Using Storytelling to Skyrocket Student Proficiency
Are you just beginning your journey using comprehensible input in your French, Spanish, or Italian World Language classes? I remember when I “got bit” by the CI bug over 5 years ago: I quickly became obsessed! I couldn’t stop reading blogs, watching videos, and reaching out to seasoned CI teachers to pick their brains about the best ways to implement CI strategies in my World Language classroom. Not sure what CI is? Check out this blog post to get a basic overview: Unlocking Language Proficiency: The Role of Comprehensible Input in the World Language Classroom.
I’ve experimented with a lot of different comprehension-based strategies over the years, but the one that I use most prominently in my language classroom is TPRS, or Teaching Proficiency through Reading and Storytelling. Although there are many different ways to utilize the TPRS approach—including co-creating stories with your classes—I use this term as more of a generic term to encompass any teaching in the target language in which comprehensible and compelling messages are communicated to students through the medium of storytelling.
In this post, I’m going to share the benefits of storytelling to increase student comprehension and engagement, walk you through what a typical CI/TPRS lesson looks like, and share some resources that will help you begin your journey as a target language storyteller! And don’t worry. If you already use CI in your classes, you’ll surely find some new ideas and resources in this blog post to help improve and refine your comprehension-based practices.
The Benefits of Storytelling in the World Language Classroom
When you use stories to teach language, you communicate through a medium that lends itself extraordinarily well to the transmission of ideas and messages, which ultimately facilitates comprehension. And if our goal as World Language teachers is to comprehensibly communicate to students in the target language, then it makes sense that telling stories is a great way to get students to understand your messages.
Stories have been used for eons as a way to communicate language, culture, values, and tradition. It’s a form of entertainment that engages and excites the audience. As children, we all experience language through stories that captivate and mesmerize us, so it makes sense that we should use storytelling as a way to engage our language learners.
Here are some of the other benefits of using stories in the World Language classroom:
Students forget they’re learning a language. They focus so intently on the story—the characters, the plot, the dialogue, the ending—that the language becomes secondary.
Stories can engage even the most reluctant learners. We’ve all had those kids who are just not ready (or willing) to learn a new language. TPRS engages these students and allows them to acquire language despite their hesitancy.
Stories become the focal point of class discussions. What do you talk to novice language learners about in the target language? Their language skills are far too basic and simplistic to have interesting conversations, and the most basic language skills they have often lead to uninteresting conversations. (What’s your name? How old are you? Where do you live?) When you have a story as a focal point of your class discussions, there are SO many more interesting conversations you can have. (What is the title of the story? Who is the main character? How old is he? Where does he live? What is he like? What’s the name of his friend? What is the main problem in the story? Do you like the main character? Why or why not? etc.)
Stories allow you to build in repetition: you’re able to incorporate high-frequency verbs and grammatical structures, target important vocabulary related to the story itself, and spiral previously taught language that students should already know (but maybe they don’t!). Students can tell when you are giving them an explicit review of old content, but when you embed your review of old content into a new and engaging story, it’s not so obvious to them, yet they still reap the same benefits.
What does a Storytelling Activity look like?
When I tell a story to my class, it is a whole-class activity in which my role as the teacher is storyteller, comprehension facilitator, and conversation moderator. During a storytelling activity, my job is to tell the story in as engaging a manner as possible. I ask my students to make predictions, I put on the theatrics during dramatic parts of the story, and I make sure to connect the story to my students’ lives. In order to verify comprehension, I ask comprehension questions to ensure students are paying attention and understanding key points. These questions could be yes/no, true/false, or I might ask basic open-ended questions. But the most important part of my storytelling activities is that the activity is meant to be a conversation. Sure, I am telling a story and students are taking notes, but I also make it a point to ask them what they think of the characters, plot, etc. I ask them to make connections between the story and their own lives. I make sure to ask targeted questions that make them think more critically and reflectively.
The role of my students is three-fold: 1) their primary goal is to understand; 2) their secondary goal is to ask questions when they do NOT understand; 3) they are to take notes of important language features of the story.
Realistically speaking, all of my stories are presented to students as Google Slides presentations that I project on my whiteboard. On each slide, I will have two-four sentences of the text, along with images to facilitate comprehension, as well as key translations off to the side to ensure that students are understanding. Here are a few examples of what my slides look like:
Students receive a Fill-in-the-Blank Cloze Handout that contains the story text with missing words and expressions for them to fill in as I am telling the story. I find that this helps keep them engaged and on-task while I tell the story. It also allows me to visually scan the room and see who is paying attention and who needs redirection.
After I tell the story, I always make sure to give students an informal 3-question comprehension check that covers the main plot points of the story, so I can easily gauge how well my students have understood the most salient points of the story.
Afterwards, students work on comprehension-based activities. These activities are important, because they allow students to: 1) reread the text more slowly and with a higher level of attention to detail; 2) review target vocabulary and language structures from the text; 3) solidify comprehension and identify areas of misunderstanding.
At the end of the class period, I hand out a quick Exit Ticket that I normally collect for a quick and easy grade to enter into my grade book. I’ll also assign a 10-question Reading Quiz that I will give students a few days to prepare for. The reading quiz should not take place the same day you tell the story, because students need time to absorb and digest the story. I have them use their completed Cloze Transcript, the Comprehension Activities, and any other Reading Extension Activities we may have completed in class as study materials to help them prepare for the reading quiz.
Begin (or continue) your CI/TPRS Journey TODAY!
This year, I began refining some of the CI/TPRS resources that I’ve used in my own classroom for the past 5 years. I am so thrilled to announce that the stories that my students have loved over the years are now available on my TpT shop! Each story includes an EDITABLE Google Slides Presentation with accompanying EDITABLE Google Doc.
All stories and activities are fully editable, so you can modify them to best suit your students’ needs. Each story comes with a Fill-In-the-Blank Cloze Activity, a Story Transcript, Comprehension Activities, a Comprehension Exit Ticket, a 10-question Reading Quiz, as well as detailed directions and suggestions for implementation, tips on using CI/TPRS in your classroom, and Reading Extension Activity Ideas.
Here are the stories that are currently available in my TpT Shop. Click on the thumbnails below to learn more and to preview each story!
I hope this post has helped inspire you to begin using CI/TPRS in your World Language classes! If you already use comprehension-based strategies in your classes, I hope you’ve gleaned some ideas and/or resources that might make your practice go a bit more smoothly. I’ve seen tremendous success with this approach over the years, and I’m sure you will, too! If you’re interested in learning more, or if you have any specific questions for me, you can always reach out to me at michael@worldlanguageresources.com. I’d be more than happy to help!
Happy language teaching,
~ Michael
