Learning English through short stories

3.3. Procedures


After the OPT pre-test was administered, both groups were taught by the researcher herself. The students were taught according to the standards set down by the university syllabus. No special treatment was given to any of the groups.
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Students of group A, the sophomores, undertaking "Reading Comprehension" were taught the book "Discovering Fiction" by Judith Kay and Rosemary Gelshenen. Since the book by itself was a collection of simple short stories the students evidently did not have any trouble in understanding some phrases that portrayed some cultural differences. If there were any such differences a quick reference was made to their native culture and as a result of which many culture bound idiomatic expressions were easily understood by the students. Once in three weeks a few short passages based on expository genres were given to the students at this level but no teaching as such took place.


The lessons in the book itself were divided into three parts; each had a pre-reading activity, to generate interest in the story and stimulate discussion and activate students' prior knowledge. A visual representation of the story in the form of an illustration depicting the central moment in the story was also presented. A story preview, the story and finally after reading activities in the form of questions based on understanding the story, vocabulary comprehension where the words in the story was given in a context and sharing ideas in which the students had to put forward their ideas of what they had learnt or felt about the story. Before the actual reading, students read the story preview for each story in which certain words related to the story in question was given in bold type which was afterwards used in a short vocabulary fill-in-the-blanks exercises. Based on the story preview the students made predictions as to the outcome of the story. In each story a brief discussion of a literary term just to familiarize the student with the type of story and help the student to understand literature and learn to read more attentively was introduced. An author's biography introduced in the text could be interesting for the student to learn about who the person was, who has written the story, the period in which he or she lived and what were their interests. No doubt the students did have some trouble in trying to make references and inferences and understanding some phrases in the story at the beginning of the course. The whole book itself was divided under different topics like "Childhood Memories", "The Unexpected", "Traveling through Time", "Turning Points", and "Men and Women". From each section two or three stories were chosen to suit the interests of the students. Before each section started a preliminary introduction in few words was given to the students so as to prepare them for the stories that they would come across. The first two summaries collected and corrected by the instructor helped and guided the students in understanding the story.

Every story had a few exercises in 'reading between the lines' in the form of multiple choice questions and for each answer the students were encouraged to defend their choice. At the end of each reading session that was for about four hours a week, students were asked to write a brief summary of the story
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they had read and understood. For this course, an additional self-study text (as prescribed by the syllabus), was introduced. An abridged version of about 1800 to 2000 words of "A Christmas Carol" by Charles Dickens was given for further study.

For students of group B undertaking 2 units of "Simple Prose" the preface to the text itself states quite clearly that it is not just a book on reading but deals with different genres so as to enhance students' lingual skills of reading, speaking, writing and listening. The book is classified into three parts: Man, Animals and Further Readings. No particular order was followed for teaching the lessons. As already mentioned different topics based on different genres were selected and before each session started a briefing was given regarding the techniques used by the writer. In addition, notes on what is simple prose, style, techniques of writing and the elements of short story that was prepared by the instructor was given to the students as a self-study material for their final exams at the end of the semester.

Each unit had been divided into five sections: words to watch, understanding the writer's ideas, building up vocabulary, understanding the writer's techniques and finally writing projects. Since the text was treated as a reading text for these students who were "English Translation" undergraduates therefore, comprehension was one of the main focuses of the study. And this was achieved through analyzing ideas in the section devoted mostly to 'Building up Vocabulary' where the students had to either rewrite or expand on those phrases selected from the text. This was a writing project and the main aim was both, to control comprehension and language at this level of learning. There was no particular focus on vocabulary for both the groups only the idea of 'denotation and connotation' was pointed out from time to time if the text in question ever needed such an explanation. The freshmen, no doubt had no difficulty as far as this part was concerned. In some cases where the text was not a narrative, the students did have some trouble in gathering ideas in the form of short summaries. In addition to the text prescribed for this level the students were also given a fiction—"Oliver Twist" by Charles Dickens, an abridged version, for self study and the students' comprehension of certain metaphorical statements or other expressions was tested.

About ten lessons were covered for both groups and before the end of the semester. A TOEFL post test in the form of 30 reference questions and one short narrative text and another expository text was given to control both the processing time and proficiency level of the 60 students chosen for the study. Those scores that fell within one standard deviation above and below the mean were taken as final samples for further study. Therefore, 30 students were chosen from each group. Another TOEFL post test was administered
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particularly for these 30 students in each group. They were given 2 narrative passages and 2 expository passages and processing time and reading comprehension was the main focus of this test.