UNIT 3.4
SPEAKING AND WRITING
Telling and responding to a story
Here are our top tips for telling a good story or anecdote.
Do:
Don’t:
Examples of storytelling tasks
Do:
- Take time to think about the question and the story before you start talking.
- Use narrative tenses – past simple, past continuous and past perfect.
- Use adjectives and adverbs to make the story interesting.
- Use sequencing words: first of all, then, after that, later on, finally, in the end ...
- Give your story an introduction. Say briefly what your story is about.
- Give the background to your story. Say when and where it took place and what you were doing at that time.
- Say what happened step by step. Use words like so, because and although to connect the actions until you reach the end of the story.
- Keep the action moving!
- Finish your story or anecdote by saying why it is important to you or why you remember it.
- Look at your listeners.
Don’t:
- Take too long telling the story or your listeners will get bored.
- Use a flat or bored voice.
- Look down or look around the room.
Examples of storytelling tasks
- Tell me about a holiday you had.
- Tell me about a difficult journey you had.
- Tell me about a perfect day you’ve had.
- Tell me about a special event in your life.
- Tell me about a birthday you remember.
- Tell me about a time when you lost something important.
- Tell me about a time when you gave someone a surprise.
Watch the video about how to tell a story in English
How to begin a story
When you start a story, if the first sentence isn’t given to you, you can use phrases like these:
When you start a story, if the first sentence isn’t given to you, you can use phrases like these:
- It all began…
- When I first…
- At the beginning…
- It was a hot/cold summer/winter day.
- A funny thing happened this morning...
- I had a bad experience last year, when I was...
Time phrases
One of the great differences between writing a letter, essay, article and so on, and writing a story is the need to pay careful attention to the time over which the story develops. In order to define the order of the events in the story, we must use time expressions or time phrases. So let’s see a few:
One of the great differences between writing a letter, essay, article and so on, and writing a story is the need to pay careful attention to the time over which the story develops. In order to define the order of the events in the story, we must use time expressions or time phrases. So let’s see a few:
- Then
- After that
- Not long aftewards
- As soon as
- While
- Meanwhile
- As
- Some time later
- A little later
- ____ minutes later
- a moment later
- Later (that morning/afternoon/day/night…)
- Just then
Creating suspense
When writing a story, the aim is not to inform or to convey information; the real purpose is to entertain the reader, just like when you read a novel you expect to be entertained, which we can do by using some of the following expressions:
When writing a story, the aim is not to inform or to convey information; the real purpose is to entertain the reader, just like when you read a novel you expect to be entertained, which we can do by using some of the following expressions:
- Suddenly
- All of a sudden
- Without warning
- Just at that moment
- Unexpectedly
- Out of the blue
- Out of nowhere
- Right away
- Straight away
Finishing your story
This paragraph, the resolution, should be separated from the rest, and it’s a good idea to start it with one of the following expressions:
This paragraph, the resolution, should be separated from the rest, and it’s a good idea to start it with one of the following expressions:
- In the end
- Finally
- When it was all over
- Eventually
- After everything that happened
- Luckily
See the following document about how to tell a story to get ideas for yours.
writing-a-story_116230.doc | |
File Size: | 217 kb |
File Type: | doc |