as they can draw it, any concept can be shown. Their imagination is the limit!

About the author: Mario Herrera is an ELT author and an International

Educational Consultant for Pearson Education Global Division. He is a

curriculum advisor for several Ministries of Education and does extensive

teacher training throughout the world. He has authored or co‐authored several

worldwide bestselling series such as Pockets for preprimary and Backpack for

elementary schools. Pearson Education will publish his new series Big English in

January 2013. To learn more about his projects and teacher training tours, visit

www.pearsonelt.com or email him at [email protected]. You may

also follow him on Twitter @marioELT

http://www.pearsonelt.com/

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elt and storytelling

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