Anecdote Telling for Adult Learners

Improving the anecdote telling abilities of intermediate adult learners (CEFR Level B1)

Valentina Morgana

Valentina Morgana, Language Skills 1: Improving the anecdote telling abilities of intermediate adult learners (CEFR Level B1)

Improving the anecdote telling abilities of intermediate adult learners (CEFR Level B1)

Contents

A. Introduction p.3

B. Analysis p.3 a) Storytelling genres: Anecdotes p.3 b) Organisational structure p.3 c) Speaker listener roles p.5 d) Linguistic features p.5

C. Issues for learners p.6

D. Suggestions for teaching p.7

a) Selection and ordering p.7 b)Approaches and activities p.7

Bibliography p.9

Appendix 1 p.10

Appendix 2 p.11

Appendix 3 p.12

Appendix 4 p.13

A. IntroductionValentina Morgana, Language Skills 1: Improving the anecdote telling abilities of intermediate adult learners (CEFR Level B1) 2

Anecdotes and personal stories are very frequent in everyday human interaction (Jones, 2001) so I believe they should play a significant role in language classroom as well.I have recently given a questionnaire to my intermediate students asking them what they would identify as their primary need. The results showed that they would like to be able to successfully manage a conversation in English. It comes that I have decided to focus on anecdote telling. First to meet the needs of my students, secondly because I need to improve and enlarge my knowledge about teaching the spoken language in general, but also because the emotional component of anecdotes could be a good technique to “establish a meaningful context for learning” (Salli-Copur, 2008:34) in a way that could support students in real situations.

B.Analysis

a) Storytelling genres: Anecdotes

According to Slade and Thornbury (2006) conversation consists of different kinds of talk - “chat sequences interspersed with larger chunks” (2006:145). To describe the structure of these longer turns (chunks) researchers use the term genre. There are different types of genres in spoken and written language, with different structures and different social goals.I am going to focus on the genre of storytelling and, in particular, on one of the four generic types of stories identified by Eggins and Slade (1996) (cited in Slade and Thornbury, 2010). Even if many structural and lexico-grammatical features are shared among the four types (anecdotes, narratives, exemplums and recounts) the focus of this analysis is on anecdotes.

b) Organisational structure

Anecdotes tend to follow a pattern when they are used in conversation. A widely accepted model of the narrative structure of personal anecdotes is that described by Labov and Waletzky (1967) (cited in Slade and Thornbury, 2010):

(abstract) ^ orientation ^ complication ^ evaluation ^ resolution^ (coda)

Abstract and coda are in brackets because they are optional stages of the genre while orientation, complication, evaluation and resolution are defining stages of the storytelling genre.

As outlined above, we can identify six narrative elements of anecdotes.

• Abstract - it is the introduction to the anecdote and it states the essential context of the story. Common openers can be:

Did I ever tell you about...I'll always remember the time (Mc Carthy, 1991)

Valentina Morgana, Language Skills 1: Improving the anecdote telling abilities of intermediate adult learners (CEFR Level B1) 3

Slade and Thornbury (2010) also state that abstracts very often contain some evaluative comments in the form of adjectives (terrible) and the attribution of a story (by a colleague of mine).

...I remember there was a terrible story, horrifying story that was told by a colleague of mine... (Crystal and Davy, 1975)

Topic information is always embedded in abstracts What I was impressed with really was the first day we moved in (Slade and Thornbury, 2010)

• Orientation - the orientation sets the scene of the story, including key circumstantial information like where and when it takes place, the activity and who is involved. Often time, place and protagonist are just hinted:

'you know that secretary in our office, well, last week... (Mc Carthy, 1991)

If we compare it with the very detailed description in the narrative 'A driving incident' (Crystal and Davy, 1975)(see appendix 1), we notice that here there is no shared knowledge and the effect of the story depends on the description and understanding of the setting (McCarthy, 1991).

• Complicating event - complicating events are the main events of the story, the remarkable events and what makes it interesting and appealing for the listener.

McCarthy (1991) lists a series of regular occurring markers for complicating events (e.g.Next thing we knew).

