ESL Lessons: Story Writing for Elementary Students

Anybody who's taught English to non-native speakers must at some stage of their career, in a lazy moment, asked their students to write a story, only to be faced with inactivity and embarrassing silence; it's happened to me, if not to anyone else.

This can be a stressful situation for the students and the teacher, and is usually the recipe for a lot of wasted time and a very frustrated teacher.

The teacher needs to take a moment to think about what it is they are asking the students to do here. If you ask a native speaker to do this, you are asking them to;
1 Invent a story.
2 Write it down on paper.

If you ask a non-native speaker to do this, you are asking them to;
1 Invent a story.
2 Use a foreign language.
3 Write it down on paper.

So, the teacher is actually asking the non-native speaker to go through an extra step than the native speaker. This could quite easily be the factor resulting in the students' inability to do the task.

The teacher should also take into consideration cultural aspects in some parts of the world, where imagination and free expression aren't encouraged. Either one, or both of these factors are likely to produce problems in producing coherent written material.

The answer seems to be to me, to eliminate the extra step and/or the lack of imagination in your students.

Selecting a suitable sequence of pictures (like the ones on the right here) which tell a story will eliminate step one of the 3 steps above and make up for any lack of imagination your students may have.

The older the students, the longer the sequence of pictures they can deal with. For small children, six pictures has been sufficient in my experience, for children aged 8-12, between ten and fifteen pictures has worked well for me, and for the older students, the sky's the limit (I guess, I've never actually applied the following technique with students over the age of 15).

Step 1 ; The teacher should prepare the sequence of pictures so that the students can clearly see them. For small children, flashcards that can be stuck to the board are ideal. For older students, the pictures are best presented on a worksheet. This allows them to make notes and leaves no excuse for not finishing as the task can then be set as homework.

Step 2 ; Go through the pictures and try to elicit a verb for each one. Write the verbs on the board and encourage the students to make a note of them on their worksheets. For young children, the teacher will assume responsibility for recording the words by writing them on the board.

This stage can be turned into a game whereby students are awarded points for the most interesting verbs. With older students, a selection of verbs for each picture can be created, and the students can choose which one to use later on. This will ensure that the teacher doesn't have to endure the pain of reading 30 identical stories. (More if you are working in a less developed country with a higher number of students in each class.)

Step 3 ; This step is for good elementary students upwards, and should be ignored for small children.

Ask the students to convert the verbs from their present tense form, to the past simple tense form. Again, this step can be turned into a competition by awarding points for the fastest correct answer.

Step 4 ; The teacher should then try to elicit sentences from the students, using the past tense form of the verbs allotted for each picture. The teacher could try a "verbs into a hat" activity here, whereby students pick a piece of paper from a bag/hat with a verb on it, and complete a sentence. Alternatively, students can simply put up their hands to make a sentence. Points can be given for every correct sentence made, and extra points for the most interesting and creative sentences.

Step 5 ; Here, the youngest learners can write out their sentences and draw a picture to make a colourful display to put on the wall, or send home to mother and father. This either earns the teacher respect from their employer (and a pay rise? Probably not.) Or, "isn't he/she a great teacher" glee factor from the parents (which will hopefully get back to your employer, but probably still not result in a pay increase.)

The older learners can do a similar presentation, minus the picture and colouring (although you could try it, I'd be interested to know the reaction). At this point they will also need some guidance as to how to put the sentences into paragraphs.

Step 6 ; Ask some of the students to read their stories out in front of the class. This not only lengthens the time of the activity but also provides reading practice for the students (at least this is what I tell my boss when he sees me sitting down with a coffee, listening to endless stuttering).

They say that preparation is everything; in this activity it is certainly the difference between reading interesting work and feeling good about your students and your teaching, or, reading reams of guff and feeling that your students are pre-evolutionary and that as a teacher you'd make a good tea- lady.

Obviously, ensure that the pictures you choose are suitable for the students' language level.

Take care to choose pictures that can be clearly reproduced by a photocopier or seen from the back of the classroom. Pictures from newspapers tend to copy particularly badly, so best avoid these unless you want stories about smudges. Cartoon books and ESL books normally have useful picture stories to use. If you are particularly creative you can draw your own story.

Take care not to choose pictures that can be misconstrued; I once used a set of pictures that included one of a man with a cat sat on his lap. It seemed innocent enough to me, but one nice 10 year old boy wrote, "the man makes a baby with the cat". Watch out for that type of thing!

If students become enthusiastic about this type of activity, then the teacher can encourage them to go home and find a set of pictures to bring to school and write about. This type of thing goes down well with parents and makes you look like a serious teacher (if you aren't already).

There are a number of ways to get hold of suitable sequences of pictures to use for these activities:

1. Draw them yourself: If you are a decent artist then you are sure to be able to draw at least a few such simple stories. I made a number of them in the past, some I took some time over, others were knocked up in a few minutes.

2. Get them from the internet: Google the words "story board" and you will get loads of sequenced pictures. I have done it for you in fact, just click here - story board.

3. Get picture stories from ESL teaching books: Spend some time flicking through a large number of ESL course books and almost every one of them will have a picture sequenced story or two. Photocopy every one you find and within the space of an hour or so you will have quite a collection.

4. Get picture stories from cartoon books: I have found the Asterix books, Tintin books, Raymond Briggs's Father Christmas, Gentleman Jim and Fungus the Bogeyman all to be good sources of picture sequenced stories. There are lots of other similar books too.

The first time you do this activity with a student or set of students, it will probably produce mixed results. Some students will seem like budding Shakespears if you are lucky, but many will appear to be destined to life of illiteracy. Don't worry, repeat the activity a number of times with different pictures, over a number of weeks, and I'm sure that you will see an improvement in your students' writing.

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