Teaching Elementary and Pre-Intermediate Students to Write Short Stories

Activity title:

Eavesdropping (a series of activities named after the major element of the process)

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Skill(s):

Writing

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Level(s):

A2

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Exam part:

A2 Key / Key for Schools: Writing Part 2

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Aim(s):

Main aim: to practise writing short stories.
Subsidiary aims:

а) Grammar: to revise the basic rules of reported speech.

б) Vocabulary: to consolidate lexis for (a topic of choice).

с) Spelling and punctuation: to provide freer writing practice.

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Materials needed:

The pictures to use for creating a story, provided by official exam preparation resources, either printed for offline classes or demonstrated via screensharing functions during online classes.

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Preparation:

1. To choose the pictures that students are capable of describing.
2. To make sure students can transform direct speech into indirect speech.
3. To present the general rules of punctuation to students.

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Procedure:

Step 1. Introduction
Look at the pictures. What idea connects all of them?
At this stage students are supposed to find similarities between the pictures and identify the topic which will become the main idea of the story, e.g. "Going out with friends", "A day at work", etc.

Step 2. Brainstorming
Name as many words on the topic as you can.
Students are supposed to focus on the topic discussed at stage 1 and to think of multiple words that they could potentially use in the story later.

Step 3. Description
Describe the people in the pictures. Try to write about their age, occupation, appearance, and mood.
Students write down their assumptions about the people in the pictures.

Step 4. Eavesdropping
Imagine that you can hear everything the people in the pictures say. Write down their dialogues (2-3 sentences for each picture).
Students imagine themselves as a part of the picture and think of the things the people could be speaking about.

Step 5. Transformation
Report the dialogues.
Students turn whichever text they've got written down into a form more suitable for creating a story.

Step 6. Drafting
Use the description and the transformed dialogues to write a coherent text.
This stage requires students to put the pieces of text into a specific order.

Step 7. Editing
Reread the text. Make sure to check your spelling.
Students are supposed to find and correct their own mistakes.

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Variation(s)

Insignificant variations are possible almost at every stage of the series of activities. Students might need a time limit to brainstorm the vocabulary (step 2). They might also need a detailed plan to complete stage 3. Different techniques of editing might be used to achieve the best results possible.

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Reflections

1. Students are more likely to experience difficulties during the first couple of stages. It might be difficult for them to come up with a topic that would connect all three pictures due to the lack of vocabulary or practice. It appears to be a good idea to give students some options to choose from, at least when this is their first time working with such pictures.
2. After working with the pictures in such a way, students tend to end up with quite a long text so editing is a stage to draw their attention to. It's essential to teach them to find distractors - in the texts of their fellow students and, later on, in their own pieces of writing.
3. Step 4 is considered the major element of the series as it helps students to dive into the world shown in the pictures. That is how they eventually create a more plausible story, based on their personal experience.