Three members of the International English Center (IEC) teaching staff, Constance Davis, Michelle Raese, and Thomas Germain, collaborated on a special project focusing on using storytelling in the ESL classroom. This collaboration resulted in our participating in two rewarding professional development opportunities: the 10th Annual English USA Professional Development Conference on January 18-19, 2018 and the Literacy Coalition of Colorado Volunteer Training on February 24, 2018.
Storytelling Project
Our team became interested in using the medium of storytelling to help take our students’ English skills to the next level after reading and sharing Guy Allen’s article, “Language, Power, and Consciousness,” (2007) in which he shares his experience of teaching Effective Writing at the University of Toronto and details his research into how student writing improved as his teaching approach shifted. The article highlights the benefits of using personal narratives to help students develop proficiency in academic writing.
Connie Davis’ Oral Communication through Storytelling
In the summer of 2017, I taught the Oral Communication through Storytelling course for the Au Pair program at the IEC. Carolyn Allen, Special Programs Manager, outlined the curriculum and provided key materials, including Allen’s article. I adapted some of the ideas presented in Allen’s article and paired them with other resources for the Au Pair classes. When I applied these ideas in the course, I witnessed wonderful communion among the students as they shared their stories. Their focus and intention were evident as they developed written and oral content and refined mechanics to polish and prepare their personal stories for class presentations. Based on that experience, I shared Allen’s ‘Effective Writing’ with IEC professors, Michelle Raese and Tom Germain, so we could further explore the medium of story and the benefits of using storytelling in the classroom.
Guy Allen’s ‘Effective Writing’ course findings
In 1979, Guy Allen took over teaching a course at the University of Toronto for the Dean of Humanities. The course, ‘Effective Writing,’ ultimately pushed Allen to dramatically change his approach to teaching academic writing. What Allen observed over the next three years was that while students could meet the requirements of the writing course, their experience of writing was alienating; it produced no original meaning and caused students to feel like they had to fake meaning to belong or succeed. Allen longed for change — what could he give the students through the writing course, and how could he bring this change about? What would help students engage with writing and take them to the next level? For Allen, the answer was storytelling — engaging the students in writing personal narrative essays, in which they had the responsibility to be the makers of meaning and rely on their own authority. Allen observed and began to research the results of changing the focus of the course from the expository essay to the narrative essay. Over time, he found that his students’ acquired writing skills transferred more successfully to other contexts. His students became better writers and achieved higher grades on written assignments in their other university courses. In addition, they felt greater self-confidence and more awareness of language overall.
English USA Professional Development Conference
For the presentation at the English USA Professional Development Conference, held in Monterrey, California, our team chose to highlight various research that supports the use of stories, and especially personal narratives, in the classroom. The following excerpts outline several key concepts.
Why Use Stories
In Storybuilding, Jane Sprio (2006) explores the natural attraction of stories and the benefits of using stories for both communicating ideas and creating meaningful contexts for learning. Stories are part of adults' as well as children's lives. We use them to help us understand the world and our own perspectives. We interact with informal oral stories such as sharing confidences with friends as well as with formal written stories that take months or years to develop and may even win literary prizes. Both contain the same quality of making us feel (Spiro, 2006). Spiro suggests the many ways that readers or listeners may connect to stories.
"Stories make us read or listen on because through them we experience suspense or surprise, excitement, fear and its resolution, empathy with main characters, insights into our own lives and beliefs, the fantastic or the impossible" (Spiro, p. 5).
Such connections highlight the potential for stories and storytelling to support the development of critical thinking skills as well as awareness of purpose, audience, and rhetorical style. Students may learn to be more flexible or adaptable in the way that they communicate their ideas.
"Stories practice different kinds of language such as descriptions, dialogues, cause and effect, arguments, letters, diaries, and recipes. They are meant to be shared with others, so voice and audience are inherent considerations" (Spiro, p. 6).
Additionally, through creating and experiencing stories, leaners may also develop an appreciation for the story as an effective communication tool.
