sld booklet
TRANSCRIPT
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Teaching English Through Short Stories
A Toolkit for 2014 BABEd Class
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Stage 1 Language Focus: READING (9 periods)- Identify and understand key featuresof a shortstory
- Read short stories with appreciation
Stage 2 Language Focus: WRITING (21 periods)
- Write specific aspectsof a short story
- Gather ideasand produce drafts
Stage 3 Language Focus: SPEAKING (20periods)
- Practice oral and story telling skills
- Performtheir own stories to the class
General Flow of the Module
It introduces learners to the world of short stories, encouraging them to read, writeand tellthem.
What EDB say about the module
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Possible Teaching Ideas
Horror Story Love Story
Detective Story Ghost Story
Fairy Story Fable
Science Fiction Adventure Story
Teachers may give some extracts of the story to students to let them match / distinguish the
story type.For instance,
Horror Story
A strange noise emerged, faint but still strong enough to leak
through the walls of the room I stood in. At first I mistook it
for my struggle to regain my breath. However, this noise
grew clearer and louder and I realised they were the
whispers of a woman, a woman looking for revenge.
Adventure Story
She fell asleep, thinking of the long weary miles still to be
traveled, and even greater dangers, now that she had come into
the region where the Arabs were fighting their Turkish masters.
Teachers may focus on the vocabulary and language structure which may be central to the
reading and writing of the story type.
E.g. For horror story, teachers may like to focus more on the adverbs of movement and
narrative tenses.
Types of Short Stories
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Possible Teaching Ideas
OpeningThe first few sentences, which usually arouse curiosity, pull the
reader in and carry compressed information in short stories.
Exposition
At the start of the story, the setting, situation and main characters
up to now are introduced (though not used as much in short
stories as in novels)
Characterization The process of creating and developing characters
Plot
A planned, logical series of events having a beginning, middle,
and end. The short story usually has one plot so it can be read in
one sitting
DialogueSpeech used for moving the story forward, though some dialogue
can be redundant
Narrative Describes a sequence of events.
SymbolAn enhancement tool to stress the theme of a story, e.g. a dog
can symbolise loyalty.
Complication An event that introduces conflict.
Rising action Action that leads to a crisis.
Conflict
This is essential to a storyline. Without conflict there is no plot. It
is the opposition of forces which ties one incident t another and
makes the plot move. Within a short story there may be only one
central struggle, or there may be one dominant struggle with
many minor ones.
ClimaxThe point of highest interest in terms of the conflict and the point
of the story with the most action.
Falling action When events and complication begin to resolve themselves.
Resolution The point of the story when the conflict is resolved.
TwistAn unexpected final paragraph which shatters readers
perceptions.
Closing The last paragraph of the story.
Moral
The message conveyed or a lesson to be learn from a storye.g.
fairy stories often have a moral about distrusting people who
appear to be trustworthy.
Features of Short Stories
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Teachers may ask students to identify any of the featuresabove in the short stories.
(Note: Not all short stories would possess all the above features.)
Teachers may also first focus practicing students writing skills in some of the above
featuresbefore asking them to write the whole story.
Teachers may also want to raise the issue of how to create a more interesting opening /
closing of a short story.
Possible Strategies for Opening a Short Story
1. Dropping the reader into the middle of the dramatic action.
2. A quoteor dialogue to make the reader ask questionsWhos this? What are they
saying? Why are they saying it?
3. A shocking statementThe telephone rang. He picked it up. The voice at the end
told him to run. To run now. To not stop running.
4. Mirroror circular openings/closingswhere each mirrors the other.
(opening) The young boy looked out of the window and wondered What am I doing
here?(Closing) The young boy looked out of the window and finally knew why he
was there.
5. An Intriguing opening that makes you wonderWhy? Whats happening here?
To encourage students creativity, teachers may ask students to create their own opening /
the ending of a given story.
There are certain endings which students are tempted to use:
E.g. they realized that it was a dream,
all of them were dead
Teachers may ask students never to end their stories with similar
phrases, which can eliminate lots of dull conclusions.
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Pre-Reading Stage
While-Reading Stage Post-Reading Stage
Improvision
- Teacher may provide students a context or setting which may be similar to the one in
the short story, then ask students how they would react and what they would do.
Students can also role-play without knowing the story.
Students may share their improvision with the other groups.
- This may help students enter imaginatively into the situation in the story and also allowthem to discuss the book obliquely by talking about their personal experience in the
improvision.
Using Contemporary Reference
- Teachers may relate the story to contemporary events using newspaper articles.Students are encouraged to notice any allegorical correspondences or contemporary
relevance.
- This may raise studentsinterest in the discussion of the relevance of the story to
contemporary events.
Stylistics (Use with )
- Stylistics concern how certain linguistic forms (e.g. syntax, morphology and lexis) work
within a text, and how they affect readers understanding or interpretation.
- Teachers may try to manipulate the language (e.g. change some of the words or
sentences) in the short stories and let students discover the differences it have on the
text.
! Stylistics SHOULD NOT be the major focus of this elective module. The aim of
incorporating stylistics is solely for cultivating students interestin the use of real
language. It can be cognitively demanding for lower achievers, but can be
interesting and challenging for some higher achievers.
Other Teaching ActivitiesIdea adapted from various references
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Writing Stage
Role-play
- Students are given a role to play from a text in a situation that either has occurred in
the text or is not described explicitly. This can be followed by a feedback session to
allow students to discuss the character.
- It enables students to experience events in the book more directly, as well as
providing interesting writing exercises in transposing one literary form to another.
Filling the Loophole
- Usually short stories would tell the ending of the protagonists or some othercharacters. However, there are cases in which some of the less important characters
may be missed out at the end of the story.
- Teachers may exploit this opportunity to let students create the story of these missed
out characters what happen on them afterwards?
Five Rules of DONT
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DON'T
Abuse the stories
to teach grammaror vocabulary
Smother studentswith worksheets
which ask students
to carry out dulltasks, e.g.comprehension
questions
Showing off howmuch you knowabout the storywithout getting
students to makediscoveries
Force students toformulate a
responses beforethey are ready to
share theirpersonal feelings in
class
Boil the texts into
moral lesson aboutlife
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DO
Make thecultural
backgroundmore accessible
to students
Preparestudents for alist of words
likely to be ofdifficulty in the
story
Justify the
length of thestory and timestudents need
to finish reading
Encourage
students tomake readerresponses in
either spoken orwritten form
Enable studentsto make
discovery fromthe story (either
language ormeaning)
Five Rules of DO
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Paper 1 Reading
Below are some questions taken from the public examination which may let you think about
training students with the necessary skills through this elective module.
(HKDSE 2012 English Language Paper 1 Question 14)
HKDSE Questions
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(HKDSE 2012 English Language Paper 1 Question 30)
Skills Involved: Inferring characters thought, stance or opinions; skimming
(HKDSE 2012 English Language Paper 1 Question 20)
Skills Involved: Critical thinking
(HKDSE 2012 English Language Paper 1 Question 36)
Skills involved: Skimming and noticing cohesive device to understand the chronological order of
events.
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Paper 2 Writing
(HKDSE 2012 English Language Paper 1 Question 44)
(HKDSE 2012 English Language Paper 1 Question 72)
Skills Involved: Understanding metaphors and similes
(HKDSE 2012 English Language Paper 2 Part B Question 7)
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