ELT article published by Prof. Jonathan Acuña at http://reflective-online-teaching.blogspot.com/

This is a copy of the online article.

Short Story Analysis in EFL/ESL: A great source of learning and teaching

Short stories can be a great source of learning and a great tool for teaching

as well. In ELT, stories can serve different purposes. Roughly speaking

EFL/ESL students can benefit from them by acquiring new vocabulary items

while appreciating literature. They can also be used to introduce the basics

for literary analysis, especially if they need to take narrative or drama as

part of the curricula. Short stories, as outlined before, can be of great

learning/teaching use if approached properly.

Keeping in mind that my students are A1+ or low A2 (based on the CEF), I

try to have them enjoy the experience rather than feel animosity against

reading short stories. In addition, using the segmented story approach

used by Goodman (2003)1 in his Literature for English series combined with

Manney’s (2012)2 well-suited workshop approach to reading short stories, I

have devised a five-step basic literary analysis for my beginning reading

skills students at the university.

1 Burton Goodman’s book series is entitled Literature for English published by McGraw-Hill

2 Article published in Voices Magazine by IATEFL

ELT article published by Prof. Jonathan Acuña at http://reflective-online-teaching.blogspot.com/

This is a copy of the online article.

Task 1> PLOT UNDERSTANDING: The stories we get to use in class

are segmented to ensure student understanding of the plot. As prepared

by Goodman in his books, for each segment of the story a set of questions

is prepared. This questionnaire aims at facilitating students plot

understanding and literary appreciation of the genre. In addition, this

segmentation of the plot can help the teacher focus students on key

vocabulary items that need to be understood to guarantee the story’s

comprehension. This process works better if the instructor assigns the

questionnaire for homework to maximize TASK 2.

Task 2> STORY RECONSTRUCTION: In class, as suggested by

Manney, a literary workshop starts to ensure that students’ voices are

heard when dealing with the questions. Students are either paired or asked

to work in small groups to go over the questionnaire. Besides, they are

asked to write a “brief” summary of what the story is about, which

guarantees that everyone in class understands it. Once students are done

with the discussion of the questions and the summary is written, -as a

whole class activity-, two questions are posed to be discussed:

What’s being told by the author?

How realistic is the story?

ELT article published by Prof. Jonathan Acuña at http://reflective-online-teaching.blogspot.com/

This is a copy of the online article.

Task 3> EVENTS RECOLLECTION: Before students are asked to create

their own story’s Feytag’s pyramid, it is advisable to model a diagram for

them. When they feel confident with its use and potential, students are

also asked to produce their own pyramids by means of Traci Gardner’s

3 Feytag’s Pyramid online tool. Through this exercise, students are

confronted with a basic literary plot analysis including conflict, rising action,

climax, falling action, and resolution. In our program at the university, this

type of analysis guarantees student training for future literature courses in

narrative and drama. So, as part of our literature workshop, everyone

shares their analysis and then it is corrected or expanded to fully ensure

the comprehension of the story plot and its analysis.

Task 4> AUTHOR’S STORY PURPOSE:

As soon as our Feytag’s pyramid analysis is over, I take advantage of the

class mood to introduce additional “new” literary concepts that need to be

learned. As the instructors, I get to choose key events in the stories we

read to introduce irony, foreshadowing, epiphany, and the like. No more

than one new literary concept is presented to the students per short story,

but as we advance through the course, several literary features can be 3 Webtool published by NCTE at http://www.readwritethink.org/files/resources/interactives/plot-diagram/

ELT article published by Prof. Jonathan Acuña at http://reflective-online-teaching.blogspot.com/

This is a copy of the online article.

analyzed in the very same story since some stories combine several literary

devices in it.

Task 5> CHARACTERIZATION: Finding the psychological and physical

traits of characters in a story is always a great exercise on descriptive

lexical items. When shifting from one short story to another (and from

author to author), it is rather difficult to find two characters whose traits

are alike. For that reason, providing students lists of characteristics (take a

look at this one) can also ensure the learning of antonyms and synonyms

in the target language. Additionally, students can begin to explore our

human psyche, which benefits them when studying literary criticism.

To sum up, a short story reading should not be just a mere reading

exercise to accomplish a course objective. The analysis of this pieces of

literature, whether they are adapted for CEF levels or not, can be a great

way to help students strengthen their vocabulary learning, appreciate great

English-speaking (or translated) authors, and explore literature in a

participative way through a workshop approach.

To fully develop and comprehend this teaching issue, it’s advisable to

research and expand these areas:

ELT article published by Prof. Jonathan Acuña at http://reflective-online-teaching.blogspot.com/

This is a copy of the online article.

1 Storytelling

2 Short stories in ELT

3 The workshop approach in short story’s analysis

4 Short story’s plot analysis

5 Literary concepts for EFL/ESL learners

Jonathan Acuña

ELT Instructor & Trainer based in Costa Rica

Curricular Developer at CCCN

Senior ELT Professor at Universidad Latina

For further comments or suggestions, reach me at:

@jonacuso – Twitter

jonacuso@gmail.com – Gmail

Other blogs I often write for my students at the university are:

1. http://bin-02.blogspot.com/

2. http://bin-04.blogspot.com/

3. http://bin-06.blogspot.com/

- Gardner, Traci. Plot Structure: A Literary Elements Mini-Lesson.

Published by NCTE at http://www.readwritethink.org/classroom-

resources/lesson-plans/plot-structure-literary-elements-904.html

ELT article published by Prof. Jonathan Acuña at http://reflective-online-teaching.blogspot.com/

This is a copy of the online article.

- Goodman, Burton (2003) Literature for English: Beginning. Chicago:

McGraw-Hill

- Manney, Linda (2012) Reading and Writing Short Stories. Voices:

November-December 2012 Issue 229. Kent: IATEFL