ESL Picture Story: Mulan

In his junior high school ESL classroom in Taiwan, linguist and author, Antonio Graceffo, employs a technique called Picture Stories. The students practice listening as Antonio tells a story, while drawing pictures on the board. Having used both natural language acquisition techniques, as well as core novel method, for learning and teaching languages in the past, Antonio chooses stories that the children are familiar with. Mulan is a well known folk tale and much loved Disney film in Chinese culture countries.

After Antonio finishes telling the story, he calls students to the board, to retell the tale, in their own words. Because the story isnt read, learned or practice, the students will retell it in real English. They use whatever language they have, at their own level, to tell the story, as best they can.
Brooklyn Monk in Asia Podcast (anti-travel humor)
http://brooklynmonk.podomatic.com

Twitter
http://twitter.com/Brooklynmonk

website
www.speakingadventure.com

facebook
Brooklyn Monk fan page

Subscribe to youtube
http://www.youtube.com/user/brooklynmonk1

Category:

Howto & Style

Tags:

• Antonio
• graceffo
• Brooklyn
• monk
• martial
• arts
• linguistics
• odyssey
• language
• acquisition
• ALG
• theory
• growth
• automatic
• brown
• long
• david
• marvin
• Bangkok
• Thailand
• thai
• Chinese
• teaching
• learning
• studying
• linguist
• TESOL
• TEFL
• ESL
• English
• Second
• Foreign
• other
• languages
• krashen

[aridion1]

It worked well. A great way to get students to speak. I also like the way that the Teacher could expand on this e.g make a class production/play based on the story. I think you have proven this method to me Antonio. Thank you.

[JoanIKilleen]

This method really works. After watching this video I tried it out on my very hesitant, silent young teens and I got them speaking more than ever before.

The amazing thing was in the floow-on activities they were also prepared to open up more.

My group was small, not sure how it would work with 20 students though

[WarrenKeingGaw]

i Love mulan =P