Teaching English Through Stories

Everyone in the world likes stories. Children learn their language through stories. We watch movies, which are stories. Stories taught to language students are good for growing teaching vocabulary. If the stories are fun,  funny and filled have a surprise in them, children and adults are more apt to think of class as fun, and  not boring  or mundane. I  know. I  have used story techniques in  most of my English and Spanish classes.

Some things I  do when I teach stories:


I prepare a list of maybe 5 new words to use in my story that I plan on teaching. Before the students see the story, there are a lot of pre-story activities to  prepare them. Mime is very good for teaching story vocabulary. I try to make sure  that  each word has a  hand gesture or body movement  that represents the meaning of the word. I  act out the words through gestures  and have the students do the same. Then, I show list of the words on  the board, white board, wall, or computer screen. We  practice the meaning, and have a few simple questions  and answers to  correspond with the words. I may have a game or two to test language acquisition. I teach so the student acquire  language, and not memorize words.  That  is why acting  out vocabulary is so important. In  all languages people use  body language and hand gestures to  accompany verbal outputs.

Next, I  have the students divide a paper each is given, into squares. In each square the students  have to draw a picture  of the  word. For example, if  the word is tree. They draw a picture of a  tree. If there  is a word phrase that I am teaching,  for  example, "The bird flew into the tree," the students draw that representation in one square. It is all fun. Nobody has to be an  artist or good at drawing. I may give worksheets so the students can get more practice in reading key words and phrases from the story.  I also use worksheets to review vocabulary from prior stories. Each story I teach reviews vocabulary from prior stories, so nothing is out in the cold, on the spot with no connection to prior lessons.

Now,  it is story time. I  first act out  the story using the gestures that I taught them. After I go through the story three times,  I act out  with  the class, all together.  Then,  I call on  a couple to act out or have the class act out in pairs. Pair work is  my preference instead of calling on students on the spot. This is not  always a good idea. After everyone  has a chance  to  practice acting out  the story, they actually practice narrating the story, and having  others act out their  narration. There are  different ways  of changing  the course  of  activities in this state of  activation.  I may have pieces of paper with different  sentences in a basket,  and the  students have to take out the pieces of paper and put the sentences together in the correct order of the story. I am  looking  for main ideas in the story, not perfect word  for word order.

I allow students to  narrate and create their own version of the story after they have had  a chance to acquire the vocabulary, and main ideas of the story.  This is very fun for the students as it is time for them to be the  storytellers. They can use any words they know and mix them around  as long  as they use the new words as well. Sometimes,  they may get tired of bored of mime, so they can use props instead.

I may or may not have a testing phase. I could  write out the  story on paper, with errors, or mix up the sentences, and the students have to put the sentences in correct order, or correct spelling, or verb noun relationships. I  am always asking questions about prior stories as review of vocabulary. As the students learn the new story, I begin to ask questions about the story to check that they have acquired  the vocabulary. There are other ways I  test too. I keep a directory of gestures, and test them  by presenting  the gesture, while the  students write down on their paper or computer screen, the word that corresponds to the gesture. I may give a matching test. One side of the paper, screen or board, has a list of meanings, and the other side a list of the words including prior story words.

It is important that the students  know the meaning of every word  in the story before we move on to the next  story.

There are other things that go into place in all of this. This is a brief presentation of how I  teach stories for language acquisition. The main point of teaching a story is to engage, and activate the  students with new vocabulary, and to allow  practice with older vocabulary.