ntroduction
There are many reasons why we want to tell stories in our classes. Stories provide students with
opportunities to listen to language in context rather than in bits and pieces. Stories also introduce
new vocabulary and language forms within rich networks of associations. Equally important,
stories can have a deep impact on a person’s construction of knowledge and self.
Stories, a form of narrative, help us to make sense of our world. Even in academic research, they
have lately been given a higher status (see Pavlenko and Lantolf 2000 for an overview). As Aki’s
words (above) remind us, stories also have the power to reach deep within us into areas that
regular teaching may not visit, thereby validating the language classroom for reasons that go
beyond l language learning. Our students tell us and show us that they have changed beliefs,
attitudes, and behaviors after hearing our stories. This deep impact makes language learning an
enriching experience that students find intrinsically valuable.
In this article we briefly discuss why giving a course depth through storytelling is important.
Then we describe some ways to help teachers deepen the impact of storytelling through language
and thinking activities that include shadowing, summarizing, student retelling, action logging,
and newslettering. Each of these activities could be applied to other classroom material as well.
We offer them here as a system of activities because we feel that teachers seldom get to see how
a group of activities can work together and be sequenced. Finally we want to share one ―split‖
story and student reactions to it as a way of exemplifying our ideas. Part one of the story is
below. Read it and think about it.