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Editorial:
Connecting Through Stories
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American mythologist and teacher Joseph Campbell (1904-1987) told a story about a
colleague who was lecturing on the Hindu concept of maya , that the world is like a
bubble or an illusion. Following class, a student came up to the professor to express her
reservations about the idea. "But maya , I don't get it-it doesn't speak to
me."
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And so it is with stories.
A fairy tale is a proper story for children, but for adults, some changes may be necessary
to make the tale enjoyable as in "The Princess and the Bowling Ball," which is
featured on our cover.
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For different ages,
different stories apply. The maya myth for the university student had no reality
because the world as she knew it was a place to learn from and deal with. But for those
who have lived long enough to have lost loved ones and the landmarks (both physical and
mental) that give one bearings, the concept of the world as an ephemeral bubble seems
quite real indeed.
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This issue of the Forum
is a celebration of story. As Pedersen notes in the lead article, "Storytelling is
the original form of teaching." Great teachers like Plato, Confucius, and Jesus
Christ used stories to connect with their listeners. In the foreign language classroom,
storytelling can provide a foundation for acquisition as well as serve as a vehicle for
language output. Stories also offer a cultural experience with fairy tales dressing
timeless, universal fantasies in national garb, and more contemporary stories mirroring
personal experiences in a particular societal context. Different story genres will appeal
to different audiences, some being attracted to autobiographical narrative and others
preferring the imaginative realms that we have represented in this issue on our Idiom
pages.
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The use of stories to
provide comprehensible input is treated in the articles by Pedersen, McGuire, Stockdale,
and Malkina. They discuss various procedures that teachers can use to make stories more
accessible to their students. A teacher's style of presentation, questioning techniques,
use of imagery-gestures or illustrations accompanying a written text, or exploitation of
story grammar as described in Malkina, facilitate the process by which a student makes
meaning out of a story.
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Two creative ways to use
stories to enhance EFL students' productive use of the language are presented in Hines and
Amtzis. Using "Story Theater," Hines mobilizes a class to stage its own
production of a short story. Besides rendering a dramatic portrayal of a selected story,
the students are responsible for obtaining appropriate props and determining special
effects. The approach is eminently successful (I have seen Hines use this approach with
teachers in Thailand) and connects with the whole person of the learner. Amtzis draws upon
stories to give his students practice in narrative writing. In the spirit of Lawrence
Durell's Alexandria Quartet , students retell a story from the perspective of its
different characters. Through roleplay and a series of tasks set down by the teacher,
students become acquainted with the structure underlying short fiction (cf. Malkina's
story grammar) and begin writing stories of their own.
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We tell stories to come to
terms with the world. The stories provide a perspective to understand what has transpired
in the past and what is happening in the present. Stories can also help us come to terms
with language. Caught up in the characters, aroused by the plot, EFL students can be
energized through storytelling and make connections with English. This issue of Forum
gives you the resources for stories to work their magic.
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