Using stories in the primary classroom

Storytelling is an accepted and widely used approach in the teaching of English language
classroom. It represents a holistic approach to language teaching and learning founded on the
understanding that learners need to interact with rich, authentic examples of the foreign
language. The communicative approach enabled story to take its place in our English
classrooms, bringing the following to language learning, all of which are
supported by the use of stories:
A focus on meaning rather than medium, with an emphasis on fluency;
The information gap, where students are encouraged to use their learning to understand
authentic texts;
A focus on process rather than product;
An emphasis on negotiation rather than pre-determination;
A teacher who acts as facilitator not just instructor.
Garvie (1990) describes story as a vehicle for all that is language learning, which includes the
cognitive and affective factors. She proposes that language learning be led by story and
claims that it has an advantage over topics as it is structured. The magical thing about stories
is that they can feature in many different ways in your classrooms. They can play a major role
in your planning, as in Garvies vehicle, or they can appear occasionally, to bring a bit of
spice and excitement to a classroom, a change of routine, a new recipe. Whats important is
that
they do appear in your classes! Stories are considered essential in learning our first language:
they can also play an important role in learning another language.
1. Why use stories?
Many authors have made excellent arguments for the inclusion of stories in our English
classrooms. These arguments are not just linguistic ones, but include socio-emotional,
cognitive, cultural and aesthetic ones. Here is a list of 30 excellent reasons for using stories in
your classrooms!
Socio-affective
Children love stories!
Children are familiar with narrative conventions and listening to stories is something they are
used to doing at home and in other school contexts.
Stories help children understand their world and share it with others, often forging links
between home and school.
Storytelling has predictable routines with predictable formats providing children with
pointers, which encourage participation. This promotes a positive attitude towards the
language that they are learning and enhances their motivation.
Stories provide for shared social experiences. Children laugh together, are happy and sad
together, shout and sing together. This helps build childrens confidence and encourages
social and emotional development.

Cognitive
Stories link with other curriculum areas, providing for continuity in learning.
English is seen as a medium for language learning, stories support this by focussing on
content not language.
Stories in L1 or L2 are processed using the same cognitive strategies. Picture books are
particularly helpful, as the illustrations support these cognitive processes.
Stories develop childrens learning strategies: listening for general meaning; predicting;
guessing meaning; hypothesising.
Stories develop different types of intelligences that contribute to language learning, in
particular emotional intelligence.
Stories exercise the imagination! Children become involved in the story, identifying with the
characters, interpreting the narrative and illustrations. This imaginative experience helps
develop their personal creative powers.
Stories develop higher level thinking skills, as children are encouraged to verbalise thought
when discussing the stories.
Picture books in particular stimulate children to create meaning using the two forms of text,
the visual and the verbal.
Linguistic
Stories provide a natural and relevant context for exposure to language.
Reading picture books to children has been investigated in positively promoting vocabulary
development in children.
Picture books expose children to rich, authentic language, which they otherwise would not
encounter.
The story visuals, the storytellers voice, mime and gesture all support meaning, and enable
children to develop their listening and concentration skills.
Children listen with purpose to find meaning. In doing so, they are motivated to listen for
more and understand more.
Listening to stories helps children become aware of the rhythm, intonation and pronunciation
of the language.
Many stories naturally provide for repetition and cumulative activities. This allows children
to participate by repeating large sections of narrative to join in as they are repeated in the
story.
Children enjoy listening and re-listening to stories. This recurring activity also allows for
children to participate in the storytelling activity by repeating large sections of narrative. This
is essentially a drill / pattern practice but in a meaningful context.
Stories provide opportunities for integrating the four language skills, listening and reading,
followed by speaking and writing.
If selected appropriately, the language in stories should be a little above the level of normal
production/understanding, which allows for Krashens acquisition-based methodology (input
+1 theory).

Stories add variety to a language course and can be used to create whole units of work that
constitute mini syllabuses.
Listening to stories helps children become storytellers. By exposing children to different
types of story they are able to recreate their own stories using ideas and formats they have
heard and seen in class.
Cultural
Stories often address universal themes, which allow children to think about issues that are
important to them, playing with ideas and feelings and promoting empathy.
Stories reflect the culture of their authors and illustrators, this allows for opportunities for
presenting cultural information and cross-cultural comparison. This is particularly true for
picture books.
Traditional stories, which the children are already familiar with, can be enjoyed with ease in
English. In some cases the stories might vary slightly and a teacher can discuss the cultural
aspects of traditional stories in both languages.
Aesthetic
Picture books promote visual literacy: children develop skills in picture reading, decoding the
visuals and not just the words.
Picture books expose children to diverse styles of design and illustration, which contribute to
developing their understanding and appreciation of art.
Why use literature?

