Storytelling

Still exploring the field of learning versus aquisition, today I turn to storytelling as a method of teaching. If aiming to create natural language situations within the limits of the classroom, the easiest way to start is telling a story and invite the listeners to join in and tell stories of their own.

In agreement with much SLA research and with the Norwegian curriculum, the oral storytelling tradition is a transition from listener to speaker of a language and a culture. And just as storytelling traditions have been moving from the oral to the written during the last century, I believe students might also see writing and reading as secondary to listening and speaking.

But for the children of today written tradition might have a larger role to play. The great stories of this world are now told by books and newspapers, their first meetings with new school subjects are more often than not through textbooks and quite a few of them already know the oral/written hybrids of text messaging from early childhood.

And for that matter, toddlers are familiar with posing for mobile phone cameras and image messaging the stories of their first steps into the larger community. 

It is with a certain technophobia I admit it, but a very realistic goal forEnglish teaching is to make students so interested and enthusiastic they pull out their gadgets and instant message their friends and family stories of new advances.