Using Folktales to Teach

Cognitive / Academic SkillsEric K. Taylor (1997)

Paper presented at Annual Meeting of the

TESOL Orlando, March 11-15

Necessary academic skills:

• Having taken ESL classes, students need to gain necessary academic

skills to meet teachers’ expectations:

• Comparing and Contrasting (How are ideas the same or different?

• Evaluating (How important is each idea?)

• Supporting (What facts or evidence show that my claims are true?)

• Organizing/Grouping (How are different ideas connected to each other?)

• Inferencing (What is implied that is not directly stated?)

Why folktales?

• Using folktales is ideal for introducing new skills and

strategies because they are easy to grasp, less energy is

needed to decode the text, they give opportunity to focus

on academic skills, they have readily available variants for

many themes.

Comparing and ContrastingActivity:

Preparation:

• Select stories appropriate to the students’ level. The stories

should have important differences.

(E.g., Turtle and the Rabbit, The Whale and the Sea Slug)

In the Classroom:

1) Stds read the stories.

2) Stds retell the stories to their groups without written version.

3) Stds identify as many similarities and differences as possible.

4) Have one student tell each story to the class. It must be

a student who did NOT read the story.

5)Visually represent similarities and differences by using

Charts and Venn diagrams.

6) Have students rate the importance of the differences.

7) If appropriate, show how the important differences are

included in academic paper or summary.

8) If appropriate, have them write a short paper discussing

the similarities and differences.

What is the purpose of this activity?

• helps stds to identify how different and same the ideas are.

• familiarizes the stds with a literary text.

• encourages to talk in groups, in front of the class.

• teaches the stds how to evaluate their own findings.

• helps stds figure out how important is each idea for a text.

• This activity is important in a way that it teaches an

academic skill with a fun and engaging text. It is a better

way to start before moving on to an academic paper.

Supporting and EvaluatingActivity:• After stds have read or listened to a number of different

stories:

Preparation:

• If stds need support, prepare a partially filled chart to get them started.

In the Classroom:

1) List the stories on the board.

2) Have stds identify the most important quality in each story. (positive or negative)

3) Have stds support these qualities.

4) In small groups, have them compare, discuss their

answers and try to reach a consensus.

5) Individually and then in small groups, have stds evaluate

the importance of different ideas. (For a single context or

different contexts. E.g., For you? For a politician, potential

spouse, actress?)

Three possiblities of evaluating the importance of ideas:

6) Discuss evaluations as a class or have them write their reasons.

What is the purpose of this activity?

teaches how to support their conclusions according to

different contexts.

helps students to figure out how to organize and group

ideas according to their importance in the context

helps students to see the relationship of the ideas and

also evaluate them independently.

provides practice in three different ways of evaluation

gives stds chance to compare and contrast various

stories in one activity

provides chance to discuss and reach consensus in

making precise evaluations

Evaluating/Summarizing Activity

Preparation:

1) Take a story and write about 15-20 summary statements.

2) Rank the importance of the strips.(most

important, moderately important, relatively unimportant)

3) For the strip story, scramble the order of the sentences.

In the classroom:

1) Have students read or listen to the story.

2) Optional: have students order a strip story.

3) Have stds rank the importance of each strip.

4) Review as class and discuss any differences in opinion.

(It is important for ts to think aloud to show how they got

their conclusion!!)

5) Show how excluding/including different levels gives

different degrees of summarization. ( for the shortest

summary include only the 1 strips)

What is the purpose of this activity?

• gives chance to see different versions of a story so that

stds could compare the differences between

views, values, ideas.

• teaches stds to pay attention to each and every detail in

the text by ranking them.

• helps stds to understand how to differentiate the key

elements from less important details and write summaries

in different lengths

To Promote Inferencing

• Academic work requires drawing conclusions that are not

directly stated. Inferencing is something that could be

learned gradually. Therefore, ts should regularly raise

questions that invite stds to draw inferences, and think

aloud when they need help. For example:

Why do you think she didn’t tell her father what her sisters had

done? What might be the possible expectations in their culture

that would have caused her not to do so?

My criticisms(+)

• This article provides options to teach academic skills in simple, fun and engaging ways.

• It also shows us that by just using some short folktales, such activities which teaches so many academic skills could be designed.

(-)

• Some of the activities haven’t been carefully thought. Especially in group discussions, it is assumed that the students will all discuss and participate. The teachers who wants to use these activities in their classrooms may need to improve them and at least design the activity in a way that it ensures evenly distributed participation. (e.g. Evaluation charts, feedback forms etc.)

Thank you