There are many more good reasons for using literature in the classroom. Here are a few:
Literature is authentic material. It is good to expose learners to this source of
unmodified language in the classroom because they skills they acquire in dealing with
difficult or unknown language can be used outside the class.
Literature encourages interaction. Literary texts are often rich is multiple layers of
meaning, and can be effectively mined for discussions and sharing feelings or
opinions.
Literature expands language awareness. Asking learners to examine sophisticated or
non standard examples of language (which can occur in literary texts) makes them
more aware of the norms of language use (Widdowson, 1975 quoted by Lazar 1993).
Literature educates the whole person. By examining values in literary texts, teachers
encourage learners to develop attitudes towards them. These values and attitudes
relate to the world outside the classroom.
Literature is motivating. Literature holds high status in many cultures and countries.
For this reason, students can feel a real sense of achievement at understanding a piece

of highly respected literature. Also, literature is often more interesting than the texts
found in coursebooks.
Different models of teaching literature in class

There have been different models suggested on the teaching of literature to ESL/EFL students
(Carter & Long, Lazar). How the teacher will use a literary text depends on the model they
choose.
The cultural model views a literary text as a product. This means that it is treated as a source
of information about the target culture. It is the most traditional approach, often used in
university courses on literature. The cultural model will examine the social, political and
historical background to a text, literary movements and genres. There is no specific language
work done on a text. This approach tends to be quite teacher-centred.
The language model aims to be more learner-centred. As learners proceed through a text, they
pay attention to the way language is used. They come to grips with the meaning and increase
their general awareness of English. Within this model of studying literature, the teacher can
choose to focus on general grammar and vocabulary (in the same way that these are presented
in coursebooks for example) or use stylistic analysis. Stylistic analysis involves the close
study of the linguistic features of the text to enable students to make meaningful
interpretations of the text it aims to help learners read and study literature more
competently.
The personal growth model is also a process-based approach and tries to be more
learner-centred. This model encourages learners to draw on their own opinions, feelings and
personal experiences. It aims for interaction between the text and the reader in English,
helping make the language more memorable. Learners are encouraged to make the text their
own. This model recognises the immense power that literature can have to move people and
attempts to use that in the classroom.

Enjoying literature with teens and young adults in the English language class
Literature in English Language Teaching

Why should ELT practitioners be concerned with literature if, as it is often claimed, it has
little practical application, is often closely connected with a specific cultural context, and it
can be idiosyncratic, even subversive? It is our contention that, although often considered
drawbacks, these features of literary discourse can make valuable contributions to language
acquisition.
Most textbooks aimed at the teaching of English for international communication prioritise
referential language: language which communicates at only one level, usually in terms of
information being sought or given, or of a social situation being handled (McRae, 1991: 3).
Learners are taught how to communicate in international contexts through language meant to
be as culturally neutral as possible. But once they have gone beyond that survival level,
once they need to express their own meanings and interpret other peoples beyond the merely
instrumental, representational language is needed. By representational language we mean
language which, in order that its meaning potential be decoded by a receiver, engages the
imagination of that receiver Where referential language informs, representational language
involves (McRae, 1991: 3).
It is here that literature has an important role to play. As Henry Widdowson put it in an
interview published by the ELT Journal in 1983: "In conventional discourse you can
anticipate, you can take shortcuts... Now you can't do that with literature... because you've got
to find the evidence, as it were, which is representative of some new reality. So with literary
discourse the actual procedures for making sense are much more in evidence. You've got to
employ interpretation procedures in a way which isn't required of you in the normal reading
process. If
you want to develop these procedural abilities to make sense of discourse, then literature has
a place..." (in Brumfit and Carter, 1985).
Such training in deciphering discourse is a crucial factor in the development of language
learning abilities. The use of texts characterised by their literariness or, to use McRae's
terminology, by the use of representational language as opposed to a purely referential one,
can help ELT students succeed in this respect: The idea that literature is not relevant to
learners is easily quashed. Natural curiosity about the world, and about any text to be read,
means that a learner is always willing to make some attempt to bridge the relevance gap
which the teacher may fear separates the learner and the text... The relevance gap is bridged
by identification of (if not necessarily with) different ways of seeing the world, and the range
of ways of expressing such a vision." (McRae, 1991: 55)
In short, literature, whether canonical or not, can make positive contributions to the language
class in that
- it can be motivating and thought-provoking
- it provides meaningful (and memorable) contexts for new vocabulary and structures, thus
encouraging language acquisition and expanding students language awareness
- it can help develop students procedural abilities to interpret discourse
- it provides access to new socio-cultural meanings, offering opportunities for the
development of cultural awareness

