The King never condemned criminals to death – this is what he did: The criminal was led into an arena with 2 doors Behind one a ravenous tiger Behind the other a beautiful girl The man did not know which door was which Had to choose – be eaten or marry the girl This was fair – as the man’s fate was in his own hands The King had a daughter She fell in love with a poor soldier The King was furious – and the man was arrested In the arena he looked up at the King and his daughter The princess knew which door was which What signal did she give her lover?
taking his/her place in the circle centre and telling about an own observation and so on. This exercise can easily be done over and over again. With an experienced group or when exercises last longer, in most cases links or connections between own observations derive from themselves. Variant: Participant 1 starts with a true observation, participant 2 amends the observation and it goes on and on like that. The participants are free to choose whether they want to add true observations or freely make up supplements.
Exercise 2: Question, answer, comment Target group: Objectives:
Practical exercises Through the interviews conducted with the storytellers, some commonalities stood out in the methodological approaches they employed when incorporating storytelling into adult training. Chapter 1 outlined four key phases and in the following sections we illustrate each phase with some examples taken from the pilot projects. Special attention is given to the practical use of the exercises, the materials needed and the role of the teacher/trainer in the exercise.
Preparatory phase – Warming up exercises
Material: Shape: Duration:
Native speakers, or level A2 + Practicing modal verbs and other grammatical peculiarities Practicing conjugations Word order in questions and answers Training action-reaction Ball Group exercise, standing in a circle 4 - 8 minutes
Content and procedure: Starting questions are sent from participant to participant with the impulse accompanied by a ball throw. It is about fast reactions and the collection of auxiliary verbs. (“Do you have?” “Do you want?” “Do you need?” “Do you like?” “Can you?” “May you?”)
Exercise 1: Morning circle Target group: Objectives:
Material: Shape: Duration:
Native speakers or level A2 + Monologues Sharing everyday life experiences Practicing sentence structures Taking the floor None Group exercise, standing in a circle 10 minutes
Content and procedure: Participant 1 stands in the centre of the circle and tells about one or another incident from this morning, e.g. “This morning I have seen a group of blind children who got on the bus.” Participant 2 releases participant by tapping him/her on the shoulder,
Now the questions shall be completed. The receiver of the question replies, the participants on the right and on the left of the receiver repeat the answer in the third person, e.g. Are you good at cooking, Are you a good cook?” “Yes, I am good at cooking” “Yes, he is good at cooking”. Then the receiver asks a new question and throws the ball. Variant: The participants on the right and on the left may as well conjugate in another way, e.g. “We are good at cooking as well”. Or they may comment with an indirect answer, e.g. “He said that you were good at cooking” – there are no limits to the ideas of the language teacher.
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