• Resolution - the resolution tells what happened at the end of the story and how things worked out.

•'...and finally he passed the test.' (McCarthy, 1991)

• Coda - the coda provides a link between the story setting and the present

'and ever since , I've never been able to look at mango without feeling sick'. (McCarthy, 1991)

• Evaluation - evaluation is how the speaker makes the story worth listening to. Evaluation can be explicitly stated ( e.g. you'll love this one ) or told by a number of implicit devices such as exaggeration ( e.g. he came in with this huge, gi-normous watermelon), repetition, recreating noises ( and she went scruuuuuunch...) or constantly evaluating individual events (which amazed me really) (McCarthy, 1991)

Salli-Copur (2008) observes that these elements are not always present in anecdotes. For example an abstract and coda may not be found in some anecdotes. However, evaluation cannot be optional (McCarthy, 1998). McCarthy (1991) mentions evaluation as a crucial element of the anecdote. Due to the fact that it signals the attitude of the speaker towards the events, it is very often spread throughout the text and it may take a paralinguistic form, such as laughter.


c) Speaker listener roles

McCarthy (1991) argues there are two notable things when we look to real data conversations. One is that stories are often told collaboratively, by more than one person, the other is that listeners are active, “constantly reacting to the narrative and asking questions that fill out unspecified detail” (McCarthy 1991:141). This consideration brings our attention to the speaker and listener roles in anecdote telling.In the conversation on appendix 2 from McCarthy (1991:139), A and B are telling a story to C, they recall details ( I remember that ) and C is helping the conversation by a series of reactions ( yeah).Anecdotes are mainly monologues with back-channel intervention, participants can intervene using back-channel devices to keep the speaker going (e.g. Did you?) In this way they provide support and encouragement for the speaker. Therefore, as Swift (2006) argues there are unequal participant rights in anecdote telling: speaker takes the floor while the listener supports the conversation with verbal (e.g. questions) and non-verbal devices (e.g.laughter).

d) Linguistic features

> Use of progressive aspects (he was looking...) (Slade and Thornbury, 2010) or present participles as in I still remember going to... is very common in anecdotes and in particular, in the orientation. Slade and Thornbury (2010) remark that the pragmatic effect of progressive aspect provides a temporal frame for a series of events. Usually the past continuous is used to describe background events, while the simple past describes foreground events as in

! And I was just looking at the coffin and there was David standing there (Slade and Thornbury, 2010)

Sometimes the speaker needs to provide a flashback, this typically requires the use of past perfect forms

! I remember once I went to a film, and ah, I'd just bought this new outfit... (Slade and Thornbury, 2010)

> Use of cleft sentences is also very common in anecdotes. They allow different clause elements to be brought into focus.!What I was impressed with really was the first day... (Slade and Thornubury, 2010)

> Back-channel language is very frequent in anecdote telling. Examples of back-channel devices are: question tags (e.g. did you?), supportive responses such as yeah? and really? and questions to ask for clarification or repetition.

> Anecdote telling is often characterised by the use of intensification strategies to emphasise the importance of a situation or an event (e.g. absolutely beautiful)

> Expressions like that reminds me of are also very frequent. Researchers refers to them as gambits.Valentina Morgana, Language Skills 1: Improving the anecdote telling abilities of intermediate adult learners (CEFR Level B1) 5

> In anecdotes there is also a high incidence of discourse markers characteristic of informal speech (well, oh etc.).

> The vocabulary used in anecdotes is often of fairly high frequency and the interpersonal nature of conversation is encoded in a number of vague language, for example yellowish or sort of smiling.

> Conversations and so anecdotes take place in real time (Brown and Yule, 1983) this explains some linguistic features of spoken interactions. First, spoken interaction can be ungrammatical and native speakers are not always correct. Secondly, while telling anecdotes speakers often make use of repetition or hesitations like erm..., well, well.

C. Issues for learners

This analysis raises several possible issues for learners. Learners often sound unnatural when performing spoken interaction, this is due to many reasons.

