Introduction
I have long been interested in using stories in the classroom. However, up until now, I have only been using pre-existing materials (e.g graded readers, picture books, movies, et cetera). Although my students have been enjoying the stories, I have been worried that I am stagnating as a teacher. I have been only a selector and curator of material, and have not been developing skills as a storyteller. So for this reason, I wanted to try Story-Listening (a particular technique of Storytelling) as my experimental lesson.
I believe that this lesson would benefit the current group of upper-elementary Thai learners. If I can grade my language successfully so that upper-elementary students can understand the story, then they can benefit from learning a lot of vocabulary from the story. It would also provide them with plenty of input in the past simple (a weak point for this group), since the past simple is traditionally used for narratives. Also Beniko Mason (the founder of Story-Listening) is very adamant that this technique is successful with all ages and all levels.
Theory and Practice
Storytelling in English Language Teacher (ELT) has a long history, and is probably as old as the profession itself (Vyner, 2013). In my research, it appears that currently the two most popular types of Storytelling in ELT are TPR Storytelling, developed by Blaine Ray in the 1990s in America, and Story-Listening, developed by Beniko Mason in the 1980s in Japan. I have chosen to focus on Story-Listening for my experiment.
The technique of Story-Listening is as follows: the teacher pre-selects a story to tell the class. Beniko Mason favors using folk tales or fairy tales, because they are in the public domain and free for everyone. Part of the ethos of Story-Listening is that it is accessible for teachers and students in all situations and all economic levels. For the same reason, Story-Listening is materials light. There are no books or computers. The teacher uses only themselves and the chalkboard to tell the story to the students. Before the lesson, the teacher plans out which vocabulary they will need to explain to the students, and writes these words out as prompts on a piece of paper. The teacher uses these prompts as a script while they tell the story, explaining the words as they go. Mason advises that the teacher try to avoid putting multiple unknown words in the same sentence. If necessary, the teacher can break up one sentence into several shorter sentences, and explain each of the unknown words as they go. For example, instead of saying “There was an old wrinkled woman” the teacher can say, “There was a woman. She was old. She had wrinkles.” (2018). The teacher explains the words by drawing pictures on the chalkboard, using synonyms, or using direct translation to the L1. At the end of the lesson, the teacher asks the students to write up the lesson in their L1. The teacher uses this to tell how much of the story the students were able to comprehend, and thus evaluate the success of the lesson (Dubois, 2017).
Beniko Mason has posted several demonstrations of Story-Listening online (The Wine Well, 2017, The Robber Bridegroom, 2017). From these examples, it is clear that the ability to draw well is central to the Story-Listening technique. In this case, drawing “well” is meant in the sense of being able to draw quickly, and for the images to be immediately. Beniko Mason uses mostly stick figures and minimalist drawings, but there is a skill in how quickly and efficiently the drawings are produced. Mason advises that drawing on the chalkboard is a skill developed over time, but also advises that teachers should practice the drawings before class as part of their preparation (Stories First, 2018).
Both TPR Storytelling and Story Listening were inspired by the work of Krashen. The assumptions behind Story-Listening are the same assumptions behind Krashen’s input hypothesis, as Mason herself outlined in a 2017 workshop. Students acquire languages by comprehending the message. Students do not need to practice speaking to acquire the language, simply understanding the input is enough. Teachers do not need to target any specific vocabulary or grammar features—if the linguistic feature is high-frequency, then it will naturally be found in the input (Mason, 2017)
Interestingly enough, Krashen’s early works do not appear to put a lot of emphasis on stories or narratives—at least not the ones I have read: Principles and Practice in Second Language Acquisition (1982) and The Natural Approach (1983). In these books, it seems that when Krashen is talking about comprehensible input, he is largely talking about classroom talk—for example the teacher having conversations with the class, or giving instructions in the target language.
It appears that the storytelling movements grew out of Krashen, even though Krashen did not call for them explicitly. However, nowadays Krashen has fully endorsed the storytelling techniques, and in recent years has actively been collaborating with proponents of both TPR Storytelling and Story Listening. Krashen has also modified his “comprehensible input” hypothesis to “compelling comprehensible input”. Input that is comprehensible, but boring, will not help the students. The students need to be interested in the input, and this can perhaps best be done by stories (Krashen, 2017).
Krashen has also modified his objection to targeting linguistic structures in light of the storytelling movement. Krashen now believes that there is a distinction between teaching targeted structures because they are part of an external curriculum (T1) and teaching targeted linguistic structures in order to aid comprehension of the story (T2) (Krashen, 2016). As Krashen states “T2 is good, T1 is bad” (2017). The theory is that T2 is used to help the students understand the story, which (according to the theory of comprehensible input) will eventually lead to the mastery of the language. T1, however, is reverting back to the idea of a structured linguistic syllabus, which Krashen has been opposed to.
Much of the empirical support for Story-Listening specifically comes from Beniko Mason herself, who has published multiple articles on the vocabulary gains and standardized test score gains of students who have learnt through her Story-Listening technique (Mason, 2005, 2007, 2010, 2011, 2013). Some of these articles have been co-authored with Krashen (Krashen and Mason, 2018). Mason is aware that some studies show that input alone is not enough for complete mastery of all linguistic structures, but she believes it is enough to get students to an upper-intermediate level, and this is sufficient for the needs of most of her students. Moreover, Mason believes most students cannot get to upper-intermediate level by the traditional classroom methods, so Story-Listening is providing an opportunity for proficiency gains which would not otherwise be met. Finally, Mason believes that Story-Listening is the most enjoyable way to learn English. She states, “The goal of Dr. Krashen and myself is to reduce suffering in the language classroom” (2018). Story-Listening is ideally supplemented by students doing extensive reading outside of the classroom, but Mason believes that students will not start doing extensive reading unless they are first guided on how to understand English stories through scaffolding techniques like Story-Listening. (Mason, 2018).
