Writing and Reading the Story
From Aural to Written Input
Learners need to receive considerable amounts of CI to acquire language. Dr. Wynne Wong, a professor from the Ohio State University, is famously quoted all over the CI Universe as saying: “A flood of input must precede a trickle of output”. Naturally, the first job of the Beginning Storyteller is to provide substantial aural and written input for learners to process. If I had my druthers, though, the storytelling process would be comprised of upwards of 90 percent aural input to mimic the natural language acquisition process. A child does not receive any written CI for many years when she first learns to speak her native tongue.
At the time of this writing, my daughter is in love with an old book called "Bugs Bunny's Birthday Surprise". At four years old, she is familiar with her letters, but is not ready to begin reading on her own. Yet, she can hold this book, look at the pictures, and recite to me the entire story (approximately 1000 words), almost word-for-word. For her, nearly 100 percent of storytelling process is aural input. If you have kids, I am sure you can tell me a similar story. The results of aural input to such an advanced learner are astounding to me.
While little children cannot receive written input, our learners are perfectly capable to do just that. This is so important because aural CI is difficult to sustain over the course of an entire term, even the most skilled CI storyteller. It can be quite the mental chore to constantly be creating something new. Because of this real potential for burnout, we need a system to continue the flow of CI while giving ourselves a needed respite to recharge our storytelling batteries. Now is the time to switch over to a written version of the story and accompanying CI tasks that will extend the flow of CI, and lead learners from input to output.
Writing more than one Version of the Story
If you had a student scribe during the storytelling process, you have already done the hardest part of writing out a version of the story for your learners to read. You have a rough draft of the story with all the relevant details you could ask for. Now all that's left is to write out these details into a Word document and edit it enough to become a coherently written story.
If you did story summaries in a Word document to review with learners, you're even one step further ahead. The story is already typed out, leaving you with just the task of revising this first draft into something readable. Let us imagine that we just finished telling a story, did a review of the story in a Word document with our students, and now we are done teaching for the day. Back at the computer, we pull open the Word document to find the following summary of our story:
There is a young woman. Her name is Anita. She is from Austria and lives in Vienna, which is the capital of Austria. Anita is 22 years old. She lives with her 85-year-old grandma. Anita is a university student but is not very smart. She has three classes: Spanish, art, and math. Anita is nervous because she has a difficult math test at 11 a.m. Right now, it is 9 a.m. and Anita is at home. She thinks: Oh no! I have a difficult math test at 11 a.m. I don't want to take my math test! It's too hard! I need to think of a good excuse. Finally, Anita thinks of a good excuse. She takes out her phone and calls her math professor. She says she can't go to class because she's in the hospital and is dead. It's actually a bad excuse.
We could give this to our students as is and call it good. It is a written version of the story, and it will provide additional CI to learners. But this is the bare minimum, and we can get a much better product out of the raw materials we have now.
With a little time and effort, you could refine this into two or three separate readings that scaffold learners from easy input to more difficult. This gradual increase in difficulty makes the more advanced reading more accessible. It lets us give learners harder input while maintaining comprehensibility.
After much experimentation, I prefer writing only two separate versions of the story. Partly, I am lazy. But I have also found that students start to get bored of the story if they must read too many versions of the same story. It seems that two iterations is the optimal number and, therefore, there are diminishing returns on the effort needed to create additional versions.
I will admit that writing two versions of the story requires a lot of extra work, but I find it personally rewarding. Not every instructor is going to find this part enjoyable. Even though I love writing these stories, there are times when I do not feel like putting in the effort. In that case, it helps to have two pre-prepared texts that run parallel to the script and the story we tell in class. That way we have a story that learners can get written CI from, but we don't have to spend any time creating the materials.
Know thyself and plan accordingly. If this is you, you may be interested in the C.I. Immersion Curriculum. At present, these materials are only available in Spanish.
The Complete Version
Turning our rough draft into a more readable and useful-for-acquisition story takes some skill, but it is not that hard to learn. Begin by making as complete a version of the story as possible. In my experience, it helps to set a target word count for these stories, which will be longer as learners progress in the language. For level one, a good target word count is around 200-300 words. For level two, a story of 250-500 words is a good target. For level three and above, the complete version should be at least 500 words. As you are writing, be sure to keep the concept of “i + 1” in mind. You can include unfamiliar vocabulary, but sure to gloss such words to make the reading process less daunting to learners. I do not count unfamiliar vocabulary towards the overall word count goals.
