When I was a kid at school I loved getting the teacher off point. My favourite teacher for that was Mr Whitehouse, my Modern Studies teacher. Modern Studies was also one of my best subjects. I think there was a definite link between storytelling in Mr Whitehouse’s class, remembering the facts he gave us in his engineered stories (well, I know that now) and being able to put it all together into reflective essays.

In Modern Languages what is it we are trying to do? We’re trying, in an ideal world, to get kids to use language, not just memorise bits of vocabulary and verb endings. We’re trying, ultimately, to get them to tell stories in a foreign language. Using a story to get the point across is the best way to that. Getting the kids to make up a story to remember a point is an even better way to do that.

Here’s an example:
Take the VerbCast, so eloquently described by one of the PiE students using it to learn her French verbs. When she talked about the past tense she could picture a red screen and the words dancing across this red screen right in front of her eyes. That’s a story helping her remember abstract elements. A PowerPoint on verb endings could work in the same way: all feminine words could come with a bright pink background, all masculines with a blue background, plurals with a green one. Verbal explanations or sentences could be presented against different backgrounds (but consistently the same ones throughout the school year/career).

Past Papers and storytelling
Past Papers could contain colour-based or graphic-based cues. Let’s face it; the same themes are going to come up in those exams until the end of all time. Why not tell a story using images which represent this key vocabulary, associating the characters of a story with the key themes in reading and listening papers?

On a simpler basis
If you have a lot of vocabulary to present to students why not get them to do all the work: find out what the words mean, put them together in a funny story en franglais or auf Deutschisch (mixtures of English and foreign tongue) and then tell the class their story.

If you’ve got this far - well done. Just remember: kids love stories. What stories have you and your students told today to try to learn something new?

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