Although both TPR Storytelling and Story-Listening were both inspired by Krashen, practitioners of the two techniques have not interacted with each other until recently. Krashen first introduced Beniko Mason to the leading practitioners of TPR Storytelling in 2016, and since then the two groups have begun to collaborate and share techniques. However this has also resulted in criticisms of Story-Listening from some adherents of TPR Storytelling. Criticisms of Story-Listening are that it is a passive activity for the students, and that there are no comprehension checks built into the structure. However, defenders of Story-Listening argue that it is much less demanding for both the teachers and the students (and thus lowers the affective filter). Also it is thought to be more suitable for Asian classrooms, in which the students are used to a more passive role. And although there are no formal comprehension check stages built into a Story-Listening lesson, an experienced teacher should be able to tell whether or not the students are comprehending the story by a variety of non-linguistic cues that the students send out, such as facial expressions, or eye contact (Dubois, 2017).
Bibliography
Dubois, Judith. (2017). Story Listening: What is it? T.P.R.S. Witch. http://tprs-witch.com/story-listening-what-is-it/
Krashen, Stephen. (1982). Principles and Practice in Second Language Acquisition. Oxford: Pergamon.
Krashen, Stephen, & Terrell, T. D. (1983). The Natural Approach: Language Acquisition in the Classroom. Hayward, Calif: Alemany Press.
Krashen, Stephen. (2016). Three Options: Non-targeted input, and two kinds of targeted input. SKrashen. http://skrashen.blogspot.com/2016/11/three-options-non-targeted-input-and.html
Krashen, Stephen. (2017). Dr. Krashen on Targeting1 vs. Targeting2. The Stories First Foundation. https://youtu.be/IzwXP6E1LE4
Krashen, Stephen, Beniko Mason. (2018). American Students’ Vocabulary Acquisition Rate in Japanese as a Foreign Language from Listening to a Story. Turkish Online Journal of English Language Teaching. Volume 3, Issue 1, Pages 6-9. http://beniko-mason.net/content/articles/2018-american-students-vocabulary-acquisition-rate-in-japanese.pdf
Mason, Beniko. (2005). Vocabulary Acquisition through Storytelling. TexTESOL III Newsletter February 2005. http://beniko-mason.net/content/articles/2005-beniko-mason-vocabulary-acquisition-through-storytelling.pdf
Mason, Beniko. (2007). The Efficiency of Self-Selected Reading and Hearing Stories on Adult Second Language Acquisition. "Selected Papers from the sixteenth international symposium on English Teaching". English Teachers’ Association / ROC Taipei, November 9-11, 2007. Pp. 630-633. http://beniko-mason.net/content/articles/the_efficiency_of_self-selected_reading_and_hearing_stories_on_adult_second_language_acquisition.pdf
Mason, Beniko. (2010). Comprehension is the Key to Efficient Foreign Language Education－Self-Selected Reading and Story-Listening are the Solutions http://benikomason.net/content/articles/comprehension_is_the_key_to_efficient_foreign_language_education_-_self-selected_reading_and_story-listening_are_the_solutions.pdf
Mason, Beniko. (2011). Impressive gains on the TOEIC after one year of comprehensible input,
with no output or grammar study. The International Journal of Foreign Language Teaching. November 2011. http://beniko-mason.net/content/articles/mason_tanaka_ijflt_11-11.pdf
Mason, Beniko. (2011). Substantial Gains in Listening and Reading Ability in English as a Second Language from Voluntary Listening and Reading in a 75 Year Old Student.
International Journal of Foreign Language Teaching. http://beniko-mason.net/content/articles/substantial_gains_b_mason.pdf
Mason, Beniko. (2017). 8th Annual ILI Symposium 2017: Beniko Mason. Indigenous Language Institute. https://youtu.be/GChH3RQUAPA
Mason, Beniko. (2017). Story Listening Demonstration: The Robber Bridegroom. The Stories First Foundation. https://youtu.be/PvynPXIs3b8
Mason, Beniko. (2017) Story Listening Demonstration: The Wine Well. The Stories First Foundation. https://youtu.be/PWxBer7pztc
Mason, Beniko and Stacey Magarita. (2018). We Teach Languages Episode 52: Story Listening and Efficient Acquisition with Beniko Mason. WTL PODCAST EPISODES. https://weteachlang.com/2018/05/11/ep-52-with-beniko-mason/
Stories First Foundation. Classroom Resources: Drawing. https://storiesfirst.org/index.php/knowledge-base/drawing/ (Accessed on November 15, 2018).
Stories First Foundation. Classroom Resources: What Stories Do I Tell? https://storiesfirst.org/index.php/knowledge-base/what-stories-do-i-tell/ (Accessed on November 16, 2018).
Vyner, Luke. (2013). Sharing stories: The creative potential of storytelling in EFL. Macmillian Education ELT. https://youtu.be/2xPphLb-f6w
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