Writing a story from a rough draft is so open-ended that I cannot tell you exactly how you should go about it. My strategy is to rephrase what we have spoken out loud in a new way. I do not want learners reading the exact same thing they heard in class, but I want the information to be roughly the same. This forces learners to process the story in a new way with a slightly new construction.
Let's look at a potential example.
There is a young woman. Her name is Anita. She is from Austria and lives in Vienna, which is the capital of Austria. Anita is 22 years old. She lives with her 85-year-old grandma.
...turns into...
Anita is a 22 year-old woman from Austria. She lives in the country's capital: Vienna. Anita lives with her grandmother, who is 85 years old.
This information is the same as the summary, but it is phrased in a new way. It will be familiar to students but will require a fresh processing of the text, which will help build their mental model of language. Let us continue, but this time let's add some details.
Anita is not very smart. Anita is a university student but is not very smart. She has three classes: Spanish, art, and math.
...turns into...
Anita is a student. She goes to the University of Vienna. She doesn't like being a student there because she's not very smart. She wants to be smart, and that's why she's a student. This semester, Anita has three classes. She has a Spanish class, she has an art class, and she has a math class.
You can see that we've taken two sentences and turned them into several. Remember that this is the complete version of the story, and learners will build to this over the coming days. Also note how there is a good amount of repetition, especially of high frequency vocabulary. When I was a Beginning Storyteller, I assumed that teaching a phrase like "she has" would be very simple. Some learners, and especially those who have never studied the language before in any capacity, need to process that phrase many, many times before it becomes automatic. Other learners get it right away. It is important to remember the one who needs more repetition will only benefit from seeing the high-frequency word in context, while the one who gets it right away does not suffer any consequence from an additional repetition. In fact, hearing or reading the phrase in context again helps make those mental pathways stronger. Let us keep going on our story.
Anita is nervous because she has a difficult math test at 11 a.m. Right now, it is 9 a.m. and Anita is at home. She thinks: Oh no! I have a difficult math test at 11 a.m. I don't want to take my math test! It's too hard! I need to think of a good excuse.
...turns into...
Today is Friday. It's 9 o'clock a.m. and Anita is at her house. She thinks to herself: Oh no! I have a difficult math test today! I don't want to take a test! I don't want to go to school! The class is at 11 o'clock... I need to think of a good excuse...
Again, we use similar language as appears in our summary, but writing it in a different way makes it feel somewhat new to learners. The more times they hear this information in slightly different ways, the more CI we can deliver without it becoming an exercise in rote memorization. It also spaces out the repetition in an unpredictable way, which leads to better recall. Let's finish up the story.
Finally, Anita thinks of a good excuse. She takes out her phone and calls her professor. She says she can't go to class because she's in the hospital and is dead. It's actually a bad excuse.
...turns into...
Anita needs to think of a good excuse. She thinks and thinks. Finally, she thinks of an excuse. She thinks it's a good excuse. Anita takes out her phone. She calls her professor to tell her the excuse.
"Hello?", says Anita's professor.
"Hello, professor," says Anita. "This is Anita from your 11am math class. I'm calling to tell you that I won't be able to go to class today."
"Why not?", asks the professor.
"Well, I can't go to class because I am in the hospital."
"Are you okay?", asks the professor.
"No, I'm not okay. Unfortunately, I'm dead."
The professor doesn't say anything. It's in this moment that Anita realizes that her excuse is actually really bad.
Here we have taken the last paragraph and expanded it to include dialogue. It's always a great idea to add dialogue because you can have learners act it out later. There is a tendency to overcomplicate the story when writing it out. To combat this, I always try to keep the vocabulary limited to the in-bounds words we have seen in class previously. You will develop a keen sense of which words your learners know and which ones they don't. Whenever I use a word that I think will be unfamiliar to students, I write out its English definition in the footnotes. It's like a miniature glossary for that particular story. For upper levels that understand more language, you can define it in L2, but for beginners L1 glosses are faster and keep them processing in L2 for more time overall. Let's look at our example complete version of the story.
Anita is a 22-year-old woman from Austria. She lives in the country's capital: Vienna. Anita lives with her grandmother, who is 85 years old. Anita is a student. She goes to the University of Vienna. She doesn't like being a student there because she's not very smart. She wants to be smart, and that's why she's a student. This semester, Anita has three classes. She has a Spanish class, she has an art class, and she has a math class.