- it stimulates the imagination, as well as critical and personal response, thus contributing to
the major aim of educating the whole person
However, teachers of teenagers and young adults often complain that their students read very
little and reject literature both as class materials and entertainment. But while a
long-established text-centered canon dominates the teaching of literature, a parallel system
develops side-by-side with school literature and its restrictions and prejudices as to what can
or should be read (Bombini, 1989). This literary system has its own laws of production,
reception and distribution, its own criteria as to what should be included or excluded. In it,
the concepts of "text" and "reading" are stretched to include not only texts of
non-conventional circulation (underground magazines, the production of adolescent writers)
but also graffiti, comics, computer games, blogs, V-logs, urban legends on the net, interactive
hypertext novels
So if young people do read, and they very often read in English, how can we take advantage
of this world of texts to develop language awareness and reading strategies? And how can we
motivate our young students to come into contact with a whole world of creative texts they
may not even be aware of?

Ferradas, Claudia. "Enjoying Literature with Teens and Young Adults in the English
Language Class." BritLit: USING LITERATURE IN EFL CLASSROOMS (2009): 27-28.
Web.
Mourao, Sandie. "Using Stories in the Primary Classroom." BritLit: USING LITERATURE
IN EFL CLASSROOMS (2009): 17-19. Web.

Websites

https://www.raz-kids.com/
Students develop reading skills most efficiently when instruction, practice, and assessment
are blended and informed by data. Raz-Plus is a blended learning platform that combines
teacher-led whole-class and small-group instruction with technology-enabled resources for
personalized reading practice. All resources are accessible online and available in printable,
projectable, and digital formats to strengthen the connection between what is being taught
and what students independently practice.
Deliver standards-aligned reading instruction with more than 50,000 resources that
develop key 21st century skills.
Personalize reading practice with more than 3,000 developmentally appropriate
leveled books and additional reading resources available in printable, projectable,
online, and mobile formats.
Build comprehension skills and strategies with lesson plans, activity sheets, and
quizzes that accompany each leveled book.
Inform instruction with online, data-driven reports that show individual and
class-wide activity and performance.

http://storyline.com/
McLean Media blends multimedia and technology to tell stories in engaging new ways,
specializing in products and presentations for museums, publishers, and children of all ages.
The website is currently busy with an upgrade.
http://www.magickeys.com/books/
Created in 1996, Children's Storybooks Online was given a 4-Star rating by NetGuide's Best
of the Web in 1997. Since then it has been featured twice in Yahoo Magazine (4 Stars out of
5) and has been mirrored on CD-Rom by Classroom Connect and distributed in schools in the
United States. It was also selected by the Australian WebMaster Project as one of the "Best
Educational Sites in the World" 1998 and mirrored on their CD-Rom distributed to schools
throughout Australia. In 1998 it was included in PCNovice's Guide to the Web, The 2500
Best Sites.
There are original stories with color illustrations for young children as well as older children
and young adults. Children's Storybooks Online seeks to combine education and
entertainment to amuse and engage children's imaginations. There are riddles, mazes,
coloring book pages and a page with children's links that have won Children's Storybooks
Online Award for excellence.
Presently there are 26 stories. The first story to be included on the site was The Littlest
Knight which took Carol Moore two years to illustrate. It made its debut on the web courtesy
of her husband Chris, the webmaster. In 1996 Carol contacted Lea McAndrews for
permission to include her story Round Bird, at that time one of only a few children's stories
on the web that was illustrated. The next stories added were Buzzy Bee, Kitty Wants a Box,
Wumpalump, and Loomploy. Shortly thereafter Valerie Hardin and Rolando Merino
contacted Children's Storybooks Online to add their stories. Duncan Wells' story, Absulum
the Reindeer Elf, debuted in January 2000 and Sniffy & Fluffy Have An Adventure by
Aimee Bruneau and Taylour Damion was added later that year.
2003 added five stories. Mr. Coyote Meets Mr. Snail and Shooflies, by Storie-Jean Agapith,
a native American Indian, and Wolstencroft the Bear by Karen Lewis. Carol Moore has also
added The Master Artist and Second Thoughts.
Authors on Children's Storybooks Online retain all copyrights to their own written and
illustrated material.
http://mightybook.com/
Where children learn to read with stories, songs, games, cartoons, comics and more.
MightyBook is the perfect place for children who enjoy books, music, art, games and puzzles.
Youll find hundreds of original stories and songs, plus scores of classic books, poems and
childrens songs. Everything is illustrated, animated and read out loud. Complete lesson plans
and quizzes are included with many of the books and songs. You can sample a few of them
on our free pages. Hundreds more are available to subscribers, with no advertising.
http://stonesoup.com/
Stone Soup is a periodical by young writers and artists founded in 1973 by William Rubel
and Gerry Mandel, who continue to run the organization today. We incorporated as a

