Short Story Analysis in EFL/ESL

ELT, Reflective Teaching, Short Stories, Teaching Tips 3 comments

Short Story Analysis in EFL/ESL:

A great source of learning and teaching

Short stories can be a great source of learning and a great tool for teaching as well. In ELT, stories can serve different purposes. Roughly speaking EFL/ESL students can benefit from them by acquiring new vocabulary items while appreciating literature. They can also be used to introduce the basics for literary analysis, especially if they need to take narrative or drama as part of the curricula. Short stories, as outlined before, can be of great learning/teaching use if approached properly.

Keeping in mind that my students are A1+ or low A2 (based on the CEF), I try to have them enjoy the experience rather than feel animosity against reading short stories. In addition, using the segmented story approach used by Goodman (2003)[1] in his Literature for English series combined with Manney’s (2012)[2] well-suited workshop approach to reading short stories, I have devised a five-step basic literary analysis for my beginning reading skills students at the university.

Task 1> PLOT UNDERSTANDING: The stories we get to use in class are segmented to ensure student understanding of the plot. As prepared by Goodman in his books, for each segment of the story a set of questions is prepared. This questionnaire aims at facilitating students plot understanding and literary appreciation of the genre. In addition, this segmentation of the plot can help the teacher focus students on key vocabulary items that need to be understood to guarantee the story’s comprehension. This process works better if the instructor assigns the questionnaire for homework to maximize TASK 2.

Task 2> STORY RECONSTRUCTION: In class, as suggested by Manney, a literary workshop starts to ensure that students’ voices are heard when dealing with the questions. Students are either paired or asked to work in small groups to go over the questionnaire. Besides, they are asked to write a “brief” summary of what the story is about, which guarantees that everyone in class understands it. Once students are done with the discussion of the questions and the summary is written, -as a whole class activity-, two questions are posed to be discussed:

· What’s being told by the author?

· How realistic is the story?

Task 3> EVENTS RECOLLECTION: Before students are asked to create their own story’s Feytag’s pyramid, it is advisable to model a diagram for them. When they feel confident with its use and potential, students are also asked to produce their own pyramids by means of Traci Gardner’s [3] Feytag’s Pyramid online tool. Through this exercise, students are confronted with a basic literary plot analysis including conflict, rising action, climax, falling action, and resolution. In our program at the university, this type of analysis guarantees student training for future literature courses in narrative and drama. So, as part of our literature workshop, everyone shares their analysis and then it is corrected or expanded to fully ensure the comprehension of the story plot and its analysis.

Task 4> AUTHOR’S STORY PURPOSE:

As soon as our Feytag’s pyramid analysis is over, I take advantage of the class mood to introduce additional “new” literary concepts that need to be learned. As the instructors, I get to choose key events in the stories we read to introduce irony, foreshadowing, epiphany, and the like. No more than one new literary concept is presented to the students per short story, but as we advance through the course, several literary features can be analyzed in the very same story since some stories combine several literary devices in it.

Task 5> CHARACTERIZATION: Finding the psychological and physical traits of characters in a story is always a great exercise on descriptive lexical items. When shifting from one short story to another (and from author to author), it is rather difficult to find two characters whose traits are alike. For that reason, providing students lists of characteristics (take a look at this one) can also ensure the learning of antonyms and synonyms in the target language. Additionally, students can begin to explore our human psyche, which benefits them when studying literary criticism.

To sum up, a short story reading should not be just a mere reading exercise to accomplish a course objective. The analysis of this pieces of literature, whether they are adapted for CEF levels or not, can be a great way to help students strengthen their vocabulary learning, appreciate great English-speaking (or translated) authors, and explore literature in a participative way through a workshop approach.

ETo fully develop and comprehend this teaching issue, it’s advisable to research and expand these areas:

1	Storytelling
2	Short stories in ELT
3	The workshop approach in short story’s analysis
4	Short story’s plot analysis
5	Literary concepts for EFL/ESL learners