"Sometimes we can think about real life more clearly by keeping a certain distance from it, by allowing ourselves to follow ideas or dreams, rather than being hooked to the details of real life. Fables and myths are fantastical and often surreal, but they can often answer questions about the real world better than realistic stories do" (Spiro, p. 8).
Research suggests that storytelling develops language for writing across diverse groups of learners, including special education students, second language learners and gifted students (Sasser & Zorena, 1991; McKamey, 1991; Houston et al., 1991).
The Meaning Problem
In his article, “Language power and consciousness: A writing experiment at the University of Toronto,” Allen (2007) notices that when students are learning to write academically, they attempt to reproduce specialized language that sounds academic. When they do this, they "substitute for and prevent genuine communication".
"The real problem lies in the students' habit of generating language that fakes a relationship to meaning. Writing in the academic setting easily becomes the negation of meaning, correct form filled with very nearly nothing. This writing expresses, clearly and unintentionally, the students' alienation from meaning" (Allen, 2007).
Allen suggests that with personal essays, "We choose meaning and are responsible for the meaning we make." (2007).
Dialogue
Although stories often include dialogue between characters, they also generate dialogue between the storyteller and the audience. This is especially true when an interesting, meaningful story is told in an engaging way. In his famous work, Pedagogy of the Oppressed, Paolo Freire stresses the importance of authentic communication – perhaps the type of engaging discourse which arises from stories and storytelling:
"… dialogue cannot be reduced to the act of “depositing” ideas in another, nor can it become a simple exchange of ideas to be “consumed” by the discussants” (Freire, p. 70).
“Only dialogue, which requires critical thinking, is also capable of generating critical thinking. Without dialogue there is no communication, and without communication there can be no true education” (Freire, pp. 73-74).
Literacy Coalition of Colorado Volunteer Training Workshop
For our team’s presentation at the Literacy Coalition of Colorado Volunteer Training, we revised and adapted our previous presentation content into a workshop format to conform to the structure of the event.
Connie Davis’ ‘Strip Story’ Activity
In the strip story activity, students work in pairs or groups to arrange the sentence strips of a short fable into the correct sequence. Students then offer their ideas about what the moral of the story is and discuss each other's ideas. Next, students think about a personal connection they have to one of the morals of the story. This could be an event in their lives, a memory of someone else in their family, etc., but a direct personal experience is best. Students share their connections with their group members. Optional: Students can later write up the accounts of their connections.
Michelle Raese’s ‘Proverb to Story’ Activity
In the ‘Proverb to Story’ activity, the class discusses any pre-knowledge of proverbs and share proverbs from their own cultures. Students then look at a list of proverbs from around the world and think about the meanings. Finally, students choose a proverb from the list or use one of their own to write a short story that illustrates the meaning of the proverb. In addition, proverbs can be related to the summarization of an idea, and afterwards, used to work in reverse from the summary to a story.
Michelle Raese’s “Story-Telling and Re-Telling” Activity
The "Story-Telling and Re-Telling" activity strengthens the use of topic specific vocabulary, for example, overpopulation. For this activity, pre-selected photos from magazines are provided to students to choose for their groups. Students individually select a photo for the group and arrange the photos in a specific order, using them to create a story that ties all the images together. One member of each group is responsible for telling the story to a different group. Students must be careful listeners to re-tell the story, and they must think about how to accurately use vocabulary. This activity can be adapted to fit various levels.
Tom Germain’s ‘Front Door: An Imaginary Journey’
The "Front Door: An Imaginary Journey" activity from the Story Arts website is an impromptu speaking exercise in which a storyteller and listener imagine that they are standing at the storyteller's front door. The storyteller explains in detail how the listener can enter the home and venture through familiar spaces – down hallways and through various rooms - to ultimately find and retrieve a "special treasure" that is hidden somewhere within. Since everyone knows the layout of his or her home quite well, the primary content of the story is also well known. The hidden treasure adds interest and an element of fun. To make the activity more interactive, the listener can be tasked to use clarification questions and rejoinders. Additionally, the listener can be challenged to retell the story, and the original teller can provide clarification and corrective feedback.
