Storytelling

Let’s enter into the magic universe of storytelling

We are all born with a natural disposition towards creating, telling and listening to stories. Any child is able -even before reading- to take a book and start inventing a fascinating story just by looking at the pictures. There seems to be an innate ability for framing quite logically a sequence of events as well as enjoying tales since an early age. Therefore, If children have this natural inclination to relish stories then, why not nurture it? We can set to work in our own homes telling stories to some little relative or in the classroom to our students. Here goes a simple reflection on storytelling in language classes.

I believe in the power of storytelling to enhance learning. By telling stories to our little students, we are exposing them to an enormous amount of input in a motivating and meaningful way since we are placing language into a context. Our students will pick up some of the language used in the story without being conscious about learning. And this is the kind of learning which we should aim at when it comes to teaching young children.

As regards the way in which tales can be told, we may read the story or we can simply tell the story ourselves. I prefer the latter. By eliminating the book from the storytelling time, we are removing a major barrier between the audience and the story-teller (i.e. between students and teachers). Why? Well, by freeing our hands from the book, we can move them widely conveying much more meaning. But leaving the book aside and start telling a story is not enough if we are to produce the most favorable impact. Use of our hands and body, gestures, pitch, intonation and delivery rate are key aspects a storyteller need to handle. It’s essential that we learn how to vary and combine all these features to represent clearly different character voices or to convey different moods.

Personally, I am very interested in improving the way I tell stories. Narrating is a complex but magical science through which we are able to create vivid images, pictures and experiences.

“Stories are the creative conversion of life itself into a more powerful, clearer, more meaningful experience”

A worrying trend

The copy and paste culture

The 21st century is undoubtedly an era characterized by an unrestricted and quick access to a tremendous amount of information. Just by googling any word or phrase or clicking on some links here and there, an unthinkable number of pictures, opinions and facts will unfold before us. As a result of the quickness and easiness of these processes, every day millions of people search the Net to find out information on different topics.

Even though we may find this aspect of technology completely appealing, some teachers resent this easy availability of knowledge. Why? Well, it seems that students are in general tempted to copy all information they are supposed to look for without any kind of production of their own.
I do not doubt the truth of claims like that. While I feel that many people approach this process seriously, I can’t help thinking it is not difficult to feel tempted to copy information when apparently all the teacher asks can be easily found on the Net. But whose fault is it? There is no doubt it is the student the one who overtly copy or print all the information they need but aren’t teachers fostering that behavior?

I think they are. I do not mean that they encourage this behavior verbally in the course of their classes but they do promote it unconsciously through the tasks they may set. I believe that if students are able to find exact answers to the activities teachers propose, then tasks are not challenging enough. If we care about framing questions which require elaboration and reflection on the part of the learner, then it is not that easy to find the appropriate answers on the Net.

Apart from setting more challenging activities, there are other ways of modifying this pattern of behavior. Perhaps we can devote some time in our lessons to warn our students against the dishonest practice of plagiarism. Most of us may think that teenagers are well aware of the deceitful nature of copying others’ productions pretending they are theirs. However, in a culture where plagiarism abounds in all spheres (we are all used to buying fake DVDs and CDs for example)and accepts it as more natural all the time, I believe it is not redundant to emphasize the ills of this practice.

Besides, we live in a time when we want things easy and almost instantaneous. How much time does it take to Google some information, click on some page, select a piece of information and print it? Just a few minutes. In most cases, as soon as the paper goes out of the printer, it is put away in the folder. Students do not even bother to read what they have printed. This is also an undesirable pattern of behavior which we may discourage in our classrooms. We can for example insist on experiencing the sense of accomplishment that arises out of completing tasks by themselves.

Even though the culture of copy and paste seems to be deep-seated, I believe efforts to try to revert this trend won’t be fruitless. I think that it is well worth the effort of trying to foster a better kind of student and citizen.

The Shocking game

We would spend hours playing with Barbie dolls in their grand mansions. More hours playing at being famous top models or dedicated housewives, taking care of our rag dolls. Boys would spend whole afternoons playing marbles or football in the street. These games seem to epitomize childhood in the 1990’s. This is the period of my own infancy so sane and innocent. I cannot help thinking about that golden age whenever I see the dangerous, life-threatening “games” which the current generation chooses to amuse themselves.

It seems that this generation characterizes for finding extreme pleasure in activities that put them on the edge of death all the time. They are ready to go to any extent in order to experience the most unusual, intense and complex sensations. And what is most worrying to me is that they exceed all limits and seem to have lost the cult of life. Five minutes of new sensations take priority over our own precious existence. At first, this sensation-seeking behavior took the form of getting blind dark. However, soon afterwards, this was no longer enough and they started feeling the curiosity of taking drugs- From one single joint one party night to significantly increasing doses of marijuana or Ecstasy. Though extreme as this behavior may seem, a group teenagers found another risk-taking game.

Have you heard about ‘the shocking game’ (or ‘ahorcado’ or ‘seis nudos’)? This is a new game which is being fostered by the Internet which caused the death of 4 boys in Rosario de la Frontera, Salta. This game consists in achieving ecstasy through lack of oxygen and it’s generally played in pairs. One of the two wraps either a rope or tie around his neck until experimenting loss of consciousness. When they reach that point, his friend needs to loosen the strap around the neck just in time to avoid their friend’s death. Apparently, the exciting element is to cheat death. If they play alone, they need to tie six knots which would automatically untie as the boys jump down. If they fail to make them in the appropriate way, they die.

I find it puzzling to understand what it is that crosses their mind to play with something as sacred as life. What would be the entertainment of generations to come? I do not dare wonder about that.

My experience as a cartoonist!

One more pseudo-solution

Take a look at my cartoon here

Well, to tell you the truth, the idea of making a cartoon appeared to be challenging. I’ve always admired the job of cartoonists because I believe the many cartoons they write are mere products of great minds. The result of imaginative, critic and humorous personalities.

I’ve never ever imagined myself writing a cartoon simply because I think I do not have that character and that innate ability to amuse people. Besides, not only do I have little imagination but also I’m horribly bad at drawing. But there comes technology to assist us. Whenever we feel limited to do something, technology is there to make the task less daunting.

Therefore, the positive side of the page we explored is that it helps us overcome some of our natural limitations. In my case, this program saves me from the frustration of struggling-without success- to make some drawings. Will there ever be some program which provides us with ideas? Perhaps if that happens, then we’ll be able to make cartoons without difficulty. And then, that may have interesting teaching implications since we can include cartoons as support material of different teaching points, perhaps adding motivation to our classes.

Besides, the program is quite easy to operate. I didn’t have any problems to create the cartoon. Perhaps the only drawback is that the options we are given to select characters and accessories from are quite limited, restricting the ways of conveying different meanings. In my case, as I wanted to use the picture of a car which was not provided by the page, I added that picture later on in Paint. Its simplicity also enables people with little skill at managing computer programs to create cartoons quite easily. So, why not encouraging our students to create their comic strips?

All in all, I may admit that the task of creating my own cartoon was less of an ordeal than I’d expected. Although the result may not be a stroke of genius, I’m glad that I was able to make my first cartoon successfully.