Teaching English Through Children’s Literature I. The role of stories and story

Teaching English Through Children’s Literature
The topic today is about the British Council’s Young Learners Centre in Paris and how they use children’s literature in their teaching of English. I will tackle the following four aspects: the role of stories and storytelling in language teaching; selecting story books; pupil responses; personal and professional development of teachers.
    Once upon a time and not so very long ago in the capital city of France, a teaching centre for little children and not so little children was opened. One little child and then two and then three and then many, many more came along. And so our story unfolds. There was a little red hen, a cat in trouble, a brown bear, a black elephant and a white elephant, a very hungry caterpillar, a clever tortoise, a big, roaring, yellow, whiskery lion, a kangaroo from Woolloomooloo and many more.
    These are just some of the colorful characters from children’s literature who have helped children aged 5 to 10 attending holiday classes at the British Council’s Young Learners Centre in Paris learn English. These weekly courses take place each afternoon for two hours.
    The educational value of using stories and the technique of storytelling has always been undisputed throughout the world. Now more and more English-as-a-foreign-language (EFL) teachers of young learners are using carefully selected stories from the world of children’s literature because (1) they have become more familiar with an acquisition-based methodology and because (2) stories comply with the major objectives in most countries for foreign language teaching to young learners: linguistic, psychological, cognitive, social and cultural. (3) EFL teachers use stories to supplement their core materials or to create self-contained units of work that constitute mini-syllabuses. In this way, a story provides the starting point and rich context for developing a wide variety of related language and learning activities involving children personally, creatively and actively in an all round whole curriculum approach.
    (4) What kinds of storybooks are suitable for teaching? In other words, how to select storybooks? (5) Storybooks are carefully selected from the world of authentic children’s literature mainly from the list of British publishers. (6) We look for stories that have gained an international reputation and contain rich and authentic examples of English, as well as literary devices commonly found in children’s literature such as repetition and cumulative content, rhyme, onomatopoeia, humor and suspense, etc.; and which allow us to implement a story-based methodology structured around the familiar three stages of pre, while and post storytelling. (7) We look for stories with high quality and varied illustrative styles and illustrations which synchronize with the text to support children’s understanding and to develop their visual literacy. We look for stories that take place in settings other than western and urban areas and address issues such as citizenship and multicultural education in order to develop intercultural awareness; (8) stories that develop social skills and emotional development and stories that allow links to be made with other subjects in the curriculum in order to build on children’s general knowledge, reinforce concepts and help them learn how to learn. (9) Finally, we look for stories that offer a concrete outcome in the form of dramatization, related songs and rhymes, book-making, making a game, a quiz or competition, poster-design, project work, etc.
    The educational gains from using authentic children’s literature are very rich indeed as reflected by pupils’ personal response to the stories. Younger children from 5 to 7 respond in pictorial form and (10) older pupils complete a more detailed written evaluation focusing on genre, characters, setting, illustrations, what they liked about the story and what they learned from the story. For example, when asked what they learned from the story The Pied Piper, someone answered, "We must keep our promises and not be greedy. " (11) When asked about Tusk Tusk which is a story about how elephants became grey and tolerant, a 6-year-old girl answered, "I learned about tolerance and racism. I learned to know how to respect others because we can’t all be the same. You have to love each other. " In the story The Very Hungry Caterpillar, children said they learned the life cycle of the butterfly. From The Little Red Hen, some learned they must help people.
    Implementing a story-based approach requires a great deal of energy, creativity and excellent classroom management skills and flexibility from teachers. In addition, at the end of the course children present their work to parents, which provides an ideal way of strengthening our parent/teacher relationships. This can, however, put teachers under a certain amount of strain as the performance of their pupils is often equated with their performance as teachers. As one teacher said it keeps you on your toes! In other words, it maintains high-quality language teaching. (12) The teacher’s critical appraisal, resourcefulness and confidence develop greatly: they are now able to appraise a prospective storybook for use in class very quickly and decide if it’s suitable and for what age group it could be used with; (13) they are also able to see the potential of a particular book and can create the support material necessary and that has links to other curriculum areas. (14) Using storybooks has been an enjoyable experience and has given them another approach to teaching English to children that is authentic and interactive where both teacher and students learn something new! (15) They have developed their own storytelling techniques and ways of making authentic language accessible to foreign language students and techniques for creating worksheets and activities for exploiting the language in the story. The choice of the storybook is very important; if a teacher is enthusiastic, often this is contagious.
    Well, there is a lot more to say on this topic, but time runs so fast. I hope this lecture may be helpful. And next time we will talk about other interesting ways of teaching English. Thank you.