Teach English in Tonghua Zhen - Yuncheng Shi

Stories. From a young age, virtually every child hears stories. From folktales to novels to family anecdotes, stories are a large part of language learning in nearly every culture. As such, it is only natural that stories be a large part of teaching English as a foreign language to children. Not only is it a familiar form of language acquisition, but it keeps learning varied and fun—if done well. Here I will discuss several ideas I have of ways to incorporate storytelling into the classroom. Required reading for school is almost never fun: I recall disliking books in school that I otherwise would have enjoyed, simply due to the fact that they were something I had to do. Having to take notes and tests on said books just deepened my distaste for them. So is there any way around this? I believe reading in class is one way to solve this—although the classic “popcorn style” can suck any fun out of it for many children. Let’s say the teacher reads to the students, then; how can we ensure they stay engaged and don’t simply doze off? I believe the use of gamebooks might solve all these problems simultaneously. As a merging of both game and story, gamebooks allow children to learn English through storytelling while also participating in the interactive portion. Let’s take the Fighting Fantasy series, for example. These books present a kind of role-playing scenario, in which the reader goes on an adventure and must make frequent choices to progress. The teacher would read to the students, who would then make decisions along the way. This could be done by calling on students and having them form a sentence describing what they would like to do. Or it could be done as a poll, allowing the entire class to vote on the outcome of these choices. Key information for solving puzzles could be written on the board, and all students would work together to figure it out. Reading is all well and good, but what about the creative aspect? Many children abhor the idea of reading a story, but would love to come up with one of their own. Again, though, this joy can often be stifled when used in typical school scenarios: “Write about a favorite vacation memory. Make sure you have an introduction, body, and conclusion!” I doubt many children would feel inspired upon reading a prompt like this. So how do we solve this problem? A kind of “continue the story” game might work well here. Again, we return to the theme of combining games and storytelling. In this scenario, one student would speak a sentence that could open up a story. For example, “It was a dark and stormy night,” to use a somewhat cliché line. The next student would then say the next sentence of the story. This would continue through all the students, until the story ends or the teacher decides to cut things off. What make this activity so entertaining is that every student has their own expectations of what the story should be, so it ends of being a kind of patchwork quilt of ideas that usually turns out to be quite hilarious. As discussed earlier, children grow up with all manner of stories. Every child has their own favorite, whether it’s from their parents, an actual experience, or even a video game. And everyone enjoys sharing that favorite story with others. So for another activity, students could share their favorite story with the class. Having them write about it is treading into dangerously “school-ish” territory, so it may be better to have them simply tell it off the cuff. Or, if the teacher desires a more in-depth assignment, each student could give a presentation in which they help the rest of the class imagine their stories. This could include pictures, objects related to the story, or even acting events out. Giving children creative freedom is key so that this feels less like an assignment and more like a fun activity. These are just a few ideas I have for bringing stories into the classroom. As you can see, there are countless fun and unique ways of teaching English to children through storytelling—and just as many boring and typical ways of doing it. I think the important point here is to keep as far away from classic “school” as possible. Stories need to be enjoyed, as they are at home, rather than dreaded school assignments. Bringing this familiar language teaching method over to English as a foreign language will hopefully be both effective and pleasurable for young learners.