Making Stories with Little Language
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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Why should children make stories?
But they have very little English!
Practically! What can children DO if they have only a few words and phrases?
Half full or half empty?
One word stories
Two word stories
List stories
Making a list story come alive with art!
Some ways of supporting the children when they are making stories
Underlying craft of story making
Starting points to get them going
No starting points
Pictures: their pictures
Pictures: magazine, data bank, photocopiable book
Objects
Music
Characters and problems
Written form of the text?
Publish or perform?
Further reading
Websites
- Many children only come alive if they can play and create.
- Making stories is a wonderful opportunity to use all the language the children have.
- When using the language for purposes which matter to them the children experience
language instead of studying it.
- Stories always lead to communication: telling, listening, reading and writing.
- Making and sharing stories leads to bonding between participants.
- Stories guide us so, surely, it is wise to help children to be storymakers, not only
receivers, if we want them to be independent thinkers.
- They know they have little English and so it is particularly motivating for them to
realise that they have made something which did not exist before with the little English
they have!
- It is so natural for children to make things with very little. A cardboard box can become
a house, a lorry, a ship, a classroom, a secret cave.
It might be a good idea, at this point, to expand on my meanings related to the word, ‘story’.
By ‘story’ I mean anything belonging to the world of stories. You may be thinking of a story as a sustained bit of writing composed of well formed sentences and making use of language in precise and expressive terms developing and presenting complicated plots.
A single word can belong to the ‘world of story’ as much as a smear of cadmium yellow can belong to the world of art. A phrase or a brief dialogue can belong to the ‘world of story’ as much as a small sketch can belong the world of art, for example, Rembrandt’s sketches.
When we work with children we can rejoice that our cup is brimmingly half full or despair if we feel that our cup is echoingly half empty. I am putting forward ideas in this article which arise from the first perception.
Recipe:
Take one word and add a sprinkling of art.
- Say Hello in five different ways.
- Draw five pictures which illustrate five different ways of saying Hello in five different
situations.
Take a noun, for example, cat. Choose a word to go with cat guided by form and by content, for example, ‘fat cat’. The words sound good together and they are beginning to create an image of a particular cat.
Who was the, ‘Iron Lady’? I put this question to about 600 teachers in Kuala Lumpur last year and about one third of them knew it was Mrs Thatcher. Those two words, combined together so uneasily, belong to the world of story, living on in the mind even about things we may prefer to forget.
A sprinkling of art in verbal form: alliteration, rhyme, contrast of sounds, rhythm, soft and hard sounds, repetition, etc.
A sprinkling of art in content: creating particular images, heightening, emphasising, even exaggerating to create memorable individuals, places and incidents. Roahl Dahl was brilliant at exaggeration!
Obviously, if the children use three words or ten words…the same idea of using art (drawing, drama, music, etc.) to create engaging language forms and creating engaging particular content.
We can tell a story just with a list of words!
Girl. Mother. Basket. Grandmother. Forest….Need I add to the list?
OK! I know it is not as rich as the story expressed with a full range of English! But, wouldn’t you be pleased…wouldn’t the children feel pleased if they managed to do this?
Quick! Pick up that cup of yours which is brimmingly half full! Rejoice!
The brilliant thing about ‘list stories’ is that the children can include in the list, phrases or even full sentences.
If you can record the stories through writing and/or recording they can be used to entertain the children in future classes but can also be used as markers of development. A year later the same children can be invited to re-compose their story with all the new language they have learned.
Add a sprinkling of art (in this case, drama)!
Child A: Man.
Child B: (staggers into the classroom, arms wrapped about his bent body, mouth open and shaking.)
Child A: Hungry.
Child B: (gasping weakly) I’m hungry.
Etc.
The story has got me gripped just writing it down this far!
Questions
The best way of supporting children is to ask questions…open questions…which stimulate but do not direct.
