- Email: [email protected]
Stories and Storyline (Teaching English to Young Learners)
Book reviews / System 55 (2015) 158e171
169
the obvious usefulness of this chapter, there are again issues, such as the use of the mother tongue or doing tasks between the tutoring sessions (aspects of homework) that are part of any syllabus of an ELT methodology course. I found Chapter 8 on teaching one-to-one sessions the least successful. Not only is the title a poor choice, since this is supposed to be what the whole book is about, but also some of the information it describes, for instance, the section devoted to establishing and building rapport, albeit useful, could be more logically inserted in other places of the book, such as Chapter 3, treating the tutor-learner relationship. In contrast, I found Chapter 9 about using technology in one-to-one teaching a valuable addition to the existing literature on this topic. Readers will find here very useful information about structuring online sessions with details about conducting initial sessions, potential benefits and challenges of technology using, as well as information about language learning programs and apps. Their writing about technology in the context of one-on-one teaching is certainly up-to-date. The last chapter (Chapter 10) focuses entirely on skills and subsystems. The writers offer their suggestions for teaching listening, speaking, pronunciation, reading, writing, grammar and vocabulary (in this order), and then mention additional sources where tutors can find more teaching ideas. Attaching a list of other popular ELT books may be quite useful for many readers but at the same time it provides further evidence that the present book is written rather for amateurs. Generally speaking, there are a lot of positive things that can be said about the volume. It is very timely, up-to-date and devoted to an important topic. The chapters are also meant to be interactive as each chapter, preceded by questions for reflection, encourages the reader to draw on his or her own experiences, become more involved in participating in the authors' analysis, and enhances the reader's understanding of the concepts being introduced. Moreover, the book is rich in case studies illustrating the authors' comments with easy-to-understand authentic examples of tutoring experiences. Finally, a lot of readers may find the book practical and therefore helpful, especially non-specialist native speaker teachers of English from ESL countries whose tutees are immigrants. Of course, it is always possible to find fault with any publication and this volume is no exception here. Being so general, the book can hardly be equally helpful for trained one-to-one EFL tutors of English because a lot of the information seems to be just a repetition of what is taught in basic English language teaching courses. To my mind, the book would have gained if there had been separate sections or chapter devoted to tutoring immigrants, children, adults, perhaps characteristic variables of EFL and ESL tutoring contexts. A concluding chapter to provide a good match for the introduction chapter could also have been expected. Finally, as the book is written by native speakers of English themselves, it is a pity that there are grammatical mistakes (“Questions can included …” p. 90, “One learner remember flipping …” p. 102). Overall, the authors provide a comprehensive coverage of one-on-one teaching with an emphasis on practical considerations, and the book will certainly find a place on the shelves of many ELT libraries. Yet, had some of the suggestions made above been included, I would have found it much more convincing as a book from which not only inexperienced (pre-service) teachers would benefit. ska Dorota Werbin ska 8 76-200 Słupsk, Poland Institute of Modern Languages, Pomeranian University, Słowian E-mail address: [email protected]
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.system.2015.10.001
ka Lugossi. Candlin and Mynard Stories and Storyline (Teaching English to Young Learners), Sharon Ahlquist, Re Epublishing, Hong Kong (2015). Ebook http://www.candlinandmynard.com/. 148 pp.