Today is Friday. It's 9 o'clock a.m. and Anita is at her house. She thinks to herself: Oh no! I have a difficult math test today! I don't want to take a test! I don't want to go to school! The class is at 11 o'clock... I need to think of a good excuse...
Anita needs to think of a good excuse. She thinks and thinks. Finally, she thinks of an excuse. She thinks it's a good excuse. So, Anita takes out her phone. She calls her professor to tell her the excuse.
"Hello?", says Anita's professor.
"Hello, professor," says Anita. "This is Anita from your 11am math class. I'm calling to tell you that I won't be able to go to class today."
"Why not?", asks the professor.
"Well, I can't go to class because I am in the hospital."
"Are you okay?", asks the professor.
"No, I'm not okay. Unfortunately, I'm dead."
The professor doesn't say anything. It's in this moment that Anita realizes that her excuse is actually really bad.
By my count, there are 253 words in the complete story. Not bad for story for beginners. This story is far from perfect, I know. Fortunately, you are not aiming for perfection. There will always be something I could improve, change, or add. For The Beginning Storyteller, there are diminishing returns on the time spent writing a story for class. I put strict deadlines for typing up stories for class, which means there may not be time for editing and re-writes. I try my best, but my philosophy is that typos and other minor errors are opportunities for learners to see that mistakes can be fixed. Point them out or ask learners if they can spot them. It is a waste of your precious time to pursue the unattainable.
Plot Holes
Sometimes your story will contain plot holes because it is impossible to write a perfect story from the skeleton script. For example, Anita's grandma appears in the story to provide a little background information on Anita, but we never meet her. In a “perfect” story, we would cut her out entirely since she has no purpose. Of course, your orbiting questions may have led you to find out more about the grandma. Perhaps she wants Anita to become a lawyer, but Anita's dream is to do something else, and that's why Anita doesn't do well in school. You can use the written version of the story to fill out the missing details or to add depth that was missing in the oral telling.
On the other hand, adding this detail teaches the L2 word for “grandma”, and teaching learners to communicate in L2 is the whole point of the class. You do not want to throw out good storytelling altogether, but there is a balance for The Beginning Storyteller.
Story Structure
However short my stories end up being, I always use a simple three act structure. While it is possible to extend the acts out indefinitely and create a longer story, I find that this is not necessary, especially at the beginning level.
ACT I
The beginning of your story should introduce us to the main character. In our example, this is Victoria. We should know some things about her. Is she smart? Is she funny? Where is she from? What languages does she speak? Where does she live? In a traditional story, we don't have to know it all right now. In a CI story, it does help to flesh out a description of the main character.
In our example story we learn about Anita. We discover that she is Austrian and lives in Vienna with her grandma. We also learn that Anita not very smart, she is a student at the university, and so on.
In Act I, we learn of some sort of incident or problem that drives the story forward into Act II. In our case, we learn that Anita has a difficult math test and that she needs to come up with an excuse in order to get out of it. In a story as short as this one, Act I lasts but one paragraph.
ACT II
This is where all the building action happens. To be fair, our story doesn't have a lot of action, but there is some. We have a specific scene where Anita is at home and is nervous. We find out that she has a hard math test, and that she needs to come up with an excuse.
Although Anita does not go anywhere in our story, we could extend Act II by having a character go to many locations and talking to many people. For example, imagine that Anita goes to the kitchen and asks her grandmother for some good excuses.
As an extension, you could send Anita on a quest to find the perfect excuse, going to many places to figure out what the excuse will be. Sending the character to many three or more locations and talking to many people is a way to repeat the exact same vocabulary and make it seem like it is new.
However, after much experimentation, I think the sweet spot for such an extension is no more than two locations for any one story. I do not think this is necessary for a CI story unless students are highly engaged, and the instructor is hyper-organized. In general, I prefer to have the character go to at most two places to keep the story from becoming tedious. The problem is that the final version of the story will end up being over 500 words, which is too long for a beginning language student. Of course, they are perfectly capable of reading longer texts, but it can be demoralizing for some of the slower processors. Be sure to keep them in mind as you write out your different versions of the story.
There are some special groups of students, though, and they can extend this part of the story out and stay engaged. This is especially true for learners at more advanced levels. In level three, for example, I would not hesitate to extend Act II much further.
ACT III
The story resolves in Act III. The climax of the story is here, as well as falling action. In a CI story, Act III could last as few as one or two sentences. In complete version, the paragraph when Anita calls her professor is the entirety of Act III. The climax of the story is when Anita gives her excuse to her professor, and the last two sentences are the falling action and resolution.
