ESL Story Writing
Attempting to get students with only a basic command of English to write a story sounds like a pretty ambitious project to begin with. However, by breaking the process down into different stages, it becomes possible to obtain short pieces of writing from even the youngest and weakest of students, without taking years off of your life expectancy.
In this lens I will take teachers through the various steps that I have found can produce structured ESL story writing lessons and quality work.
Do You Teach Storywriting?
Story Writing can be a Very Frustrating Lesson
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.
Why Can't Students Write Stories?
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.
Use a Series of Pictures in ESL Story Writing Lessons
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).
The Story Writing ESL Lesson Technique

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).
Choosing Pictures for ESL Story Writing Activities
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).
Where To Find Suitable Picture Stories
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.
Some Useful Picture Story Books
Don't Panic
Story Writing Resources
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Find Teaching English as a Foreign/Second Language Jobs
Links to websites that regularly display TEFl & ESL jobs.
- TEFL.com
A website which has been providing TEFL career opportunities since 1997 with jobs added daily from over 15000 registered employers. - ESL Job World
ESL jobs from all over the world, each continent has its own section for ease of searching. - Dave's ESL Cafe
Probably the best-known and longest running ESL job site on the internet. Jobs added daily and there are always hundreds of current vacancies. - ESL Emplyment.com
Advice, articles and resources for English as a Foreign Language teacher but most important of all is a list of worldwide teaching vacancies. - ESL Base.com
Eslbase provides English language teachers with information, advice and resources. On eslbase you'll find help if you're just starting out, a directory of teacher training courses, job adverts, teaching resources, discussion forums and much much more.
Other Useful Sites
Reader Feedback
I don't pretend to be any sort of expert on this topic, but this system has worked quite well in my lessons in the past. I hope it can help others to induce their students to write something intelligible. There are probably a lot of holes in this little piece of advice, so I'm very happy to receive your comments in the place provided here.
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- GonnaFly GonnaFly Oct 31, 2009 @ 1:57 pm
- Another excellent lens! Even for EFL (is that a "word") this is a useful idea.
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- nickupton nickupton Oct 23, 2009 @ 12:10 am
- Yes, basically this allows the teacher to keep things under their control and lead the students in the right direction.[in reply to spirituality]
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- spirituality spirituality Oct 21, 2009 @ 2:40 am
- Great idea - also makes sure the kids are not inventing stories they don't have the words for yet (or too many new words). And by selecting the series of pictures well, you can go around making sure they learn words from all kinds of social and physical situations.
English Grammar
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Lensmaster nickupton has been a member since June 23 2007, has rated 146 lenses, favorited 71, and has created 63 lenses from scratch. This member's top-ranked page is "The Sneetches by Dr Seuss". See all my lenses
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