Pace: a story-Based Approach for Dialogic Inquiry about Form

Inductive approach	Dialogic approach
Deductive approach
Learners analyze the grammar explanation for themselves.	Teachers and learners collaborate on and co-construct the grammar explanation.	Teacher provides explanation for learners.

Basic principles of Dialogic Story-Based language Teaching: Research and Rationale.

Language forms gain meaning and function (e.g., giving advice on good eating habits to a friend using the subjunctive in French, Spanish, or Italian) when: (1) they are placed in the context of a coherent text with an organized discourse structure, such as story; and (2) when learners are permitted to explore with assistance from the teacher the relationship of form to meaning and use in the text. In the previous example, the subjunctive takes on meaning in the context of giving advice and suggestions to friends. Compare this approach to simply giving students a deductive explanation of the subjunctive, which fails to illustrate how the form is used in social situations and for particular cultural practices, e.g., suggesting, directing, and recommending. Learners need to encounter grammar in action in contextualized language and well organized texts that can be found in a variety of oral and written genres (e.g., stories, legends, poems, listening selections, cartoons, songs, recipes). Emphasis needs to be placed on meaning before a focus on form can be a productive instructional activity. A story-based language approach makes use of cultural texts as core material that students are assisted to comprehend from the very beginning of the lesson. As learners comprehend meaningful texts (e.g., stories, songs, folktales, legends), the forms of the language take on meaning and their uses become transparent. Once learners grasp the meaning of the story, they will be better able to focus on and understand the contribution and interaction of particular forms in the text to express elements of the story as a whole, for example, how grammatical forms work to express plot, characters, conflicts, settings, and tone.

Why Use Stories?

Storytelling is a time-honored human pastime used to entertain, to explain the human condition, and to share an aesthetic experience through expressive language. Across languages and cultures, children listen, read, invent, and, if fortunate, see stories acted out. Stories allow children, as well as adults, to organize and make meaning of life’s experiences. “Stories, including fictional stories, give shape to things in the real world and bestows on them a title to reality…”. Unlike some other narrative forms (e.g., informational texts, descriptions, or persuasive essays), stories naturally create meaning, context, relevance, and empathy. These four characteristics also instill motivation and enthusiasm for learning. The power of storytelling is found in its potential to create “an integrated and educated mind, one that is both logical and imaginative. Recent advances in neurology and brain-based research overwhelmingly and convincingly stress that stories, compared to other narrative forms, provide a better meaning-bearing structure that improves memory and long-term recall. For humans of all ages, the familiarity of story structure readily activates prior knowledge that increases comprehension, meaning-making, and interpretation. More specifically, stories match how humans naturally perceive, observe, process, think, and learn about the world. Emotions drive attention and attention is strongly linked to memory and learning. Storytelling is particularly adaptable to additional language instruction, since it is natural to tell stories orally, interpret their contents, and extend the story in various

ways (e.g., talk about favorite parts, speculate on why an event occurred, or express personal opinions about a character). Part of the story’s success is its uncanny ability to motivate listeners to pay attention to the story as they relate to the character’s problems/struggle and as they try to comprehend the flow of events in the story. Since language learning often requires repeated and frequent encounters with language forms in context, storytelling allows for natural repetitions of language forms in creative and novel ways. Teachers can make multiple passes through the story line, recycling elements of the story using comprehension-enhancing activities such as arranging scenes from the story in sequence, acting out the story using Total Physical Response (TPR) activities, and role-playing scenes from the story using student actors. Because of the teacher’s multiple re-tellings and accompanying activities, students’ comprehension is strengthened, and they are better able to explore form-meaning connections. “One of the best times for them [the learners] to attend to form is after comprehension has been achieved…”