Teaching Short Stories

Alexandra_LoweAlexandra Lowe
ESL instructor at SUNY Westchester Community College

The following blog post was written by Alexandra Lowe and originally published by TESOL International Association on June 3, 2015. It can also be accessed through the TESOL website.

At the recent TESOL International convention in Toronto, I was privileged to attend an outstanding workshop entitled “10 Tips for Teaching Short Stories” by Sybil Marcus, an inspiring teacher from the University of California, Berkeley. Presenting excerpts from two short stories, she showed us how she uses stories to teach critical thinking skills, style, grammar, and vocabulary, and to lay the groundwork for classroom debates and writing assignments. Sybil’s approach to teaching ESL skills through short stories sounded so compelling to me that I dashed back to my own classroom as soon as the conference was over to try it out.

One of the short stories she showcased in her workshop was Daniel Lyons’ “The Birthday Cake” (.doc). The story features two immigrants—an old, embittered woman from Italy and a young single mother from the Caribbean—who find themselves locked in an unexpected conflict. The story subtly raises challenging issues of attitudes toward immigrants, single parenthood, aging, isolation, and death.

The story was an immediate hit with my high-intermediate, low-advanced students. When we discussed an issue central to the story—whether the old woman was justified in her contemptuous response to the young woman’s plea for a special favor—my students were as bitterly divided as the two protagonists themselves. Even students who were normally shy and reluctant to speak in front of the whole class launched into a passionate debate over the merits of the old woman’s behavior. And what was particularly fascinating was the discovery that the battle lines among my students were drawn in unpredictable ways—students whom I would have expected to sympathize with the plight of the young mother were surprisingly hostile to her.

One bonus of this particular short story is that it is written almost entirely in dialogue, as if it were the script for a short play for three characters (the two women, and a man who finds himself entangled in their conflict).  So, naturally, I put my students into small groups of three and asked them to practice acting out the dialogue. After giving them the opportunity to practice their lines with three different sets of partners, I asked for volunteers to act out the story in front of the whole class. It was one of the highlights of the semester, as some of my shyest students threw themselves into their roles, displaying acting skills and abilities no one would have suspected, while some of the more outspoken students were able to “ad lib” additional theatrical lines for their character. Continue reading

Back to the Future: More Low-Tech Activities for a
High-Tech Classroom

2013_Heyer_SandraSandra Heyer

In a previous newsletter, I described my state-of-the-art classroom and its hidden drawback: It was making my students and me a little lazy. I was glued to a high-tech console, and my students were glued to the seats of their sleek gliding desks. Concerned that our sedentary class-style might have a detrimental effect on our health, I looked for a remedy.

Fortunately, the problem caused by technology had an easy low-tech solution: simple interactive activities that got us out of our seats and moving around. We took a look at two activities, the Moving Line and Conversation Stations. In this article, let’s consider the Walking Dictation and Find Your Match.

Activity 3: Walking Dictation (also called Messenger and Scribe)
Levels: All

Almost any text suitable for dictation can be the basis of a walking dictation. Because students do this activity independently, it is best to choose a text that is a little less challenging than one you might dictate yourself. During a walking dictation, half of the students are out of their seats at any given time.

  1. Number each sentence in the text to be dictated. Then post the text on a wall in the classroom or outside in the hallway. (If you have a large class, you will need to post more than one copy.) Alternately, you could scatter single numbered sentences on walls around the room.SH_5
  2. Students pair up. Student A stays seated. Student B walks to where the text is posted and memorizes a sentence.
  3. Student B returns to Student A and recites the sentence. Student A writes it down.SH_6.
  4. Halfway through the activity, students switch roles.
  5. Write the text on the board or project it on a screen so that students can check their writing. Continue reading

Brain-based Research:
Strengthening Learning and Memory

Sarah Lynn 2013.1.1 Sarah Lynn

“If you’re just engaging in mechanical repetition,
it’s true, you quickly hit the limit of what you can retain.
However, if you practice elaboration,
there’s no known limit to how much you can learn.”
~ Brown, Roediger, McDaniel (2014)

Elaboration is essential for you to commit new learning to memory. Elaboration is when you explain new information in your own words. Once you begin to add examples and details, or make connections to other experiences and knowledge, you are enriching the new learning and making it more memorable and more  transferrable to new contexts.

Thinking Please wait

Elaboration involves the thinking strategies of paraphrasing, summarizing, creating analogies, answering questions, and describing connections. Elaboration activates the frontal lobe of your brain and brings your new learning to a higher level of awareness and articulation. Continue reading