Once upon a time… I was in a rapt audience when the late Terry Pratchett scored even more than the usual nod- and smilecount with his account of ‘narrativium’ as the unseen but ever-present 119th element infusing human life-stories and enterprises. This engaging book, the first of a new e-series, is the testament by the two authors to their belief (and, for me, convincing demonstration) that the power of story has much more to offer to ELT learners than simply a brighter and more memorable way to expose them to continuous discourse. The book is structured as below Section 1: The Theory and Practice of Using Stories and Children's Literature in the Classroom. e e e e e
Chapter Chapter Chapter Chapter Chapter
1: 2: 3: 4: 5:
Young Learners The Power of Stories Using Stories in the Foreign Language Class e Frequently Asked Questions How to Use Stories in Class e Practical Ideas How to do Research with Stories
170
Book reviews / System 55 (2015) 158e171
Section 2: The Storyline Approach in Theory and Practice e e e e e
Chapter Chapter Chapter Chapter Chapter
6: The Storyline Approach 7: Storyline e Our Street 8: Storyline Topics for Different Age Groups 9: Research into Storyline 10: Stories in the Classroom from Enthusiasm to Daily Practice
There are also two Appendices, on Picture Books organised by theme, and on useful websites for finding and using stories. The focus of the book is on Young Learners in the broad sense of the term, meaning children from 6 to 16, but usefully the different manifestations of story-use and the different techniques that can be used with them are often discussed with reference to smaller age spans. The reader can thus trace the subtle or more fundamental adjustments that need to be made to fit the different stages of learners’ cognitive, emotional and self-regulatory development as well as their language levels. Both authors are teacher educators as well as teachers. The research discussed concerns not only responses by Young Learners to the approaches suggested but also the developing understandings of teachers working out their own styles and strategies for making use of stories. This gives the book a dual value for its insights into both classroom and teacher education concerns. The text itself is somewhat informal in style and indeed there is much narrative interwoven with the description and analysis. This is particularly striking in the accounts of research undertaken by the authors themselves. These are conveyed in very much the ‘tell the story of your research project’ mode favoured by some (but not all) academic supervisors, in the UK at least. The informality and sometimes openly exhortatory tone of the text make for a very reader-friendly piece of work and no doubt this was a deliberate choice on the part of authors and editor. My only worry with this is that, while there are strong principles and good research underlying the pleasant surface, maybe in the sterner sort of teacher education and research cultures the style might diminish the chances of the book being recognised as the solid and important piece of work it is. That would be a loss for the sterner sorts, but it is an issue to consider. ka Lugossi) and The main teaching contexts from which the experiences and practical examples are drawn are Hungary (Re Sweden (Sharon Ahlquist). An ungenerous reader might see the book as consisting of two halves. In spite of the more general ‘Theory and Practice’ opening chapter, the frequent cross-references and the summarising chapter at the end, the approaches to story use covered are nonetheless in strong contrast even if non-competing and complementary. The differences seem to be strong enough for one to think that justice might have been done to the subjects in two separate works, although my preference would be to see it as a co-operation between two colleagues with strong enthusiasms in different areas of a very broad field which are actually linked by Terry Pratchett's ‘narrativium’. ka Lugossi gives a lively and impassioned account of the perhaps more familiar orientation of classroom In Part One, Re story use e a teacher supporting learners' experience of hearing, seeing and/or reading narrative texts, often with strong visual component. Her accounts of research undertaken both with teachers and learners are particularly vivid and convincing. However, it is the second part e the account of ‘Storyline’ e that many readers may find breaks really new ground for them. ‘Storyline’ is a simulation-like approach, well known since the 1960s from some mainstream educational contexts, having apparently started in Glasgow primary schools. It is not an approach that I, at least, had encountered in the world of ELT for Young Learners. Sharon Ahlquist brings long experience in ‘Storyline’ use from her work in Sweden. I felt that perhaps covering a little more of the history and basic principles of ’Storyline’ at the very beginning of the section would have provided useful scaffolding for newcomers. The fully-described example of an often-used scenario e ‘Our Street’ -does, however give at an early stage a very clear idea of how dynamics and procedures may work. Ahlquist discusses ways in which learners may be induced to inhabit stories themselves, playing their parts in them, even taking on roles and to a large extent determining how the stories work themselves out to a conclusion, often over extended periods of time. Typically, progress is documented by visual means such as a frieze or a map on permanent display in the class, on which subtle changes introduced by teachers or ‘characters’ may not only track progress but trigger a new episode. ‘Narrativium’ is indeed present here. There is much that recalled the once very popular Simulation techniques that were in use with adult learners in places such as the British Council's English Language Teaching Institute during the 1980s. However, the strongly human values promoted, the more open-ended possibilities and the commitment of large spans of time to the approach seem to be the crucial distinguishing features of ‘Storyline’ as described here. As a new-ish user of Kindle and other e-book formats for reading fiction and one who has found those experiences tolerable, I was interested to find out how I would manage with my first encounter with factual material in e-book form. I read the book both on my normal tablet computer and on a Kindle. Navigating was easy in both formats but, although wordsearches within the text may allow more fine-grained inspection of the content, having to use these rather than an index still felt uncomfortable. There are numerous links from the text to resources and examples to be found outside, including story-readings on You Tube. The book also has a webpage with a wealth of supplementary materials. All of these links worked extremely well with my Samsung Galaxy tablet and reading the text with frequent excursions outside was invigorating. However, not all the necessary file types can be handled by a Kindle so the experience was more pallid and frustrating using this device.
