Teaching English podcast: How can we use 'story' to teach English?

Download the fifth episode, activity booklet, show notes and transcript from series 2 of our podcast 'British Council Teaching English'.

British Council: TeachingEnglish - series 2 overview

In our second series of this ten-part podcast series from the British Council, we try and provide solutions to some of the key questions being asked by English teachers around the world. Each episode explores a specific topic through interviews, a focus on recent developments and reports on British Council initiatives in English language teaching.

For each episode, an activity booklet, practical show notes and transcripts in English and Arabic are available to download at the bottom of the page.

Episode 5: How can we use ‘story’ to teach English?

Wherever you are in the world, and whatever your context, story will almost certainly be an important part of the teaching and learning context.

However, what is meant by the word’ story’ may differ from place to place, ranging from the type of traditional tale found in coursebooks, to oral narratives created by students themselves, to digital creations found online.

To develop our understanding of these different contexts we first speak to Jamie Keddie, an expert in the way we can use different forms of ‘story’ to teach English. His passion and knowledge of the subject will be sure to stimulate your own classroom practice. After this, we visit the Oasis Centre in Cardiff to learn more about their novel approach to using storytelling to develop their students’ English language skills.

Show notes

Each episode contains downloadable show notes. These include the following:

Ideas for how you could use the podcast in your teaching
Detailed notes with extra information about the contents of the episode
Useful links

Using this podcast for lessons or training

You can download a transcript of the episode from the podcast homepage. To help you and your learners with preparation and language analysis, all words at the B2, C1 and C2 CEFR level have been highlighted.
There is an ‘activity booklet’ for this episode, which contains activities you can use in your classroom. The activities focus on speaking, listening, grammar and language. They are available in both pdf and in editable PowerPoint format, in case you wish to edit them to make them more relevant for your specific classroom.

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