1. The real time nature of spoken discourse raises many issues for learners, and anecdote telling is not an exception. From my experience intermediate learners face the problem of moment-to-moment lexical grammatical encoding at clause level, this tends to interfere with the discourse level, so that “we have stories with very little evaluation from the speaker and from the listener” (McCarthy, 1991). It comes that learners need time to search for how to say something.

2. Cultural identities raise also different issues for anecdote telling. Korean students are not used to speaking in class, their typical class size is 60 pupils and there is a strong emphasis on grammar. The result is that many Korean learners are not willing to participate in class without the certainty of being correct (Swan and Smith, 2001).Japanese learners prefer not to spread their private opinions in public, which means that the typical anecdote telling situation that requires personal experiences will be followed by embarrassment and silences (Swan and Smith, 2001).

3. Educational and linguistic background also involves issues. Anecdote telling usually requires the use of informal vocabulary. Italian learners tend to use Latin words instead of their Germanic equivalent, this can often makes them sound unnatural. (e.g. equilibrium vs balance).

4. The context where the anecdote telling task is taking place, plays a key role on the success of learners performance. I have noticed that students need to feel relaxed and self-confident in order to successfully perform a speaking task. In an intermediate adult class the problem is likely to lie with the role of the teacher towards learners.

5. a. Most learners may have problems recognizing native speakers’ intonation patterns and the meaning related to them.

Jim’s brother is a LAWYER (not a waiter) vs Jim’s BROTHER is a lawyer (not his cousin) 5.b. Some learners tend to have problems recognising and distinguishing proclaiming and referring tones. In addition, proclaiming tones are often more difficult for learners to produce than referring tones.Valentina Morgana, Language Skills 1: Improving the anecdote telling abilities of intermediate adult learners (CEFR Level B1) 6

'you know that secretary in our office, well, last week... (Mc Carthy, 1991) (referring - information shared - intonation pattern rises)

That guy we met at the party is my new teacher (proclaiming - new information - intonation pattern rises and then falls)

D. Suggestions for teaching

a) Selection and ordering

As outlined above, the context of the conversation plays a key role, to address this issue I would first introduce a classroom speaking dynamic, in order to create a friendly atmosphere. Then I would gradually introduce different activities to focus both on structure and lexical-grammatical features of anecdotes.

b) Approaches and Activities

Thornbury (2006) believes that achieving expertise in a skill has at least three stages: awareness, appropriation and autonomy.

I would recommend approaching speaking tasks using an awareness-raising approach. Thornbury (2006) identifies as awareness activities those that help learners to uncover knowledge gaps (e.g. what to say in order to signal a change of topic). The standard process of an awareness-raising activity would be attention-noticing-understanding. For example, the teacher can ensure attention by recounting an anecdote that has an unusual outcome (e.g.one of the worst holidays I have ever had). She can then promote noticing by incorporating into the story several instances of storytelling devices, such as the use of intensifiers (absolutely beautiful). Finally, a possible understanding step would be asking learners to underline each instance of the pattern in a transcript of the anecdote. This approach would be useful to reduce some issues related to the real time nature of spoken discourse. Learners have time to “encode”, notice, understand and practice an instance. I have noticed intermediate adult learners appreciate this awareness approach and show motivation and commitment.

Many recent coursebooks follow a standard receptive-skills procedure into related speaking activity without noticing storytelling devices. Learners listen to recordings (e.g. childhood memories) and then work on the text: answering gist questions, looking for detailed information (e.g. how did he hurt himself?) or focusing on vocabulary. Once linguistic features are recognised, the teacher will present learners with the speaking task (e.g. Think about an incident from your childhood) This is mainly the approach taken in Cunningham and Moor (2005).

As presented above, many intermediate learners could have problems identifying and using intonation patterns of English. In order to address this issues I would suggest the use of appropriation activities. As Thornbury (2006) states appropriation gives the idea of “making something one’s own”. In the case of spoken features, learners will use some practice control activities in order to gain control of the speaking. Activities presented in Clare and Wilson (2006) resulted to be extremely useful in adult language classroom. Learners are asked to listen to short dialogues focusing on back-channel devices (e.g. Valentina Morgana, Language Skills 1: Improving the anecdote telling abilities of intermediate adult learners (CEFR Level B1) 7

Really?!), they listen to different ways of emphasising words and then copy the intonation. Only after drilling they will work on a free practice activity. I have also found particularly useful encouraging students to exaggerate the falling intonation and move their head and body downwards at the same time in order to understand proclaiming tones.