Tom Germain’s PACE: Teaching Grammar through Storytelling
The "PACE: Teaching Grammar through Storytelling" activity from an article on the TESOL Connections site by Randa Taftaf entitled "PACE: Teaching Grammar through Storytelling” presents an interactive, learner-centered lesson framework for teaching grammar. The acronym PACE stands for the stages of the lesson: Interactive Presentation, Attention, Co-Construction, and Extension.
In the first, interactive presentation stage, the target grammar is presented through the telling of a fairy tale or other widely known story; for example, The Three Little Pigs, can be used to highlight comparative and superlative forms. First, the story is told with the support of visuals via PowerPoint or another medium. The printed slides of the PowerPoint are then given to pairs or groups of learners who then collaborate to arrange the images in the correct order of the story they just heard. To complete the first stage, they retell the story of one of the slides.
In the second stage, Attention, the target language (TL) is clearly and repeatedly highlighted in the context of excerpts from the story. The story chosen should incorporate the TL naturally and frequently so that its meaning can be grasped. This stage initiates a class discussion about the TL.
The third stage, Co-Construction, allows for a thorough class discussion of the form, meaning, and use of the TL. For example, why does the second little pig say, "I will build a stronger house than yours"? Additionally, the discussion can explore various comparative and superlative forms, for example, "Who built the weakest house?" or "Why was it weaker than the other houses?" The students can also be tasked with writing their own questions using the TL.
The fourth and final stage, Extension, has students put their new learning into practice. They retell the story from a certain character's perspective, such as the wolf's. They can also retell the story but change the ending. In this way, they not only recycle but extend what they have learned by applying it in a now familiar but also slightly new context.
Conclusion
Engaging opportunities abound for the use of stories and storytelling activities in teaching. Research such as that done by Allen and others indicates that using storytelling in the classroom helps transition learners into confident and empowered language users who collaborate in meaning making.
While recognizing the value of a process-based writing approach in our curriculum, our future perspective is to continue to interweave stories and storytelling activities into our classes in order to offer modeling and sharing of this medium and to support students’ ability to critically process their own lives and experiences and gain awareness of their import and the power of narrative. As Allen discovered, using narrative to transition to expository writing is an effective and impactful approach.
Resources
- Aiex, N. K. (1988). Storytelling: Its wide-ranging impact in the classroom. Retrieved from (ERIC Document Reproduction Service No.: ED299574).
- Allen, G. Language, Power, and Consciousness. AUTHOR Anderson, Charles M., Ed.; MacCurdy, Marian M., Ed. TITLE Writing and Healing: Toward an Informed Practice. Refiguring, 259.
- Eder, D.J. (2007). Bringing Navajo Storytelling Practices into Schools: The Importance of Maintaining Cultural Integrity. Anthropology & Education Quarterly, v38 n3 p278-296.
- Freire, P., Ramos, M. B., & Macedo, D. P. (2012). Pedagogy of the oppressed. New York: Continuum.
- Gibson, B. (September 1999). Storytelling and Retelling Activity. Internet TESL Journal Vol. V, No. 9.
- Miller, S. & Pennycuff, L. (May 2008). The Power of Story: Using Storytelling to Improve Literacy Learning. Journal of Cross-Disciplinary Perspectives in Education Vol. 1, No. 1 p36-43.
- National Council of Teachers of English: Position Statement from the Committee on Storytelling. (1992). Teaching Storytelling.
- Sasser, E. & Zorena, N. (1991). Storytelling as an adjunct of writing: Experiences with gifted students. Teaching Exceptional Children, 23(2), 44-45. Retrieved June 25, 2006, from ERIC database.
- Spiro, J. (2006). Storybuilding. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
- Taftaf, R. (February 2018). PACE: Teaching Grammar through Storytelling. TESOL Connections.
- Wallace, C. (2000). Storytelling: Reclaiming an Age-Old Wisdom for the Composition Classroom. Teaching English in the Two-Year College.