Book reviews / System 55 (2015) 158e171
171
This is a work which will provide an extremely inspiring and friendly grounding for teachers in the approaches to storyuse that are covered. It is also something that because of its excellent research content I intend to use with MA-level students on a Young Learners module, although maybe with a caveat to be cautious about reproducing the informal narrative style in the stiffer climate of assignment writing! Shelagh Rixon School of Education, University of Leicester, United Kingdom E-mail address: [email protected]
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.system.2015.10.003
169
the obvious usefulness of this chapter, there are again issues, such as the use of the mother tongue or doing tasks between the tutoring sessions (aspects of homework) that are part of any syllabus of an ELT methodology course. I found Chapter 8 on teaching one-to-one sessions the least successful. Not only is the title a poor choice, since this is supposed to be what the whole book is about, but also some of the information it describes, for instance, the section devoted to establishing and building rapport, albeit useful, could be more logically inserted in other places of the book, such as Chapter 3, treating the tutor-learner relationship. In contrast, I found Chapter 9 about using technology in one-to-one teaching a valuable addition to the existing literature on this topic. Readers will find here very useful information about structuring online sessions with details about conducting initial sessions, potential benefits and challenges of technology using, as well as information about language learning programs and apps. Their writing about technology in the context of one-on-one teaching is certainly up-to-date. The last chapter (Chapter 10) focuses entirely on skills and subsystems. The writers offer their suggestions for teaching listening, speaking, pronunciation, reading, writing, grammar and vocabulary (in this order), and then mention additional sources where tutors can find more teaching ideas. Attaching a list of other popular ELT books may be quite useful for many readers but at the same time it provides further evidence that the present book is written rather for amateurs. Generally speaking, there are a lot of positive things that can be said about the volume. It is very timely, up-to-date and devoted to an important topic. The chapters are also meant to be interactive as each chapter, preceded by questions for reflection, encourages the reader to draw on his or her own experiences, become more involved in participating in the authors' analysis, and enhances the reader's understanding of the concepts being introduced. Moreover, the book is rich in case studies illustrating the authors' comments with easy-to-understand authentic examples of tutoring experiences. Finally, a lot of readers may find the book practical and therefore helpful, especially non-specialist native speaker teachers of English from ESL countries whose tutees are immigrants. Of course, it is always possible to find fault with any publication and this volume is no exception here. Being so general, the book can hardly be equally helpful for trained one-to-one EFL tutors of English because a lot of the information seems to be just a repetition of what is taught in basic English language teaching courses. To my mind, the book would have gained if there had been separate sections or chapter devoted to tutoring immigrants, children, adults, perhaps characteristic variables of EFL and ESL tutoring contexts. A concluding chapter to provide a good match for the introduction chapter could also have been expected. Finally, as the book is written by native speakers of English themselves, it is a pity that there are grammatical mistakes (“Questions can included …” p. 90, “One learner remember flipping …” p. 102). Overall, the authors provide a comprehensive coverage of one-on-one teaching with an emphasis on practical considerations, and the book will certainly find a place on the shelves of many ELT libraries. Yet, had some of the suggestions made above been included, I would have found it much more convincing as a book from which not only inexperienced (pre-service) teachers would benefit. ska Dorota Werbin ska 8 76-200 Słupsk, Poland Institute of Modern Languages, Pomeranian University, Słowian E-mail address: [email protected]
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.system.2015.10.001
ka Lugossi. Candlin and Mynard Stories and Storyline (Teaching English to Young Learners), Sharon Ahlquist, Re Epublishing, Hong Kong (2015). Ebook http://www.candlinandmynard.com/. 148 pp.
Once upon a time… I was in a rapt audience when the late Terry Pratchett scored even more than the usual nod- and smilecount with his account of ‘narrativium’ as the unseen but ever-present 119th element infusing human life-stories and enterprises. This engaging book, the first of a new e-series, is the testament by the two authors to their belief (and, for me, convincing demonstration) that the power of story has much more to offer to ELT learners than simply a brighter and more memorable way to expose them to continuous discourse. The book is structured as below Section 1: The Theory and Practice of Using Stories and Children's Literature in the Classroom. e e e e e
Chapter Chapter Chapter Chapter Chapter
1: 2: 3: 4: 5:
Young Learners The Power of Stories Using Stories in the Foreign Language Class e Frequently Asked Questions How to Use Stories in Class e Practical Ideas How to do Research with Stories
170
Book reviews / System 55 (2015) 158e171
Section 2: The Storyline Approach in Theory and Practice e e e e e
Chapter Chapter Chapter Chapter Chapter
6: The Storyline Approach 7: Storyline e Our Street 8: Storyline Topics for Different Age Groups 9: Research into Storyline 10: Stories in the Classroom from Enthusiasm to Daily Practice
