Storytelling in the EFL class. A good source of linguistic and spiritual input

Ever since I was a child I loved it when my aunt or my mum told me stories without reading them. I still remember the look on their faces, their tone of voice, some of the words they used and the powerful message the stories left. I sdometimes complained that they were changing the words the second time I heard them. That is a proof of the powerful impact the stories and the way they were told had on me.

As a teacher and teacher trainer and after studying the power methaphors have on people when attending my courses as an NLP trainee, I started gathering stories from different traditions which I treasure and I'm redy to share with whoever feels the same way.

Later, I happened to meet and find lots of teachers and trainers that were collecting stories. I would like to quote Michael Berman's words taken from an enlightening article he wrote for Developing Teachers called Teaching Tales from the Sufi & Hasidic Traditions,(http://www.developingteachers.com/articles_tchtraining/tales1_michael.htm):
" Tales have a long and honoured history for being a way to entertain and, at the same time, educate people. The earliest examples were probably chants or songs of praise for the natural world in pagan times. And since stories first began being told, one of the methods of passing on a culture’s teaching has involved a student sitting at his teacher´s feet and listening to the tales that teacher had to tell of times and people gone by."

Would you use a story told orally in a teenagers' or adults' class? How would you arrange the sitting? How would you exploit the story? Any ideas?

Would you provide a written version of the story? When? What kind of tasks would you use to work with it in an EFL class?


The following is one of the stories Michael Berman includes in the aforementioned article. Any ideas on how to use it?

A Bridge In Khelm

A river flowed right through the middle of Khelm.
It occurred to several merchants that a bridge over it would be good for
business on both sides of the river. But some of the younger people objected.
They said: “Of course it would be nice to build a bridge, but let’s not do it because it would be good for business; we should build it solely
for aesthetic reasons. We’d be glad to contribute towards the cost for beauty’s
sake, but we won’t give a penny for the sake of trade.” Still others, even
younger people, said, “A bridge! That’s a good idea, but not for the sake of
trade or beauty but to have some place to stroll back and forth. We’d be glad to
contribute money to build a bridge for strolling, but not for any other reason.”
And so the three groups began to quarrel, and they are quarreling still. And to
the present day Khelm still does not have a bridge.