Humanising Language Teaching
Year 5; Issue 2; March 03

Story stepping stones

Ages 13 and up
Levels Intermediate-Advanced
Time 20-50 minutes, depending on the length of the stories
Focus Reading (fairly intensive), oral storytelling, listening to another's story
Materials Class sets of two stories or a class set of each half of the story

This reading-to-storytelling activity is for students who are fairly well motivated. One aim is to develop learners' ability to tell a story methodically—something which is especially important (for the listener) when a teller's pronunciation, grammar and word choice are sometimes inaccurate. (One example story is provided; you can use one of the stories given above by knocking it into paragraphs.)

Preparation

• Choose two stories (or more) and photocopy or print out a class set of each. The stories should be ones your students can read relatively easily.
• Prepare several comprehension questions for each story and make enough copies for ¼ of the students in your class. Write the answers on a separate sheet and make the same number of copies.

Procedure

1. Give half the class one story and the other half, the other story. The activity will work best later on if students with the same story are sitting next to each other at this point.
2. Ask students to read their stories silently and then circle words or short phrases (no longer than four words each) which they think they will need in telling the story—i.e., names/nouns for of all the characters, things and places; the really important verbs; and a few key adjectives and adverbs. Be fairly specific about how many items to circle, for 350 words 30-35 is usually about right. .
3. As students finish reading, ask them to write their words and phrases—in the order they occur in the story-- in a column down the centre of a sheet of A4 paper.
4. As students finish their lists, ask ones who have read the same story to form pairs. Give them your list of comprehension questions for the story and ask them to agree on the answers. They should do this orally, not in writing and tell you when they have finished.
5. Hand out the answers to the questions.
6. Ask pairs to compare their lists of words and phrases. Tell them that this is their chance to add to their lists any useful items they see on their partner's list.
7. Students who read different stories now pair up. (They need their lists.)
8. In each pair, students tell their stories as follows. Tellers must use each item in their list. When they use a word or phrase, they should cross it out. (This encourages slow, methodical, intelligible delivery.) Listeners should ask for a repetition or clarification whenever they don't understand something.
9. As pairs finish, give each student a copy of their partner's story.

Variations

• Use just one story. Half the class gets the first part, the other half the second part.
• Give the less proficient half of your class an easier, shorter story than you give to the other half.
• Students work in trios such that two less proficient students work together to tell a story to a more proficient student. The less proficient students can, for example, tell alternate paragraphs.
• If you have a student who is far better than any of the others, give her/him a third, more challenging story. This student then joins one of the pairs and listens to both stories but does not tell his or her own story. Ask the student to tell you the story one-to-one after class. (This is a good way of dividing up work if you have an odd number of students. It is also a good way to improve relations with a student with whom you haven't been getting along well but whose English is good.)
• Use just one story. For the final telling phase (Steps 6 and 7), pair your least proficient students with proficient ones. Give the less proficient ones the beginning and the end and the proficient ones the middle. This seems to encourage the proficient students to (1) listen especially intently and (2) ask more questions about what they don't understand, both of which help their partners to tell the story in a more informative way. Additionally, it seems to me that the less proficient students are able to comprehend their partners better if they themselves have already read both the beginning and the end) than if they just read just one or the other and then have to understand the missing half from oral input alone.
• Give less proficient learners a list of key words and phrases that you have prepared earlier. While other students are making lists on their own, help the less proficient students rehearse.

Seth Lindstromberg

The Princess and the Pea Hans Christian Anderson, shortened etc. by SL. (Perhaps pre-teach pea, muddy, servant, pea, mattress, lump.)

Once upon a time there was a prince who wanted to find a princess to marry. But!!…she had to be so beautiful that everyone would think, "How perfect she is!" That is what he wanted in a wife. He rode his horse twice around his father's kingdom and around all the neighboring kingdoms too in order to find a lady such as he dreamed of. Well, he met hundreds of lovely young princesses but there was always something wrong with them. True, each princess was attractive in one or two ways, but then each was also unattractive in some other way. In short, none was perfect. Not one was perfectly beautiful and not one was a perfect princess.

At last, tired and disappointed, he returned to his father and mother's palace. He was so sad about not having found a perfect princess that he locked himself in his bedroom and spoke to no one for days. Finally, late one afternoon he came out for a walk around the palace garden. The weather was absolutely terrible...and getting worse and worse. The sky grew black and the wind blew harder and harder. A heavy rain began to fall. He ran back to the palace as fast as he could but was soaked... completely wet…before he got halfway back to the palace. Without speaking to anyone he went into his bedroom, shut the door behind him and went to sleep.

Some hours later, he woke up. Someone was beating on the front door just below his window. He knew all the servants had gone to bed so he got up, went downstairs and opened the door. There, in front of him…standing in the rain, was a young woman, with muddy feet. She was completely wet and looked very unhappy. Incredibly, she said she was a princess! Unbelievable! Her wet hair lay flat on her head like an old-fashioned swimming cap and her clothes were so muddy that he could not tell what color they were. Still, she said she was a princess and so he invited her in.

The prince rang a bell to wake up the servants. Soon the hallway was filled with people. In a loud voice, his mother, the queen, gave the servants an order. "Give her a bath! Get her some clean clothes!"

While the young woman was having her bath, the prince said. "Mother, she says she is a princess!" The queen answered, "Really? Well, there's one way to find out!" She went to the kitchen and returned with a tiny pea. "Come with me", she said to her son and to a couple of servants standing nearby. They climbed three flights of stairs and walked down a long corridor to the bedroom that the young woman was going to sleep in. "Bring 20 mattresses and put them on the bed!" said the queen to the servants who then went to other bedrooms to collect the mattresses.

Meanwhile, the queen put the tiny pea on the mattress that was already on the bed the young woman was going to sleep in. The servants then piled the other 20 mattresses on top of it. Then they got a ladder and made the bed, that is, put sheets, blankets and pillows on top. They also left the ladder there so that the princess (if she was a princess) would be able to climb up into her bed.

The next morning, at breakfast, the queen asked the young woman how she had slept. "Oh!", replied the young woman, "I had an awful night. I was unbelievably tired but even so I hardly slept for five minutes the whole night! There was a giant lump, as big as a boot, right in the middle of the mattress!"

The queen smiled. The prince smiled too. It was clear that the young woman was a real princess after all because no one but a genuine princess could feel one little pea that was under 20 mattresses! And she was soooo beautiful. Naturally, there was a royal wedding soon afterwards. And everyone lived happily ever after. As for the pea, the prince put it in the royal museum.

Seth Lindstromberg