The Brief Version
With the complete version of the story in hand, it is time to make another version. The goal of this version is to provide an initial comprehensible reading for learners to sink their teeth into. Look through the complete version of the story and look for anything you can rip out. Extra details are not necessary for this reading since the goal is to end up with a barebones version of the story.
We want to make sure we follow the three-act structure even in our brief version of the story. Be careful not to rip out any details that are essential for this pattern. Not every story with three acts is a good One, but most good stories have a three-act structure.
Here's an example of an example of what the brief version of the story could look like:
Anita is a 22-year-old woman who lives in Vienna, Austria. She lives with her 85-year-old grandmother. Anita is a university student but isn't very smart. This semester, Anita has three classes. She studies Spanish, art class, and math. It's 9 a.m. on a Friday, and Anita is at her house. She has a hard math test at 11 a.m. She thinks: Oh no! I have a difficult math test today! I need to think of an excuse... Finally, Anita thinks of an excuse. She takes out her phone and calls her professor to tell her the excuse. "This is Anita from your 11am math class. I'm calling to tell you that I won't be able to go to class today because I at the hospital and I am dead." In this moment Anita realizes that her excuse is a bad one.
In a well-written story, the text above should be broken into more than one paragraph. Nevertheless, I like to clump the entire story into one paragraph to save space on the paper. When I go to print the story, there will be additional CI tasks on this page, and the extra space comes in handy.
Systems for Writing Better Stories
We should develop ways to make our stories better over time. The Beginning Storyteller has enough to worry about without writing the perfect story (which does not exist anyway). The key for The Beginning Storyteller is to just write whatever you can and go with that. As Seth Godin says, "Real artists ship", which means that you get your art out the door, even if it's imperfect (spoiler: it will be imperfect).
But we should strive to get better over time. The following are some basic tips that will turn your ‘OK’ stories into great ones.
STUDENT SCRIBE / CLASS SUMMARY
Assigning a student to be a story scribe is a great tool for The Beginning Storyteller. Just have them write down the story as you co-create it as a class. This will save you the trouble of having to write a summary from memory after the class is over. I used a volunteer student scribe for a long time, but sometimes it made a bit more work for me. I found that I needed to correct spelling and grammar mistakes, decipher sloppy handwriting, etc. Still, this one system can be a lifesaver if you decide to write custom versions of the story for each section you teach.
OPEN-ENDED STORIES
There are times when I decide not to finish a story in class. In this case, I will make up an ending for my written versions. I like when this happens, since I can usually tie a nice bow on the story. But I also like when the students come up with an incredible ending in class.
To this end, a good friend who uses CI storytelling shared a wonderful idea with me recently. When you do not have an ending or are just too tired to keep going (which can and does happen), simply open a Google slideshow and share it with your class. Each student puts their name on a slide to claim it, and then they write out an ending to the story as best they can in L2. At your leisure, you can read through the slides and pick your favorite ending to use for the written version of the story.
As an extension, you can also proofread and correct this slideshow and use it for more CI with learners. Reading through each ending and have them vote on their favorite. These revisions will require some extra work on your part, so plan accordingly. The phrase “extra work” does give me some pause, but the idea is so novel that I believe it worth a try.
Quick Hits and Easy Wins
DESCRIPTIONS
Feel free to do a deep dive when describing your character, especially toward the beginning of the term. Getting good at descriptions is low-hanging fruit for acquisition.
COMPARISONS
Be sure to do lots of comparisons between characters in your stories. Billy is tall, but Martin is short. Who is taller? Ned is neat, but Homer is a slob. Who is neater? Kaitlin is funny, but John is always serious. Who is funnier? These kinds of comparisons will lead to a ton of CI and will help you teach an antonym for each descriptor.
CHARACTER GROWTH: MORAL CHOICES AND PSYCHOLOGICAL CHANGES
A good story always has the main character change in some way. In a great story, the main character faces a moral choice that will determine their psychological change. In the movie "The Dark Knight", Bruce Wayne must choose between saving Rachel Dawes, the love of his life, and Harvey Dent, the lawyer that will clean up crime-ridden Gotham City. This moral choice produces a psychological change in both Bruce Wayne and Harvey Dent. The growth that characters experience as a result of making moral choices is the essence of good storytelling.
A character could even make a moral choice that, instead of causing them to grow as a person, would allow them to remain the same psychologically. Or, as is the case with Walter White from “Breaking Bad”, they might make a choice that causes them to go down a path of moral ruin.