Other awareness and practice activities can be:

Use of picture stories: e.g. Look at the pictures and find the following things (e.g. an envelope), think about how the story begins/ends, how to make the end more interesting for listeners. Then practise telling your story to your partner (Cunningham and Moor, 2006)(Appendix 3).

Rationale: Learners have the chance to work on vocabulary, they have time to think about the story and collaboratively build it up. They can concentrate on structure and form before practicing it. For my experience this activity reduces the issues related to the real time nature of spoken language. This also address the issue of telling a personal anecdote in international classes with Japanese students. It requires them to tell a story, but it is not personal.

Use of news stories: e.g. read these ‘strange but true’ news stories, discuss with your partner how to retell the story to a friend (Clare and Wilson, 2006).

Rationale: This activity will motivate intermediate adult learners and it will help them to generate suitable language for their particular purposes. It would also be a fruitful activity in international classrooms with Korean and Japanese learners, teacher can leave the practice stage at student-to-student level so to keep classroom atmosphere relaxed and learning oriented.

Matching activities: e.g match the words with their synonyms ( equilibrium > balance)

Rationale: this is a controlled activity where students can concentrate on the form and use, and make it familiar. For my experience Italian learners need this kind of activity to understand the use of Germanic equivalent of Latin words. This will help them sound more natural when performing anecdote telling activities.

Finally, I recognise free practice activities as the most popular among intermediate learners. Many recent course-books encourage the use of personal stories. Roberts (2008), for example, includes some interesting anecdote telling activities (Appendix 4).


Bibliography

• Brown, G. and Yule, G. (1983). Teaching the Spoken Language. 12th ed. Cambridge:

Cambridge University Press.

• Clare, A. and Wilson, JJ. (2006). Total English. Intermediate (Student’s Book). Harlow:

Longman.

• Crystal, D. and Davy, D. (1975). Advanced Conversational English. Harlow: Longman.

• Cunningham, S. and Moor, P. (1998). Cutting Edge. Intermediate (Student’s Book).

Harlow: Longman.

• McCarthy, M. (1991). Discourse Analysis for Language Teachers. 1st ed. Cambridge:

Cambridge University Press.

• Jones, R.E. (2001). A consciousness-raising approach to the teaching of conversational

storytelling skills. ELT Journal 55 (2): 155-63• Roberts, R. (2008). Premium. B1 Level (Student’s Book). Harlow: Longman.

• Salli-Copur, D. (2008). Using Anecdotes in Language Class. English Teaching Forum

46(1): 34-39• Swan, M. and Smith, M. (2001). Learner English. 2nd ed. Cambridge: Cambridge

University Press.

• Swift, S (2006). Teaching Speaking: Genre and Subskills Seen Feb. 2011 at http://

thedeltacourse.blogspot.com/2006/01/module-one-unit-53.html

• Thornbury, S. (2006). How to teach speaking. Harlow: Longman.

• Thornbury, S. and Slide, D. (2006). Conversation: From Description to Pedagogy. 1st ed.

Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

• Wright, A. 1995. A traveling storyteller. The Language Teacher 19 (10): 16-19, 26.


Appendix 1Extract from Crystal, D. and Davy, D. (1975). Advanced Conversational English. Harlow:

Longman - p. 43-45


Appendix 2Extract from McCarthy, M. (1991). Discourse Analysis for Language Teachers. 1st ed.

Cambridge: Cambridge University Press - p.139

5.7 Stories, anecdotes, jokes

I'll always remember the time . . . Did I ever tell you about . . . Then there was the time we . . . I must tell you about. . . Have you heard the one about. . . You'll never guess what happened yesterday . I heard a good one the other day . . . I had a funny experience last week . . .