There are also two Appendices, on Picture Books organised by theme, and on useful websites for finding and using stories. The focus of the book is on Young Learners in the broad sense of the term, meaning children from 6 to 16, but usefully the different manifestations of story-use and the different techniques that can be used with them are often discussed with reference to smaller age spans. The reader can thus trace the subtle or more fundamental adjustments that need to be made to fit the different stages of learners’ cognitive, emotional and self-regulatory development as well as their language levels. Both authors are teacher educators as well as teachers. The research discussed concerns not only responses by Young Learners to the approaches suggested but also the developing understandings of teachers working out their own styles and strategies for making use of stories. This gives the book a dual value for its insights into both classroom and teacher education concerns. The text itself is somewhat informal in style and indeed there is much narrative interwoven with the description and analysis. This is particularly striking in the accounts of research undertaken by the authors themselves. These are conveyed in very much the ‘tell the story of your research project’ mode favoured by some (but not all) academic supervisors, in the UK at least. The informality and sometimes openly exhortatory tone of the text make for a very reader-friendly piece of work and no doubt this was a deliberate choice on the part of authors and editor. My only worry with this is that, while there are strong principles and good research underlying the pleasant surface, maybe in the sterner sort of teacher education and research cultures the style might diminish the chances of the book being recognised as the solid and important piece of work it is. That would be a loss for the sterner sorts, but it is an issue to consider. ka Lugossi) and The main teaching contexts from which the experiences and practical examples are drawn are Hungary (Re Sweden (Sharon Ahlquist). An ungenerous reader might see the book as consisting of two halves. In spite of the more general ‘Theory and Practice’ opening chapter, the frequent cross-references and the summarising chapter at the end, the approaches to story use covered are nonetheless in strong contrast even if non-competing and complementary. The differences seem to be strong enough for one to think that justice might have been done to the subjects in two separate works, although my preference would be to see it as a co-operation between two colleagues with strong enthusiasms in different areas of a very broad field which are actually linked by Terry Pratchett's ‘narrativium’. ka Lugossi gives a lively and impassioned account of the perhaps more familiar orientation of classroom In Part One, Re story use e a teacher supporting learners' experience of hearing, seeing and/or reading narrative texts, often with strong visual component. Her accounts of research undertaken both with teachers and learners are particularly vivid and convincing. However, it is the second part e the account of ‘Storyline’ e that many readers may find breaks really new ground for them. ‘Storyline’ is a simulation-like approach, well known since the 1960s from some mainstream educational contexts, having apparently started in Glasgow primary schools. It is not an approach that I, at least, had encountered in the world of ELT for Young Learners. Sharon Ahlquist brings long experience in ‘Storyline’ use from her work in Sweden. I felt that perhaps covering a little more of the history and basic principles of ’Storyline’ at the very beginning of the section would have provided useful scaffolding for newcomers. The fully-described example of an often-used scenario e ‘Our Street’ -does, however give at an early stage a very clear idea of how dynamics and procedures may work. Ahlquist discusses ways in which learners may be induced to inhabit stories themselves, playing their parts in them, even taking on roles and to a large extent determining how the stories work themselves out to a conclusion, often over extended periods of time. Typically, progress is documented by visual means such as a frieze or a map on permanent display in the class, on which subtle changes introduced by teachers or ‘characters’ may not only track progress but trigger a new episode. ‘Narrativium’ is indeed present here. There is much that recalled the once very popular Simulation techniques that were in use with adult learners in places such as the British Council's English Language Teaching Institute during the 1980s. However, the strongly human values promoted, the more open-ended possibilities and the commitment of large spans of time to the approach seem to be the crucial distinguishing features of ‘Storyline’ as described here. As a new-ish user of Kindle and other e-book formats for reading fiction and one who has found those experiences tolerable, I was interested to find out how I would manage with my first encounter with factual material in e-book form. I read the book both on my normal tablet computer and on a Kindle. Navigating was easy in both formats but, although wordsearches within the text may allow more fine-grained inspection of the content, having to use these rather than an index still felt uncomfortable. There are numerous links from the text to resources and examples to be found outside, including story-readings on You Tube. The book also has a webpage with a wealth of supplementary materials. All of these links worked extremely well with my Samsung Galaxy tablet and reading the text with frequent excursions outside was invigorating. However, not all the necessary file types can be handled by a Kindle so the experience was more pallid and frustrating using this device.
Book reviews / System 55 (2015) 158e171
171
This is a work which will provide an extremely inspiring and friendly grounding for teachers in the approaches to storyuse that are covered. It is also something that because of its excellent research content I intend to use with MA-level students on a Young Learners module, although maybe with a caveat to be cautious about reproducing the informal narrative style in the stiffer climate of assignment writing! Shelagh Rixon School of Education, University of Leicester, United Kingdom E-mail address: [email protected]
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.system.2015.10.003