You will not be able to do much in terms of moral choices and psychological growth in a 250 word story, but it is possible. In our example, Anita's makes the moral choice to lie to her professor. At the end, the psychological change is her realization that she has been caught in a lie. While not much, it is enough for the story to be interesting.
TWO OR MORE CHARACTERS WANTING THE SAME THING, OR DIFFERENT THINGS FOR THE SAME PERSON
Another technique for writing a more interesting story is to have two or more characters want the same thing. In the “Lord of the Rings”, every character wants the One Ring of Power at one time or another. In “Star Wars”, Obi-Wan Kenobi and Yoda want Luke Skywalker to become a Jedi. On the other hand, Darth Vader and the Emperor want Luke to join the Dark Side. This push and pull between the various sides creates tension in the story, which in turn creates reader interest.
Again, in a 250-word story you must be economical, but it is possible to include this common desire in your story. Most learners will never be able to put their finger on it, but it is the hallmark of a great story to have tension between characters, and common or competing desires are an easy way to add it.
Reading the Story
Now that we have our written versions of a story, we need learners to read it. I always start them with a review of the artwork and an oral summary to remind them what happened.
VARIOUS WAYS TO HAVE LEARNERS READ THROUGH A STORY
There are various ways to have learners read through a story, and I like to shake it up from time to time to keep things from getting stale.
1. PAIR READING
My go-to option is to put learners in groups of 2-3 and have them take turns reading every other sentence out loud in L2. To make it easier, I tell them to read one paragraph at a time, after which we get together as a class and discuss what we read. If the spirit moves me, I might think of a question related to a theme in the paragraph and begin asking students to answer, helping them answer as needed. You may be surprised at how well some of them can respond in L2 after receiving this amount of CI on the subject during the past few class periods. Once we have exhausted the conversation, we move on to the next paragraph. There have been times when we only get through one paragraph in the entire class period because the flow of CI is so good, and the conversation is that interesting.
2. SILENT READING
Like the name implies, learners get 5 minutes to read the text silently. This is a great option for people who are a bit shy or can't process language well when they read it. I know I have had the experience where I read out loud just fine but didn't register a word of what I read out loud. Silent reading gives the slow processors a chance to read at their own speed.
3. INSTRUCTOR ONLY READING
The instructor reads the text out loud. In this one, learners listen as the teacher reads the entire text. This is more aural input, but it is now more like hearing an audiobook. I believe audiobooks make reading more accessible anyway, so this is a legitimate option.
4. SILENT READING + INSTRUCTOR READING
This strategy combines strategies #2 and #3. The instructor reads out loud and students follow along by reading silently. This is another great option for the leaners that struggle to comprehend what they read out loud.
5. VOLUNTEER READER
A volunteer learner reads the text out loud while the rest of the class follows along. This option is okay, but some learners struggle through their readings and do not put any inflection in their voice as they read. Do not be afraid to stop the learner and direct them as if they were an actor in a play, and you were the director. Have them re-read portions with different emotions (happily, sadly, angrily, romantically, etc.) to add some comic relief. Really encourage your volunteers to “ham it up” as this creates an incredible amount of interest.
6. CLASS “POPCORN” READING
My least favorite reading option is the "popcorn" reading, where leaners take turns reading a sentence or chunk of the story for the class. This has the same problems as #5, but with multiple people. In my opinion, it works best for higher levels where learners are a bit more literate.
Variation on the Ending
We have reached the end of our story. Anita came up with an excuse and called her professor. The story is complete, and all is fine and dandy. Here is a twist you can occasionally throw at students: as you read through the story, change the year it takes place.
Right now, the story takes place sometime in or after the 1900s, since Anita uses a phone to call her professor. The date is not specified in the story, but we could do that easily enough with some orbiting questions.
Instructor: Class, what year is it in the story?
Bethany: 2019.
Instructor: Class, in the story it's 2019. What year is it now?
Class: It's 2022 [or whatever year it is at the time you tell the story]
Instructor: That's right. It's [2022]. Now, let's imagine that it's 1822. Let's read the last paragraph together. Let's see if it's still a good story. If it's a bad story, let's fix it.
We read through the last paragraph together and try to fix any inconsistencies we find. Does Anita use a phone? It is the year 1822. No, she does not use a phone. She uses a pen and paper. She writes her professor a letter and it is delivered on horseback. Whatever the case, we now have an entirely new frame for the story.
Lesson 4 Worksheet
Get more out of this lesson by completing its companion worksheet .