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Tell it Again – The Storytelling Handbook for Primary English Language Teachers Part 1: Methodology Encouraging pupils to ask you the question ●● Give a picture (of a cherry pie) to a pupil and say: ‘Ask me the question!’ If the pupil does produce the question, ‘Do you like cherry pie?’, ask her to repeat it and then the class to repeat it. Otherwise, ask the question yourself and invite the class to repeat it. Ask individual pupils to ask the question. Inviting pupils to ask other pupils the question ●● ●● ●● Give a picture (of an ice cream) to a pupil and instruct him to ask another pupil: ‘Nicholas, ask Sarah!’ Nicholas asks: ‘Sarah, do you like ice cream?’ Sarah replies, ‘Yes, I do’, or ‘No, I don’t.’ Continue in this way until you are satisfied. Next choose a picture but do not let your pupils see what it is. Invite them to guess the picture by asking: ‘Do you like salami/cheese/cherry pie?’, and so on until someone gives the word for the food item in the picture. That person keeps the card, and takes the place of the person being questioned. Afterwards pupils can play the game in pairs. When pupils are confident, they can conduct a survey such as the one described on page 89 of the story notes for The Very Hungry Caterpillar. This procedure allows a structure to be introduced and practised so pupils are well-prepared to use it subsequently in a task. Pupils move from a situation that is tightly controlled and directed by the teacher to one where they direct their own learning and are working independently of the teacher. The teacher then brings the class together to review what they have done and, if appropriate, to analyse the language. For further ideas on how to introduce and practise structures see ‘Speaking’ on page 36. Discovery grammar activities Many pupils learn their mother tongue in a fairly analytical way and are therefore well grounded in formal grammar in their own language. Primary teachers of English can capitalise on this by encouraging pupils to compare their own language with English to spot similarities and differences and attempt to work out the rules of English grammar for themselves. This approach turns grammar into a problem-solving activity where pupils consolidate knowledge of a structure that has been already introduced, or establish the structure for themselves without an explanation from the teacher. Some story notes include discovery grammar activities – see The Elephant and the Bad Baby Lesson Five (working out the use of the indefinite articles a and an). There are many other occasions when these activities could be used and you may like to devise appropriate activities yourself. Listening It is important to remember that listening to stories is not a passive activity. As children listen, they are observing the storyteller’s gestures, noticing the subtle differences in her voice, matching any visuals shown to the language they are hearing, building up their own pictures in their heads, trying to predict what comes next, guessing the meanings of new words and so on. In short, a great deal of information-processing takes place in learners’ heads. An important way of helping children to listen with understanding is to ensure they are motivated and actively involved while listening. Pupils will be able to follow a story more effectively and listen with understanding if you focus their attention on specific points they must listen out for, or if you have provided them with important background knowledge of the topic and key language. You can support your learners’ understanding further by providing different kinds of visual support or written framework, such as pictures, charts or diagrams. Here are five points to bear in mind when planning to develop listening skills. 1. Give the children confidence Make sure the children appreciate that they cannot be expected to understand every word, especially after only hearing something once or twice. You need to be clear in your own mind how much detail you think learners can process after just one chance to listen. You may decide you want them to listen out only for specific words, for example, ‘Stand up if you hear a colour word.’ Or you may want the learners just to get the gist of the storyline. In a second reading you might choose a smaller part of the story and ask the children to focus more on specific details, such as following the exact sequence of events or asking them to predict what might happen next. 2. Help the children to develop strategies for listening You also need to encourage children to use intelligent guesswork when listening. Explain that they can use strategies such as using their background knowledge to work out the meaning of new words from context, using any information from pictures, picking up clues from your gestures, facial expressions or voice. The most important listening strategies include: ●● Predicting. It is useful to encourage children to predict what they think might come next in a story. This means that they then listen to check whether their expectation matches the reality of what they hear. Many of the stories have repeating sequences that make prediction much easier. 34 Part 1: Methodology © British Council 2014
Tell it Again – The Storytelling Handbook for Primary English Language Teachers Part 1: Methodology ●● ●● ●● Inferring opinion or attitude. An awareness of stress, intonation and body language – such as facial expressions or gestures – will help the children work out if a character is angry, happy, hungry and so on. Working out the meaning from context. Although keywords might be explained or translated before the story is told, children need to be encouraged to use pictures and their general knowledge about a topic to work out the meaning of unfamiliar words. Recognising discourse patterns and markers. Words such as, ‘first’, ‘then’, ‘finally’, ‘but’, and ‘so’ give important signals about what is coming next in a story. Again, the repeated sequences of stories help the learner to predict from such discourse markers what might be coming next. 3. Think of listening as a three-stage model The teaching of listening has for many years been considered in terms of a three-stage model: before or pre-listening, while-listening and after or post-listening. See Figure 7 on page 22. ●● ●● Pre-listening. This stage is used to stimulate learners’ interest in the topic, to personalise the context and create expectations, all of which help to raise motivation for listening. At this point the teacher can highlight key background information and key language by showing the cover or pictures and asking pupils to predict what they think the story is about. Learners can also raise questions they would like answered and check the answers afterwards and so on. See also examples in Chapter 5, ‘Using multimedia’. Pre-listening activities include: ●● ●● ●● ●● ●● ●● using illustrations or mime to elicit ideas or key vocabulary encouraging prediction from the cover/illustrations asking questions to allow pupils to personalise the topic making mind maps, e.g. ‘What do we already know about…?’ ‘What do we want to find out about…?’ asking True/False questions doing simple reading activities to introduce/ practise new vocabulary, e.g. ‘Bingo!’. While-listening. This stage ensures that the children have something to do as they listen, which helps them to focus their attention and stops them becoming bored. Point 5: ‘Set a specific task’ describes a range of while-listening activities in more detail. ●● Post-listening. This stage allows the teacher to check comprehension in more detail, gives the pupils opportunities to practise any new language they have learned and enables them to use their creativity and own ideas in working on role play, re-writing stories, art and craft work and so on. 4. Explain why the children are listening Make it clear what pupils have to do while they are listening, or whether they should simply listen and enjoy. You may not always expect the pupils to produce or do something, but if you do, this must be explained. Different kinds of listening purpose are as follows. ●● ●● ●● ●● Listening to improve general listening attitude. This includes listening for enjoyment, listening to improve the concentration span, or listening to develop the memory. Various listening games to prepare pupils for listening to longer texts are useful here such as Total Physical Response (TPR), which is listening to spoken instructions and following them. For example, ‘Touch your nose and then your ear.’ Listening to develop various aspects of language. This includes listening to improve pronunciation of sounds, stress, rhythm, and intonation, as well as becoming familiar with new words and structural patterns. Listening to reinforce conceptual development. Many stories act as useful revision for reinforcing concepts already learned in the mother tongue such as colours, size, or cause and effect. Listening to interact with others. Listening is an important part of communicating with others. Follow-up activities to stories, for example, carrying out surveys in pairs or playing games in groups, require learners to negotiate meaning by listening and asking questions, checking meaning, agreeing and so on. 5. Set a specific listening task When listening to narrative or to a set of instructions, a task that asks the children to rearrange a series of pictures or put numbers by pictures describing different actions supports the child’s understanding very well because they are actively engaged in the listening process. However, if learners are asked to listen to something once, especially without visual support, and then to recall facts, they are being tested rather than taught. In order to focus on the teaching of listening you might like to experiment by using tasks from the following list that the learners complete while they are listening. Part 1: Methodology © British Council 2014 35
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