GENIAL STORYTALE PRESENTATION

How to teach literature

Yaritza Bucardo Carolina Fonseca María José Jiménez

Short Story

• There is no maximum length, but the average short story is 1,000 to 7,500 words, with some outliers reaching 10,000 or 15,000 words.
• A piece of fiction shorter than 1,000 words is considered a “short short story” or “flash fiction”.
• Anything less than 300 words is rightfully called “microfiction.”

Selecting and evaluating materials

• The type of course you are teaching.
• The type of students who are doing the course
• Certain factors connected with the text itself.

Anticipating student problems when using a short story

• Understanding the plot.
• Understanding the language in which the story is written.
• Understanding how the type of narrator who tells the story can shape or influence the way the story is told.

Planning a lesson for use with a short story

1. What is the aim of using each activity
2. What would be a good order for using the activities in a lesson?

Reading sequences

Pre-reading activities:1. Helping students with cultural background: -Predictions about the genre of the short story (e.g. What would students expect of a story entitled Murder in a Country House?). 2. Creating student interest in the story: -Group discussion about what the title of the story suggests. -Prediction about the story based on reading the first paragraph only. 3. Pre-teaching vocabulary: -Matching important words in the story with their dictionary definitions.

While-reading activities

1. Helping students to understand the plot -Providing students with two or three overall questions to check they have understood the gist of the story. -Students are given three slightly different summaries. They have to decide which is the best one. 2. Helping students to understand the characters -Students rank the characters in the story according to certain traits; for example which character is the most or least active, passive, aggressive, gentle, decisive, etc. 3. Helping students with difficult vocabulary -Give the text to one student or group of students in advance. Let them look up any difficult words in a dictionary and prepare a glossary for the others. 4. Helping students with language and style -Using a section of the text to focus on a particular grammatical problem that students may have; for example blanking out all verb forms in a section of the text and asking students to supply the correct tenses. The 'student version' is then compared with the original, and their stylistic differences discussed.

Post-reading activities

1. Interpretation of the main themes of the story: -Providing general questions to 'debate', focussing on any contentious points in the story. 2. Helping students to understand narrative point of view: -Students write diary entries or a letter describing the events of the story, as if they were one of the characters in the story. 3. Writing activities: -Writing a review of the story. 4. Discussion: -Roleplay or acting out of a scene from the story.

Poetry

Poetry evokes an emotional response in the reader through language chosen and arranged for its meaning, sound, and rhythm.

What is distinctive about poetry?

Poetry reorganizes syntax, invents its own vocabulary, freely mixes registers and creates its own punctuation. For this reason, poetry has been described as deviating from the norms of language (Leech, 1988, p. 5).

So, why do we use poetry with language learners?

• To exploit the unusual use of language.
• To expand the student's language awareness and interpretative abilities.
• To practice intonation and rhythm.

Let's exploiting unusual language features!

Helping students with figurative meanings:

Students often have difficulties understanding the multiple ambiguities of metaphorical language in poetry. This is often because 1) it may not be very clear to students that a metaphor is being used and 2) students may find it difficult to unravel the connections between apparently dissimilar objects or concepts. To help students with this, for example, we can give them a list of words related to the poem so they can do associations they have for the words. In some cases, there might be a cultural problem, because maybe the students don’t know the meaning of a word and they can’t do correct associations, so as teachers we have to explain the meaning of the words.

Anticipating student problems

When planning a lesson using a poem it is always useful to try to anticipate some of the difficulties students may face when reading or studying a poem, since by doing so you can design materials which help the students through the following difficulties:1. The background to the poem 2. The language of the poem 3. Motivating and involving students

Activities you can uses in the sequences

Further follow-up activities: Discussion or roleplay based on the theme or subject of the poem

Post-reading

Providing the necessary historical or cultural background: Students discuss what are appropriate behaviors or feelings in their culture or society in a particular situation. Then they compare this with the emotions in the poem.

Helping students towards an interpretation of the poem: Students imagine they are filming the poem. They have to decide what visual image they would provide for each line or verse of the poem as it is recited.

While-reading

Students read only one verse at a time and then try to predict what's coming next.

Pre-reading

Helping students with the language of the poem: The teacher pre-teaches any important words, phrases or grammatical constructions that appear in the poem.

Stimulating student interest in the text: Discuss or describe pictures or photographs relevant to the theme of the poem.

Reading Literature Cross-Culturally

Cultural aspects to consider when using literary texts with students

-Objects or products that exist in one society, but not in another-Social structures, roles and expectations -Customs, rituals, traditions or festivals -Political, historic, and economic background -Taboos -Representativeness -Metaphorical/connotative meanings -Genre

Activities to overcome cultural problems

Provide explanations/glosses

Personalising

Relevant to their own experience -Think of a situation in which someone you know has been sad. Why? Could you do anything to help them?

Provide cultural information

Ask students to infer cultural information

-Do you think that an ogene is: a) a kind of leather drum used to summon people? b) a musical instrument of some kind? c) an iron gong which is beaten with a stick?

Make cultural comparisons:

Compare the cultural aspects in the text with their own culture

Extension activities

Provide cultural background information as reading/listening comprehension

Activities after reading the text

Provide more information

THANK YOU