There are also regularly occurring markers for complicating events: And then, suddenlylout of the blue . . . Next thing we knew . . . And as i f that wasn't enough . . . Then guess what happened. . .

Common codas include 'makes you wonder', 'so, there we are', 'and that was it, really', 'looking back it was all very . . . ', 'and that was as true as I'm standing here9. Such useful language is never given in dictionaries, and is often absent from coursebooks too, though it is every bit as important as the written-text counterparts such as 'once upon a time', which tend to get more of an airing in teaching.

Two other things are notable when we look a t real data. One is that stories are often told c ~ l l ~ b o r a t i v e l ~ , by more than one person; the details are jointly recalled and an agreed version arrived at through alternating contributions (see Edwards and Middleton 1986). The other is that listeners are active, constantly reacting (usually with back-channel responses) to the narrative and asking questions that fill out unspecified detail. The following data sample illustrates this. A and B are telling a series of stories about driving incidents to C. (5.17) A: I remember that journey, we went from Yarmouth, when we had

the car C: 1 Yeah. A: and we went into Norwich, and there's a

ring road round Norwich, and this road to Fareham was off this ring road . . . well, we turned right if you remember

B: 1 Oh I can't remember A: l a n d we went right

round this ring road, I bet we did twenty miles, and when we came back it was the next one on the left to where we'd started.

C: God (laughs). A: I remember that, I thought we were never going to find it. C: You went right round the city. A: Yes. C: Good God, that must have been frustrating.

5 Spoken language

A: It was expensive as well (laughs) . . . B: But the time I turned into the police station. A: Oh . . . dear. C: Yeah, what was that? B: Dorset Constabulary Headquarters. A: [ He says you, you B: We were going to Lyme Regis. A: He gave us the map. B: On this tree there was this wooden thing, it had on 'Lyme Regis'

and there were these big massive gates, big iron gates A: No, it was Iris and I, we said you turn left here, and he turned

immediate left, instead of going on to the next road, and it said 'Five miles an hour' and we were creeping along, and there were bobbies looking at us, two of them in a car.

C: (laughs) Well, well, great, yeah. (Author's data 1989)

A and B work out a joint version of events, and C makes positive contributions, evaluating the stories, and, in the first of the two, summarising what happened. In conversational data, this sort of joint enterprise with active listeners is very common; stories are not just. monologues told to a hushed audience. Another point we have already mentioned briefly is illustrated here: one story sparks off another along similar lines, and in such informal situations, each participant who has a story to tell may demand the floor and tell it.

What difficulties do learners have when telling or listening to stories? For lower-level learners, the usual problems of moment-by-moment lexico- grammatical encoding at clause level tend to interfere with the discourse- level skills, so that we get the bare facts of stories with little evaluation, either from teller or listener. In extract (5.18), a student (A) has had a

. real-life accident while on a language-school day-trip. The accident was 'seen as an authentic opportunity to get the student to tell his story to others; a second student (B) was instructed to find out the full srory from A: (5.18) B: Hello, Manolo, how are you?

A: E m , I'm better, I'm better from my . . . felt in the Lakes. B: Why. . . why . . . what did you happen? A: E m , we went to the Lakes for a walk with our teacher of English

here and crm, we erm, dirnb . . . climbed . . . they say climbed, erm, and, erm, when we came back from the mountain I feel . . . felt and broke . . . a little broke of my elbow . . . then I went to the hospital in the night but it take two hours and I must suspect . . . expect. . . e m , for the next day . . . in the morning, and (points to his sling) I have this slip, I think it's a slip, but I don't remember, as well.

B: The arm, do you . . . is still hurt . . . still, still hurt? A: No, no . . . not so much . . . no it's hurting. . . it's not hurting . . .


Appendix 3Extract from Cunningham, S. and Moor, P. (1998). Cutting Edge. Intermediate (Student’s

Book). Harlow: Longman - p.109


Appendix 4Extract from Roberts, R. (2008). Premium. B1 Level (Student’s Book). Harlow: Longman -

p.55


Documents

Anecdote Telling for Adult Learners