Thank you to International Association of Teachers of English as a Foreign Language (IATEFL) Young Learners and Teenagers Special Interest Group (YLTSIG) for organising Better Together – a free CPD conference for teachers of Young Learners and inviting me to share my thoughts.
At the International Association of Teachers of English as a Foreign Language (IATEFL) Young Learners and Teenagers Special Interest Group (YLTSIG) Web Conference, I speak about how storytelling can be used to integrate real world issues in English lessons. Read on to know more about the topic.
Watch Bhavna Gupta aka Story Aunty narrating stories on our YouTube channel @StoryLandByLearning Sutra (scroll to the bottom of the page for link). Subscribe to the channel to listen to more stories.
Scroll down to download a PDF copy of the presentation slides (with links to the story used in the presentation) and a framework/checklist that you can use to plan your 'real' English lesson.
Stories may be works of fiction, but they still fundamentally connect us to the real world. But if the real world is all around us anyway, why do we need stories? Well, why not? How did we learn our first language? You are absolutely right – by listening to it. We were exposed to it all the time. Stories were often a part of our bedtime routine. Our elders often narrated stories to put us to sleep or keep us engaged - and this is exactly how children learn a language! (No, not by sleeping but by being engaged!) If children can learn their first language through stories, what better way than stories to teach English – and more than just English. Storytelling is about asking questions – questions that explore learners’ prior knowledge of the world, questions that help them explore visual clues, questions that make them question stereotypes, and most importantly questions that make them pause and ponder and ask questions of those around them and of themselves too – the perfect way to then lead them into them thinking about real-world social issues. Isn’t that the nicest way to create change? Let’s catch them young!
Educators/parents can watch the session recording below.
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