Drawing a Parallel
Using creative storytelling as a way of teaching & learning English.
Students start to feel the connection with the teacher because everybody at some point of their lives experienced challenging, dramatic, sad things and their professor is not an exception. Pupils start getting more comfortable and ask themselves: ‘This guy is giving a lot of opinions, he is outspoken, I wonder if…’
and the chaps at the uni desks embark on sharing their opinions too, which is incredible for learning. The first step in creating an invisible cobweb of trust has been made.
Delving further into the story students find out that the teacher also has a mentor, who had a profound impact on him,
“I also started taking private English lessons from Frederick. He was also my choreography teacher he was an incredible actor in the theatre, and an amazing dancer, and he was kind of guru to me, because I saw his performances and it was very inspiring; I could talk to him as an actor, teacher, choreographer, director, and just as a friend.
He was very supportive in every passion I had; we talked about (actually I talked about my creativity and he was listening to me) music, English, meaning of my songs, etc and it gave me great confidence about my creativity.” (from “The Story of My Relationship with English.”)
and they start searching their past to draw a parallel, trying to find a person they had looked up to and share their sentiments in the classroom, coming up with the words that would reflect their revelations in English, delivering unique personal traits and establishing a deeper connection with the language.
As the story moves along the students learn about the basement where Frederick lived and where their teacher would take private lessons from him and about the theater where professor drew the inspiration,
“So I would take private English lessons from him. Often the theater rehearsals would finish quite late so what it meant – me sneaking around in the rehearsal room with an English book, Rhymond Murphy, in my hands, making sure the director didn’t see the aspiring student because I could be fired, and riding my bicycle in the midnight towards the place where Frederick was living, really a mysterious one in the basement of the amber seller’s mansion with a quite underground atmosphere.” (from “The Story of My Relationship with English.”)
English Via Storytelling 2023 Doggedly Extracted From The Adventurous Midst Of Turquoise Imagination Via Sergey Denisov.
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