STORYTELLING with young
children in EFL
Sophie Ioannou-Georgiou
sophiecy@yahoo.com
Επιμόρφωση για τα Νέα Αναλυτικά Παιδαγωγικό Ινστιτούτο Κύπρου
2010/2011
“Why stories?”
Stories are:
• motivating for children.
• Interesting and enjoyable.
• a rich source of language and experiences.
• a source of natural, authentic language
Stories offer:
• a connection to the children’s life and interests
• language in meaningful contexts
• multiple possibilities for activities involving multimodality
• Insights into the culture of the author/s
• a structure/plot that can be followed and often a natural repetition
of vocabulary and structures.
• opportunities for developing reading/listening skills
• a way to develop children’s attention spans
• a way to develop a lifelong love for reading and books
So children…
• want to listen (motivation)
• listen with a purpose and become involved in
meaningful communication)
• develop learning strategies (not all is understandable,
searching for meaning, predicting and guessing
strategies).
• become aware of the general “feel “ and sound of the
L2.
• develop general learning (issues/topics linked to other
curriculum subjects), cognitive skills and creative
thinking
How to choose a story
• A story should always be suitable to the interests
and developmental level of the child.
• For younger learners a story should have:
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a clear storyline
plenty of repetition
helpful illustrations
opportunities for joining in
at a level where children can understand most of it (with
appropriate help)
– linked with a topic you are working on (curriculum)
How to choose a story
• For older learners, a story should be:
– at an appropriate language level
– related to the students’ interests and age
– when possible linked to other topics/subjects of the
curriculum
• either offer subject content, or
• be suitable as a springboard for subject-content work
How to tell a story
• Decide if you will tell or read the story.
• Decide if you will modify the language
and how
• Prepare
• Act out the story
• Find opportunities for students to join in
Storytelling … a process
Usually there are 3 stages in storytelling:
• Pre-storytelling stage
(to prepare the students to follow the story)
• While-storytelling stage
(to engage students in the storytelling process)
• After storytelling stage
(expanding the story to further creative activities,
consolidating/evaluating understanding)
Some ideas for pre-storytelling activities:
• Pre-storytelling for younger learners
– Pre-teach key vocabulary
– Use a song connected with the theme
– Introduce and talk about the main characters
• Pre-storytelling for older learners
– Give words or phrases from the story for children to
guess what it is about
– Show pictures from the story and have students guess
what the story is about
– Give title and students guess story
– Give part of the story and students predict the story
– Give gapped summary ands students have to create the
story
Some ideas for while-storytelling activities:
• While-storytelling for younger learners
– students hold up pictures of objects or characters when
these are mentioned in the story
– join in the story
– asked to guess what comes next
– sequence pictures
• While-storytelling for older learners
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hold up words when these are mentioned
sequence sentences
joining in the story
predicting what’s to follow
taking notes
Some ideas for after-storytelling activities:
• After-storytelling for younger learners
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draw a picture of a favourite scene
make a class book of the story
act out the story
learn the story in the form of a chant
• After-storytelling for older learners
– Make their own story
– Create their own ending or make other changes to the
story
– Complete worksheets about the story
– Create posters about the story
– Put a class play about the story
– Carry out an investigation into similar stories/ the
characters or countries in the story / etc