Stories in Language Teaching
Andrew Wright, Hungary
Andrew Wright lives in Godollo, Hungary, near Budapest. Andrew and his wife Julia run a private language school in Godollo and Budapest doing mainly company teaching. Julia is the director of the company. Andrew spends most of his time writing books and travelling in order to work with teachers. Andrew’s books include: ‘Games for Language Learning’. CUP, ‘Creating Stories with Children’. OUP, ‘1000 Pictures for Teachers to Copy’. Longman Pearson, ‘Writing Stories’. Helbling Languages. E-mail:andrew@ili.hu, www.andrewarticlesandstories.wordpress.com
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First of all...stories in our lives
Stories in language teaching
Four skills
Fluency
Recycling
Introducing 'new' language
Educational responsibility
Motivation
Performing and publishing
Sense of achievement
Social sharing and bonding
Activities arising
Feedback from students
Summary
Further reading
I was staying with my family for our holiday in Whitby which is on the North East coast of England...about half way up on the right. Most famously it is the town which Captain Cook sailed from on his voyages of discovery. I went out on to the pier to look for my son Tom who was ten at the time. It was a dark, moonless night but the stars were bright. I found Tom, in the darkness, lying in a nest of ropes, at the end of the pier. He was lying on his back looking up at the sky.
- 'Tom! What are you doing?'
- 'I am looking at the stars and trembling.'
- 'Why are you trembling?'
- 'Because there are so many of them and they are so far away.'
I seem to remember being told that there are more stars in the universe than there are grains of sand on every beach and in every desert in the world. Infinite complexity is enough to make anyone tremble!
Our only way of coping with complexity is to look for patterns and to find them whether they are there or not. The Great Bear or the Plough, as I was brought up to call it, is a pattern of seven stars which most people can identify. If you take the distance between the two stars on the right of the pattern and multiply their distance by five you find the North Star.
As a child, standing on the same pier in Whitby, I was quite able to recognise the shape of the plough with its long curving handle and its rectangular blade, which my mother pointed out to me. And yet the stars do not lie flat on a piece of paper like a drawing! For example, the two on the right are separated by 40,000 light years in their distance from us. But I found it reassuring that I could look at the night sky,
so full of stars, and find something which I could recognise.
We need to find patterns. We need to find things we can recognise. We
need to name. We need to tell stories. Curiously, and very usefully, the North Star does consistently show us where north is and in this way offers us practical help in finding our way, obviously more significant in the past than in the present day.
Less obviously, the stories we make to help us to cope with complexity also give us guidance. The values, perceptions and behaviours featured in stories act like a 'story map' helping us to feel we understand what is happening around us, helping us to make judgements and to take action. If we have the right story map for our circumstances then we are healthily helped! Big trouble when our story map does not fit our circumstances!
All my life I was an athlete, a mountain runner until I was 56. Then, my arteries narrowed and a few minutes pedalling on the 'computer bicycle' showed the doctor that I had problems: angina. I remember he wouldn't let me get off the bicycle until I had taken a pill. I looked at the pill in my hand and thought, 'But this is a mistake. I am an athlete. It is my mother who takes pills.'
My story map was out of date, it showed me as an athlete, and that meant that I could run but I couldn't. A short trot of twenty metres was enough to finish me off. It took me a few months to revise my story map.
Everybody, without exception, needs to search for patterns of meaning, needs to name, needs to tell stories. And given it is so important to get the stories right, if they are to be used to guide us, then it is a pre-requisite for the happiness of the individual and of society that we each have the right story map.
Before I leave this overview of the centrality of stories and storying in our lives let me please sketch out some examples chosen to demonstrate that we are not just talking about helping little children to develop but about the centrality of stories in human society.
The most powerful man in the world, faced with infinite complexity, couldn't cope, and fell back on the simplest kind of storytelling for guidance. Who was it who said, 'We are going to hunt 'em down and smoke 'em out!' 'You are either for us or against us.' 'The axis of evil.'?
George W. Bush, guided by the most simplistic story map one can imagine, piloted the world into complexity, arguably into even greater and more destructive complexity, than before. All senior politicians and world leaders employ 'spin doctors' whose job it is to find good stories about their employers and bad stories about their opponents. They are often willing to omit key information and even create 'new' information in order to give as good an impression as possible. Storytelling counts so much in politics.
The newsreaders on CNN and BBC constantly refer to 'the top stories today are...', 'the breaking story'. The news, does not merely inform, it affects our story maps, it affects what actually happens. The stories from Vietnam stopped the war.
There are so many examples of the centrality of storying one could take. Let me give just one more. Stephen Denning, responsible for Africa, at the World Bank, found that no matter how carefully analytical he was and no matter how rationally he presented his information it had very little actual effect. He, eventually, after a lifetime of belief in the superiority of analysis, accepted that without storying, analysis was communicatively impotent. He found that by giving examples of individuals and their individual situations he was able to move his listeners in a way that careful analysis and smart power point lectures could not.
