TELLING TRUE STORIES:

BLENDING MULTIMEDIA IN A TASK-BASED ACTIVITY

by Aiden Yeh

National Kaohsiung First University of Science and Technology,

Kaohsiung , Taiwan

aidenyeh@yahoo.com

Level: Upper Intermediate and above

Time: at least 3 periods (50 minutes each)

Aims:

1.          To learn the basic structures (see Introduction) and expressions used when telling true stories.

2.          To enhance listening, reading comprehension and writing skills.

3.          To engage in a chat activity with a native speaker of English integrating language skills.

4.          To foster oral communication skills by giving learners opportunities to use the language in an authentic manner or real-life situation.

Technical Requirements:

·         at least one computer for each student (or a group of 2) with the Internet access;

·         Yahoo Messenger (YM) installed, which is a free chat software available at http://messenger.yahoo.com/;

·         a multimedia projector or any broadcasting system that could project images/sounds. If you do not have access to any of these equipment but have enough computers for all your students (Ss), then invite as many Ss as you can to YM but limit their participation. Only selected Ss will have the privilege to speak;

·         an optional web cam;

·         a word-processor.

Introduction

Telling true stories is a basic English usage task that is used on a daily basis (Beare, 2003). Unfortunately, Ss struggle with their grammar usage while speaking the English language that they wind up being less understandable. A typical story telling structure outline consists of:

1.      Introduction: Introduce the story by telling what kind of story it is

2.      Beginning: How the story started

3.      the Story: The main events related in order

4.      The End: What has changed or how things are now

5.      Moral: Final Comments or moral conclusions about the story.

The lesson plan is heavily influenced by a lesson that was selected from Kenneth Beare’s ESL Lesson archive available at http://esl.about.com/library/lessons/bltellingstories.htm, and is the basis for this class activity, which is divided into three phases, 1) pre-online chat, 2) during chat, and 3) post-online chat activity.

Necessary Preparation

Prior to the activity, the teacher should arrange for a guest speaker (a native speaker of English or a non-native but with near-native English proficiency) to meet with the Ss.  Since this activity requires collaboration between the teacher, the guest speaker/s and Ss, it is advisable to invite someone you know (a friend, family member/s and/or colleagues). You may also find support from professional organizations such as TESOL or IATEFL and their respective English as a Foreign Language (EFL) Interest Sections (IS) or Special Interest Group (SIG). Teachers can also benefit from joining online collaborative communities such as the Webheads in Action (http://www.geocities.com/vance_stevens/papers/evonline2002/
webheads.htm), epals (www.epals.com), and Intercultural E-mail Classroom Connections (www.iecc.org).  Time and availability of the guest speaker should also be taken into consideration.

Procedure

I. Pre-Online Chat Warm-up Activity

Time: 10 minutes

1.      A short discussion about telling true stories

2.      You can initiate the class discussion by sharing your own story.

3.      Then, gather students’ opinions and experiences by asking questions such as, “Have you ever told someone about a funny, scary or any memorable incident that happened to you?”, “Have you ever shared stories with your best friend, mom or teacher?”)

4.      After soliciting answers to your questions, you can now tell your Ss what the activity is about. For example, “You will be meeting (name of guest speaker) online and he/she will share with you a true story…”

5.      Explain in detail the tasks that they will have to accomplish for the day.

II. Voice Conference with Students

Time: 40 minutes

Notes:

For the online chat activity, the teacher should make sure that all the computers to be used have Internet access and YM chat software has been successfully installed.

Steps:

1.      The teacher should log in and start the voice conference by opening YM.

2.      Choose between 5-10 student volunteers.

3.      Ask the students to log in YM.

4.      Add the students’ Yahoo ID onto the teacher’s YM’s Group of Friends.

5.      Slowly invite the students in the conference by clicking on the “invite” feature of YM.

6.      Start the conference as soon as everybody (students and the guest speaker) has settled down. The LCD projector should be running at this point to broadcast and project images as they appear on the students’ monitors (A step-by-step procedure is available here, http://www.geocities.com/nkfust2003/listening/story/
procedure/steps.html

7.      The students who are offline (the number could depend on the total number of students in class) can still participate by watching the big screen where images from the chat conference are projected via LCD projector. This way, these Ss could read and understand what’s going on in the voice/text conference (see photos and chat log here, http://www.geocities.com/nkfust2003/listening/story/
ed/p2_edm.htm)

8.      Ask the guest speaker to begin sharing her/his story to the class by either typing on the keyboard or by using voice.

9.      After the guest speaker has shared her/his story, the Ss take turns in asking questions or posting their comments/opinions.

10.  After the chat, save the chat log before closing the voice conference interface. The log can be used for assessment purposes and a material for peer feedback.

Teaching Tips

The interaction between the Ss and the native speaker should be as spontaneous and natural as possible. Yahoo! tends to be unstable when there are more than 15 online participants. The connection speed will depend on the computer’s bandwidth and the Internet connection. If you lose voice or any of your Ss is unable to hear the sound, it would be wise to settle for a text-based chat. Instead of clicking or pressing the ‘Talk’ icon on Yahoo’s voice conference interface, ask the participants to simply type on the keyboard.