If they are stuck you can give suggestions but only if you give a huge number and then they have the possibility of choice. What’s the weather like? Is it hot? Is it cold? Is the sun shining? Is it foggy? Is it windy? Is it snowing? Is there a storm?
Texts
Some teachers offer gapped text stories. I feel comfortable about these IF the children are invited to put any ideas/words in the gaps rather than trying to guess what is the correct word to put in the gap. In this way thirty children produce thirty stories.
Some teachers give the children skeleton stories which the children then fill out with all the detail they can muster.
Through your questions and through your response to their ideas the children can develop their craft of storymaking which I consider to be:
- Particularising: creating a feeling of individual people, places, incidents, etc. A ‘thin
girl’ is more imaginable than a ‘girl’. Additional information makes her even more
imaginable. (Particularisation does not apply so much to stories written in fairy tale
genre.)
- Desires and difficulties: the protagonist wants something but has difficulty in getting it.
No difficulties…no story! In practice there must be a succession of mini desires and
difficulties in order to sustain interest in the story).
- Struggle: the protagonist struggles to achieve what he or she wants.
- Resolution: there must be an ending…it can be happy or sad.
All of the starting points below can be responded to with single words, short phrases or lists. They can be put together by you into a flowing story (providing you do NOT add your ideas but strictly concentrate on putting their ideas into full sentences.) Or they can be left at single words and short phrases.
Children don’t necessarily need a starting stimulus. Your questions might be enough. Who do you want in your story? Where are they at the beginning of the story? What are they doing? Etc.
For example, five children at the board. The class counts slowly to ten. The children draw whatever they can in ten seconds. The five pictures illustrate the story which is to be created.
Magazines are full of pictures…so are the Internet data banks and don’t forget my, ‘1000 Pictures for Teachers to Copy’, published by Pearson!
Copy a random selection of pictures. The children arrange the pictures into an order for a story. They create the story.
For example, the children bring in their animals, cars, houses, etc. The children play and create a story as they play. They can record what they say.
Play music with a CD (You can tell the children that the music is the background music to a film which they are going to see in their minds. Keep pausing. Ask who is in the story? Where are they? What are they doing? What are they thinking?
Play the next bit of music…just a second or two and pause again and continue to ask questions. (One of the only times when it is authentic to use the present continuous to talk about the present!)
Choose a main protagonist…Who do you want in your story? Tell me all about him/her. What does he/she want? What is the problem? Create the place, the antagonists, the incidents and drama through your questioning being careful to minimise or exclude your own contributions so they feel that it is their story.
You will decide what to do. My own instincts are to offer the written form of their story even at the pre-reading stage (if there is one). But this is a question which is separate from the basic idea of ‘making stories with children with little English.’
It is an extraordinary privilege to be present with children when their story is completed. They know they have made something which did not exist before. Rejoice in this! Speak with respect about it! And then, what more could you say but, ‘What a pity to let the story just disappear! We must put it (them) into a book…onto the school website. We can have an exhibition of the book(s) in the school lobby…director’s office…local bookshop…And your parents can have a copy and the neighbours! We can send a copy to the twin school.
If the children know their work will be published you don’t have to tell them to make a good job! Just keep referring to all the people who are going to see it! In this way you become a co-author, a reader, an editor, an agent and not a receiver.
If you would like to follow up these ideas with more ideas then have a look at:
Andrew Wright. (1997) Creating Stories with Children. OUP. (Ways of helping children to make stories)
Andrew Wright. (2009 new edition) Storytelling with Children. OUP. (Major revision of first edition ways of helping children to respond to stories)
Andrew Wright and David A. Hill. (2009) Writing Stories. Helbling Languages. (Ideas for writing stories for older children.)
www.andrewarticlesandstories.wordpress.com
www.teachertraining.hu
Please check the English for Primary Teachers course at Pilgrims website.
Please check the Methodology and Language for Primary Teachers course at Pilgrims website.
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