And storying is going on every night in television soap operas, adverts, talent shows, rags to riches films, Face to Face, blogs, twittering, social networks and so on. And the language teachers on ‘my’ IATEFL YL discussion list? Predominantly, stories from experiences rather than an exchange of research information.
Given the centrality of stories in society. Given our constant need for stories. Given that words play a key role in storytelling. Given that we want to find motivation and language in our language teaching classrooms then, surely, stories should be central and not be peripheral to language teaching and learning?
My daughter Timi, (Timea is Hungarian and British) studied German for 5 years and was never asked to write or tell a story. Bizarre!
Now for part two
...
How should I sequence all the points about stories in language teaching when they are so often experienced, together, holistically? Don't look for too much significance in my sequencing!
Bonding
There is no better way of bringing students and the teacher closer together than through the sharing of stories.
Experiencing language and not just studying it
The students want to hear stories and sometimes want to tell them. In doing so they experience the story through the language rather than merely studying the language. The are involved emotionally rather than intellectually.
Making and responding to stories makes use of the four basic skills: reading, listening, speaking and writing. It also integrates these skills; each one has its own role.
If you do not make accuracy a key element (see below) then there is no better way of developing fluency, than storying. Fluency for me means being able to make use of all the language you've got with the purpose of communicating meanings rather than avoiding grammatical errors.
What better way can you find of getting the students to make use of all of the language they have previously learned?
Introducing language new to the student has traditionally been done through texts including stories. This technique is well established. But how important it is for the student to care about the story and in this way 'experience' the language instead of merely responding to it analytically...as something to learn and regurgitate when required to do so...that notion is less traditional.
If it is the case that stories make us who we are and if it is the case that you feel that teachers share the responsibility with families and others for helping children to develop then it follows that teachers have a shared responsibility to make stories central to their language teaching. If your notion of development is to help the child to be discriminatory, to be able to respond to stories thoughtfully, to be able to find their own path in life fulfilling their personal needs and helping to create a harmonious society then you will help the child to respond to the stories thoughtfully and you will help the child to be not only a receiver of stories but a story maker.
If you are working with adults this notion does not apply, in my opinion.
The first part of my argument (Part one in this paper) for stories demonstrates, I trust, that we all need stories. The motivation is there to a greater or lesser extent in all students. You can lose this motivation. If you use stories first of all as a way of teaching English and checking on the students grasp of grammar then you will kill the goose that lays the golden egg.
May I suggest that you do not mark student story texts for accuracy, ever? Use the texts as a thermometer for your own teaching. Have I managed to help them master the present perfect yet or not? No? I wonder what sort of 'present perfect focus' activity I could do to help them to feel more confident in using it correctly?
My son, Tom, when he was eleven and had just started in secondary school, told me, 'There is something you learn at school: The less you do the less mistakes you can make.' The motivation is there unless your response is not to the story but to accuracy in the use of the language.
If it is the case that you actually care about their stories then how can you think of keeping them all for yourself! In a real story class the students do not make the stories for you but for themselves and 'the world'! I strongly suggest that you frequently perform or publish all the stories. In this sense your relationship is no longer that of an 'accuracy obsessed employer' but as initiator, guide, editor and agent.
Performing and publishing, encourages the students to do their best and encourages them to communicate i.e. to think about the reader.
Am I being clear?
Am I likely to engage my reader's interest?
To have created something which did not exist before is magical.
If you are an initiator, encourager, guide, editor and agent then the work on stories develops closer and more positive relationships in class than in a more traditional class where the relationship is based on: teach, learn, regurgitate, test.
Many activities can arise naturally from storying. In my book, 'Storytelling with Children', published by Oxford University Press, I described about 100 different kinds of activity which can be done with most stories. This paper and the plenary talk on which it is based is not a vehicle for going through these many activities. Better see the book!
Please allow me to add a wonderful bit of feedback from a student in a college in Switzerland.
‘All my life I have tried to learn what teachers have asked me to learn. In the story writing workshop with Andrew I opened doors in myself I did not know were there.'
And from a mother in Klagenfurt
'Are you the man who is working in the local school on stories? I want to tell you something. It has been difficult to wake up my son and get him off for school all his life. This week, working with you, he has been setting his alarm clock 45 minutes early so he can get to school and work with his group on the book they are doing with you.'
And from a group of students in Linz
- 'Here's our story book! Its a present for you!'
- 'But when I left you this morning you had no more English lessons!
When did you do it?'
- 'No problem! We did it in other teachers lessons!'
You can practically live on stories!
Wright, A. (2009 Second edition). Storytelling with Children.. Oxford University Press.
Wright, A. (1997) .Creating Stories with Children.. Oxford University Press.
Wright, A. and Hill, D.A. (2009). Writing Stories. Helbling Languages
Please check the Creative Methodology for the Classroom course at Pilgrims website.
Please check the Methodology and Language for Primary Teachers course at Pilgrims website.
Please check the Methodology and Language for Secondary Teachers course at Pilgrims website.
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