501(c)(3) nonprofit called the Childrens Art Foundation. The purpose is to encourage
childrens creativity. For the past forty years the primary work has been to inspire young
writers by publishing the best work by their peers. They have published over ten-thousand
pages of writing and art by children. A great deal of that trove published on our website. As
we move from print to a digital platform we are in the process of broadening our focus on
childrens creativity to include music, composition, dance, and filmmaking.
The Childrens Art Foundation has had a long standing interest in childrens art. In the late
1970s we began collecting art by children around the world. With more than 1,000 high
quality works of art by children from 36 countries, the Childrens Art Foundations collection
is one of the finest childrens art collections. We offer a growing selection of prints from the
collection in the Stone Soup Store.

storiesfromtheweb.org
Stories from the Web is a great place for children and young people to read, write and play. It
is all about books, stories and creative writing.
It has the following sections:

Writing gallery

Art gallery

Book awards

SFTW blog
Teaching literature in the EFL/ESL classroom (useful site)
http://literaturetoteachenglish.blogspot.com.ar/

This blog provides some useful links that can help teachers to teach literature in the
classroom using stories, rhymes and songs. There are charts that includes the name of the
website, the link and a brief description about what can be found there. Here there is an
example about what teachers can find in the blog.
Useful links to teach literature in the classroom using stories:

Name
of
website

Link

365
ESL
Short
Stories

http://www.eslfast.com/

English
as a
Second
Langua
ge

http://www.rong-chang.com/

Description

A Free Site for Intermediate ESL/EFL

Learners
Short stories with listening tracks (online).
Different exercise for ESL/EFL Teachers
about each short story, such as: vocabulary,
Yes/ No questions, crosswords.

Beginners:

English for Children (1): 100 short

stories (50 words each), simple present
tense, + audio & Exercises.
http://www.rong-chang.com/easykids/
nglish for Children (2): 125 Short
E
Stories + Audio & Exercises.
http://www.rong-chang.com/children/

uper Easy Reading for ESL/EFL

S
Beginners: 100 short stories (50 words
each), simple present tense, + Audio &
Exercises.
http://www.rong-chang.com/nnse/

 asy Reading for ESL/EFL

E
Beginners (1) -- 200 Short Stories +
Audio & Exercises.
http://www.rong-chang.com/nse/

asy Reading for ESL/EFL

E
Beginners (2) -- 200 Short Stories +
Audio & Exercises.
http://www.rong-chang.com/ne/

For Intermediate Learners

nglish for ESL/EFL
E
Intermediate Learners (1): 265 Short
Stories + Audio & Exercises.
http://www.rong-chang.com/eslread/index.htm

nglish for ESL/EFL

E
Intermediate Learners (2): 100 Short
Stories + Audio & Exercises + 53
Extra Stories.
http://www.rong-chang.com/qa2/index.html

hort Stories from New York

S
City: 300+ stories (150 words each) +
Audio, at www.eslyes.com
http://www.eslyes.com/nyc/contents.htm

Short
Stories
For
Kids
(British
Council
)

Literat
ure
collectio
n

http://learnenglishkids.britishc
ouncil.org/en/short-stories

In this website you can listen and read short

stories for kids.
You can also see the Stories playlist on
YouTube for videos of our most popular short
stories for kids at
http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=17
E353040E588A05

http://www.literaturecollection
.com/

The website offers free literature from famous

authors. You can search the literature
collection by author or book.

It offers more than 70 books and 600 short

stories in the online literature library and they
add new literature classics daily.

CLASS
IC
SHOR
T
STORI
ES

The
English
Library

http://www.world-english.org/
stories.htm

The website includes complete short stories by

some of the very best classic writers. All
stories are complete and unabridged. Read
them online or print them.
One new story is added to the site every
month. All stories are in the public domain
and copyright free. The readings are open in a
Word Document.

http://www.englishlibrary.org/

The website is an online source for the written

word in English. Most of the content is made
up of older works of English literature now in
the public domain and free of copyright. The
free online source for the written word in
English:
Classic Literature (such as Lorna
Doone)http://www.englishlibrary.org/l
iterature.html
Childrens Books
Short Stories
http://www.englishlibrary.org/stories.h
tml
Poetry
http://www.englishlibrary.org/poetry.h
tml
Online Dictionary
http://dictionary.cambridge.org/
New writing
http://www.englishlibrary.org/new_wri
ting.html

World
of Tales

Fables
and
Fairy
tales

http://www.worldoftales.com/

Stories for children, folktales, fairy tales and

fables from around the world

http://www.kidsgen.com/fables Contains one of the best collection of free

_and_fairytales/
fairy tales with pictures, for kids, from the
house of KidsGen, The New Age Kids Site.