Retelling the story

We agreed that a good story teller keeps their story by including a lot of details in it. Next lesson, you are going to retell the story you'd found in a newspaper or online on a topic that interests you. When you prepare your stories you need to include the following:

• who? (Who is the main character in your story? Are they famous? What is special about them? Age? Marital status? Gender?) 
• where? (Where is your story taking place? Can you briefly describe it?)
• what? (The main events of the story in order, emotions of the characters, your own opinion)
• so what? (What happened in the end? What's the 'finale'/ 'punch line'?)

Also think about what tenses you're going to use and how you're going to interest your audience with your story (Will it be the story itself? Your tone of voice? The pace of your speech? Special words?). Below, I'm including the links to the audio recordings we listened to so that you have an example of a story that is well 'retold' and an example of a story that lacks details and therefore is quite boring. 

Open the links below and click on 'Download file' on a page. The file will open in a media player on your computer. 

Story that lacks details (bad example of story telling) 

Story that includes details (good example of story telling)

I am also putting an electronic copy of the chapter we are working on now. At the end of it, you'll find a tapescript of both stories on p. 17 & 18. 

Chapter 2 Level 1