III. Offline Post-chat Activity

Time: 50 minutes

1.      Follow up your guest speaker’s story with some basic comprehension questions to check whether the whole class understands her/his story. You may touch on the moral lesson of the story by invoking such questions as ‘What did you learn from it?’ or “If you were him/her, would you have done the same thing?”

2.      Ask the Ss to reflect and think of a situation that they have experienced. The time in which the event/s occurred is not important. It could be last week, last month, as long as it happened in the past. The nature of the story could be one of or combination of the following: happy, sad, scary, inspirational, keeping in suspense, etc.

3.      Ask the Ss to plan and write their own true stories of about 100 words.

4.      The written work can be printed out or uploaded on the class website (see http://www.geocities.com/nkfust2003/listening/story/
sample_joy/sample.html)

IV. Students Telling Their Own True Stories

Time: 50 minutes

1.      Students take turns in sharing their stories to the whole class (after the writing phase).

2.      Ss may be allowed to look at their notes but try to encourage spontaneous delivery.

3.      Encourage discussion from the class.

Conclusion

Technology is a salient tool and medium in implementing this activity, however, we cannot refute the fact that it is not perfect. Technological problems, no matter how trivial could, in a way, affect the outcomes; but, they are not barriers to learning. Teachers are advised to prepare an alternative course of action and give Ss an extra time for technical prep. As they say, “an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.” Another important issue that should be considered is the appropriateness of the material or the story. Although, story telling is conversational in essence and the use of colloquial terms and phrases may seem inevitable, offensive expressions are unacceptable even in real-life situations. In a nutshell, the tasks in this activity are designed to achieve the aims of the lesson by combining a blended approach to learning English, crossing boundaries and cultural dimensions and using a different learning environment that cannot be recreated in a regular classroom.

Reference:

Beare, K. 2003. "Telling True Stories for English Learners and Classes". Available at http://esl.about.com/library/lessons/bltellingstories.htm   

INSTANT LESSONS – BOTH IN AND OUT OF THE CLASSROOM

by Rachel Ellis

Rachel.ellis@xtra.co.nz; Rachel@selfaccess.com

Introduction

The Internet has been touted by many as the world’s largest library. In many ways, however, it is a disorganized library without a librarian. Now the potential of the Internet is being realized with a resource that is easy for language teachers to take advantage of. English-To-Go (www.english-to-go.com) produces photocopiable lessons and stores them on the Internet in a searchable library designed exclusively for teachers.

English-To-Go supplies a variety of resources, the main one being “Instant Lessons” - English language training material based around Reuters news articles. These are printable, topical lesson plans that exploit current news articles. As a follow on to classroom work, there are also Instant Workbook (www.instantworkbook.com) exercises. These are online interactive activities for students and are linked directly to Instant Lessons. Grammar points are either further extended, material recycled or students can further practise reading and listening using material on the same topics as have been taught in class. Teachers can choose specific exercises for students to do either in a computer lab or as homework exercises. The activities are fun and rewarding and teachers are easily able to control those exercises students are to do. The following link http://www.selfaccess.com/iatefl will take you to a page where photocopiable materials, comprehensive teachers’ notes and answer key and on-line exercises have been provided. Below is a lesson outline showing how one teacher has used these materials.

Title: Bah Humbug!

Level: Intermediate

Time: 90 minutes

Aims:

·         to enable students to listen for specific information

·         to familiarise students with Christmas traditions

·         to enable students to understand and use “like” and “as” in context

·         to practise first person narrative writing

Preparation:

Print lesson and photocopy.

Procedure

This lesson was used as a lead up to Christmas. The theme of Christmas was introduced using Christmas cards and then students’ opinions on the good and bad things about Christmas were elicited and written on the board. Students then wrote down a short text that was read out three times by way of introduction to the main reading.

The 7 Pre-Reading and Reading Activites explored two news articles about Colin Wood and his unsuccessful attempts to escape Christmas by hiring an underground bunker. These were completed in the classroom. Upon finishing the language section, students were given background information to Dicken’s “A Christmas Carol”, the origin and meaning of the words “Bah Humbug”, (provided in teachers’ notes) and then taken to a computer lab. Learners were asked to log in to http://www.instantworkbook.com using a username and password that was valid for five days. This password allowed students to view only those exercises selected by the teacher – in this instance the 4 exercises linked to the “Bah Humbug!” lesson.

Students were first asked to complete two listening activities – a multiple choose exercise and a cloze. This particular listening was the dictation text students first heard as an introduction in the classroom. However, this time students were exposed to a different speaker, a different accent and given control over how many times they heard the text. Many students felt more confident after recycling the listening in this way, as dictation exercises can prove challenging for some.

After completing the listening exercises, students were then placed in pairs – two students to one computer. This was done to increase peer interaction and led to much discussion before choices were selected. Students then competed the vocabulary exercise relating to the article in the “Bah Humbug!” lesson and reading exercise based on “A Christmas Carol”.

For homework students were then asked to write a diary entry for Colin Wood from inside his bunker. This was to be printed and saved on disc to allow for peer correction the following day.

Conclusion

The diary entry activities in this lesson were successfully used as vehicles to practise different skills: listening, text comprehension, and writing. The pre-reading and reading activities worked well together and students really enjoyed the opportunity to work with the listening text again in the computer lab.