ONCE   UPON  THE  LANGUAGE  CLASSROOM

 

ELT story telling started  meekly, slowly with me and grew gradually, steadily and passionately. I guess the reason this happened to me, a teacher of English and director of studies, is the communication bridges that stories effortless built between me and the students. Stories simply lay the ground for exchange of feelings, wisdom, fun, knowledge and binding. They offered a social and educational experience in a relaxed atmosphere.  I have now trained myself to see stories everywhere and stories are to me the language of the spirit which connects the world to me,  ignites my imagination and  gives me creative force as I speak or think in stories.

 

We all know that stories  started  from cave drawings  and oral tales, found themselves in  handwritten scripts, then moved  to printed books from where they found themselves in films, televisions, tablets and smartphones. Stories are anything but static.  Who doubts that stories are the perfect medium to pass on a message?  It is not a coincidence that Homer, Jesus Christ, Shakeaspeare and more recently Walt Disney or Richard Branson, and so many more, have passed their messages through stories. Now, business executives  get  training on  how to spin compelling narratives about their products to get more clients on their side. And we have Facebook and Snapshot and Instagram stories. And people are waking to the fact that every logo, every picture, every word, every person, every incident has a story to tell. 

 

The purpose behind the ELT Story telling site is to  help sow the Story Telling seeds in our language classrooms and  to get students to story devise, story tell, story act and story present. My hope is that more teachers will be inspired to use the story telling tool and have students not only on the receiving but on the production end too. In my opinion, storytelling and language learning go hand in hand.  We just have to acknowledge a natural given: our genetic predisposition for stories. As a species we are addicted to story.  When we are young we are drenched in make believe. Then, as grown ups  and while we are on a task, we catch  our minds  wandering  in make-believe lands.  When our minds are not tied to a mentally demanding task, we daydream and weave  stories. For example, when driving, cooking, or brushing our teeth our minds escape and spin stories in our mind’s  theater.  At night when our bodies are resting, our minds  wander off  into fancy lands and in our dreams, they simulate, script and screen night stories. So if story listening, reading, watching, devising and  telling is so powerful why not harness it in our teaching?

 

THE  POWER  OF   A  STORY

 Stories, whether delivered through films, books or video games activate our  neural pathways. Fictional stimuli fire at our neurons. Is it not true that when we hear “once upon a time” we can’t resist  entering this “other” world? Why are we absorbed with films so much?  Why are we showered with emotions and treat  fake things as real?  Why is it that we are engrossed with totally unrealistic movies  and far fetched storylines? Why is it that some people watch a James Bond film, for example, and become so entranced with its totally unrealistic story that they rush to buy the suit James was wearing and spend sth. like 2.000   euros on it and still be thrilled? And why are we so eager to consume literature? According to  Eno Belinga’s Ted talk, what happens is that our brain is flooded with neurotransmitters and hormones, -serotonin, dopamine, endorphins, oxytocin-,  the angel’s cocktail,  as he calls it. The fact that each story gives us a cliffhanger and leaves us expectant of what will happen, make us willing to bond and infuses us with  empathy.  

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WHAT  WE  TEACHERS  KNOW    

• We know that in real life we use stories to bring people together, to convey  meanings,  to guide  in the labyrinth we call life, to  allow relationships to become visible, to feel accepted, to  please ourselves or others, to deceive oneself or others,  to pass on stories which have educated so many human beings before us and which, we have received.

• We also know that we use stories for entertainment, to escape but also to erase fears and anxieties and heal  traumas. Stories feed our mind and have the amazing ability to mold our thinking and behavior through the messages they convey. We also know that stories lend us somebody else’s eyes, body and voice and represent those who have disappeared, are absent or have been forgotten.

• We also know that the way we listen to a story and see the messages hidden in it changes over time. Just like an onion, a story has many layers. As the story unfolds, the layers of its meanings come forth and its metaphors, and symbols  surface too. Stories  enable us to represent ideas or  pass on non-transferable truths and in many  little doses, they affect our personalities.

• And we teachers know that some of these uses can be passed onto our classes. We could get students to reflect on  a story and its meaning, to predict the ending, to listen for the gist or particular detail, to imagine how the protagonist may feel, to send a message to the protagonist, to swap and share stories and so take part in collaborative learning.

• And we know that we could do these because stories take us, listeners on a transformative journey, strike the chords of our hearts, waken our feelings, involve our whole being and   allow us to escape from mundane reality into different worlds which we could not have  approached otherwise. As Andre Klein, author, put it, stories do not just help us reach educational objectives and culture from the outside; they are actually helping us experience them from the inside. 

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WHAT   WE   TEACHERS  FEAR

So why do we neglect this teaching  tool which is a powerful addition to our teaching arsenal?  Is it because we think we are not going to be good at it? That we are not gifted or skilled enough to effectively communicate stories and that we lack the dramatic, highly polished style of story tellers? Is it that we do not have the material to introduce and to use  the story telling tool in our teaching? Is it that our teaching schedules are forbiddingly tight?

