story4language

Wit & Wisdom

Roger Jenkins
storyteller

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story4language story in education World of Story

Why are folktales so useful in language teaching?

Certain typical characteristics contribute to relatively easy reading. Three of the most important are:
 Time-ordered story structure
 Repetition and redundancy
 Predictability

Time-ordered story structure
When it comes to telling stories, all cultures appear to do the same thing: tell about events in the order they happened. First ... then ... after this ... finally.... Time provides a structure for the story. By using a structure familiar to everyone, folktales are more easily understood than many other types of literature.

Repetition and redundancy
When you are listening, you can't slow down or go back and re-read if you miss something. As a result, stories from an oral tradition tend to have much more repetition and redundancy than those that haven't. Types of repetition:

 main themes. in Three Little Pigs, each pig's encounter with the wolf follows the same pattern. In another popular structure, the main characters begin very humbly; wish for more and more, thinking that this will make them happy but in the end, they return to where they started.

 sections are repeated word for word many times in the story. The repetition may consist of short phrases ("Not by the hair of my chinny-chin-chin") or of longer refrains (eg The Tailor)

 building refrains - portions that repeat and get longer each time. This can be especially useful for language learning, since a great deal of material is repeated, but students deal with one new piece at a time. (eg Stone Soup)

There are also many redundancies in folktales. Saying the same thing more than once or in more than one way helps students get the idea even if they missed it the first time. Repetition helps language learners/weaker students because it:

 helps new vocab stick

 gives many examples of a particular grammatical form in context

 helps students become more automatic in their recognition of language - an important part of becoming fluent.

 makes a story easier to understand by making the story more predictable and giving students less new language to process. See The Tailor – despite its length, it isn't all new material; and one basic event that is repeated five times.