Stories are mainly for being enjoyed! However, teachers have become increasing  aware that stories are very  powerful teaching tools and can provide a way of allowing  many different learning threads to be woven together in a meaningful way.

In English language teaching, the enriched contexts of stories also allow teachers to simulate a natural language learning experience in the classroom and to provide  pupils with  opportunities to develop real language learning strategies. In  Krashen's terminology, stories are sources of comprehensible input: while some specific words and phrases that are used in a story may be new, pupils know so much about what happens in stories and have so much knowledge of the world, that they are able to make use of a multitude of linguistic and non-linguistic clues to understand the action and to enjoy the experience. Stories, therefore, are not only fun, they  generate active learning.

In order to be able to exploit  the potential of stories, English  teachers need to know what qualities make a story a good one for the purposes of language teaching. They must also have a range of strategies for using these stories. The aim of the Storytelling project is to support teachers with Internet resources which will help them and thus hopefully, motivate them to use stories with their classes.

The project is funded by the National Distance Education Network for Higher Education (SOFF).  My partners in this project are Bjørn Sørheim, Sogn and Fjordene University College, and Simon Thompson, St. Dominics International School in Portugal. 

Project forum (for project partners only).

2002-2003 Aspects of English teaching

Aspects of English teaching  is  the result of a co-operative project involving colleagues from six colleges of education located throughout Norway. The working title of the project was "Skolebasert Fjernundervisning i Engelsk 1-7 - utvikling av nettbasert bruk av videoopptak fra  eksemplarisk praksis".  Simon Thompson, St. Dominics International School in Portugal, and I contributed the module English in Action to this project.

It was supported by funds from the National Distance Education Network for Higher Education (SOFF). Project co-ordinators were  Kathryn Hermansen and Ninian Millar, Oslo University College.

Sandra Foldvik, 02.10.06 .