Let me address the first question. Of course, teachers are not story tellers; but why should they be?  The worthy job of a story teller is different from that of ours. It just happens that we use a tool which is expertly employed by story tellers. We also use the computer a lot, but this does not make us IT professionals. So, fearing that we are not story tellers should not deter are for embracing  the tool.  Of course, if we are averse to the whole idea, we do not try it. The truth of the matter is that one can not be pushed into a direction which is totally foreign to him. What will work is to bring one’s passion in the classroom because the key to success is passion. And we all have different passions. But we need to remember that our success as educators has to do with our attitude towards teaching, our handling of the students and our approach to the content matter. So if we, for reasons of our own, do not see the value of the story telling with a touch of drama, we simply keep our distance. What is important is to relentlessly search for what engages students in the class and go after it. I found that stories, among other things, engage students very much.  And I have also found that the familiar oral style of a teacher is indeed effective and sounds natural. Children grow up in a world of mass media and fast and efficient digital communications and appreciate some good stories spoken with the integrity and warmth of the human voice; that of their teacher.  Told at the right time, in the right way, stories can become guides, true soul and language nourishment.

 

Now to address the second concern, that of lack of material,  I would say that yes, one needs to do serious homework picking out stories which relate to  students’ cultural background and language reality. But story material is everywhere. One just has to go looking for it. Blogs, sites like the one you are reading now, You tube clips, story telling communities, articles, books, hands on workshops, seminars  and resources help a lot. The current educational pedagogy is indeed, and rightly so, for student involvement in high energy lessons with the use of  technology too.

 

Of course, we will have to acquire an eye for the relevance storytelling has with our present generation and for how to link fantasy with the child’s real world. But this new approach will light the routine of our classrooms and equally importantly it will help us evolve as individuals. As we enter story lands we set on a journey of discovery, of unearthing hidden talents and gifts, of refreshing our social and cultural reality and coming into greater contact with nature. Searching for myths, legends, folk tales, personal or world stories to bring in our classes, will awaken our inner story teller.

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To address the third concern, that of tight schedules, I will say that we should reconsider. We will find that experimenting and being daring, adventurous and willing to tread on the story telling path means that we care more about teaching to kids and less about teaching to tests. Safe lessons are more often than not, a recipe for mediocrity. 

 

EDUCATIONAL   VALUE  OF  STORY  TELLING  IN  TEACHING

 

Let’s start by recognizing the bare fact. Teaching and story telling can meet and merge. Stories use language and it is language that we are teaching.  In our too literal society, children ought to  listen to, read, act out and discuss stories for the benefit of their language skills and not only.   Stories in the classroom are an excellent source of listening exercise, a boost for vocabulary acquisition, a consolidation opportunity for several tenses, grammatical structures and functions and a springboard for narrative writing and collaborative speaking. In a contextualized way, children can also be involved in cross curricular activities , experience a boost of language  and of their  concentration span and of their imagination.   

 

The context of the story helps the message to camp in their mind. Stories powerfully hook and hold human attention because, at a brain level, whatever is happening in a story is happening to us and not just them. When told a story children are not simply spectators. They are participants transported into a parallel universe, identifying   with the struggles of the protagonists.  Storytelling, unlike typical paper-and-pencil schoolwork addresses most of Gardner’s intelligences, brings into play the kinesthetic and spatial element  and  influence our moral logic.  So, stories shape our minds without our knowledge or consent.    All we have to do as teachers, is chose the stories that speak to us, change their shape to respond to the circumstances of the moment and craft them in a way that makes them memorable to kids and then use them in class. And remember stories shouldn’t pretend to tell the truth or else we will accuse them of lying.

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STORY  TELLING  BY  THE  STUDENTS  FOR  THE  STUDENTS.

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The idea is simple. Get students to listen to stories and this will  naturally lead to story telling. Get them to read stories and story devising, telling and acting  is not too far away.  And do this in English. Story is so central to the lives of young children that it almost  defines  them.  What do little kids do?  They do story. Pretend play is deadly serious fun for children; it is mostly about trouble and it helps them rehearse for adult life.

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So, asking students to story tell or story devise or story act is not foreign to them. If given the floor, they activate their improvisation, creativity and speaking skills. They are alert and deeply engaged and this helps them internalize language in an unconscious and effortless manner. The principle of learning through doing is at work. Students express themselves, work as a team, learn how to listen to others and their emotional, social and language development grows through the art of telling stories. The story then is difficult to forget since it is experienced  through  “primitive” pathways of learning. Of course, students need to be  initiated into the building blocks of stories and brought to  realize that  a story’s beginning  is a question or a riddle which is followed by some temporary responses and that the answer, or resolution of the dilemma comes at the end. They will need systematic encouragement to go into story creation and they will need to rely on their instinct, imagination, response making, on the spot decision ability and of course to rehearse and   practice  presenting stories to their peers and teachers.

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In short, stories can connect us with students and infuse our classroom with activities and movement. More than that, a story based lesson is engaging because learning is dressed in an excellent context that supports vocabulary and structure retention in the target language. When students get involved in story telling activities and story making, the educational objectives shown in Bloom’s taxonomy, like synthesis  and  creative thinking, are at work.  The lesson turns into a multi-modal experience which the kids will remember and talk about with their family and friends. In short Storytelling is an effective, efficient and powerful teaching tool which  motivates students and which happens to be incredibly entertaining. So, long live the story telling tool.