The Importance of Stories

Who doesn’t like a good story? Who doesn’t get home at the end of the day telling the anecdotes of the day? Who doesn’t write emails to friends telling them all the important things that happened? Stories are around us all the time, every single day. They fill our thoughts and become part of our experience. However, telling or writing stories in a foreign language is  a skill one must master and,  although the narrative is not one of the most important types of texts to work on at this level, we teachers see,  over and over again,   how difficult it still is for students at this level to show a good command of the language needed to do so. That’s why we decided to give this skill the importance it has and  work further on narrative techniques and  oral storytelling.

We started with the written word, helping students build up their knowledge on how to write a good story, giving them models and brushing up their writing skills, going over certain grammar structures  they still have problems with: time clauses and linking words, the three narrative tenses, conditional sentences, relative and participle clauses, direct and indirect speech, reporting verbs, etc,  and adding one challenge: the use of emphasis (what clauses, cleft sentences, inversion, emphatic words), which is something they will develop in the further courses to come (C1-C2.2).

We began all  this  work well before introducing the project on the series, but also  during the project, and at different stages of the project: the idea was to constantly revise this, so that the structures sank in and students gained more control over them and could use them more effectively. There were different stages: we analyzed different stories and how the use of certain structures rendered them better. They wrote in groups and individually several times before they were asked to submit their story for the competition. Feedback and corrections were given  trying to make the students aware of their problems and mistakes.

If you like storytelling, this is project for you! We hope you like it.