In a Strange Land: Short Stories for Creative Learning

Acknowledgements

We wish to sincerely thank Susan M. Dean, Hannah C. Floyd, Lynn A. Fraser and Tracey Seagrove for writing these stories for us and allowing us to include them in this collection. Special thanks go to Alison Bruce, Royal Literary Fund Fellow from Anglia Ruskin University, who helped us to select the stories for this volume. Next, we would like to extend our thanks and gratitude to Paul Bloomfield, Michael Butler, Lorraine Noble and Mary Whiteside, who kindly agreed to read the stories for the accompanying audio material, and to Will Smythe for preparing the recording.

The accompanying audio recordings are available as two audio CDs or as individual MP3 downloads. For more information, please see the publisher’s website at www.linguabooks.com.

To the Teacher

IN A STRANGE LAND is a collection of four stories written with the aim of providing you with motivating and engaging material to use in the classroom at the CEFR B2 and C1 levels. The stories require the reader to represent the imaginative world while they interact with the texts. Encouraging the reader to become an active participant in the story not only offers fertile ground for critical thinking, but also helps the student to develop scope for mental reflection on the texts they read, as well as on how the plot relates to their personal life.

These original stories invite the student to read naturally in a relaxed and enjoyable manner. For this reason, it is not our intention to encourage you to exploit these stories in the conventional form of intensive reading we find in many modern course books. Since the stories have been written to be enjoyed, they are supported with attractive activities in which the student can integrate all language skills, use computer technology, practise learning strategies and exercise autonomy. In other words, the student is involved in experiential learning through which they are stimulated to relate the inner world of their own selves to the outer world of external reality.

In order to arrive at a compromise between a truly natural reading experience and what the language teacher and learner often expect from texts, we would suggest two ways of using this material: reading for pleasure and an integrated skills approach to reading.

The reading for pleasure approach is based on Pennac’s Rights of the Reader. We offer the following two alternatives to the learner: to read the story and enjoy it, both in and out of the classroom, or to read the story while listening to a recording of it (audio-reading).

The integrated skills approach combines both receptive and productive skills in activities based on specific aspects of the stories in this volume. The learner is involved in a series of creative activities which encourage meaningful use of the target language. The skills practised and the types of activities vary from story to story. By the time the learner gets to the final activity in each story, they will have practised the language related to its content, including relevant vocabulary. Occasionally, the skills practice is supported by vocabulary exploitation exercises to help the language learner to interact with the text.

It is our intention to promote a creative and original approach to reading. We believe that the input required to stimulate effective language acquisition and learning should engage the whole person. For this reason, the stories and activities in this volume aim to boost learner-intrinsic motivation, affective arousal and self-investment. Additionally, this material instantly attracts the learner’s curiosity, interest and attention, all of which are necessary for successful language development. Another distinctive feature of this volume is that reading encourages the language learner to use the target language in a new and productive manner.

The activities are ready to use, yet you are welcome to adapt them to meet your students’ needs and interests. It is essential for teachers to exercise their creativity, to recognise the need for contextual relevance and to address the learning styles of both individuals and members of a reading community. This differentiated approach maximises the potential of each language learner to extend their learning. Matching classroom work to the diverse abilities of the learners requires teachers to abandon the security of the structured lesson and reinvent themselves by adapting their instructional strategies to unfamiliar situations, giving students a voice in the classroom and incorporating their students’ creativity into the teaching/learning process. The deliberate absence of an answer key likewise serves to remove restrictions, promote creativity and thereby enhance enjoyment for both student and teacher.

To the Learner

IN A STRANGE LAND consists of four stories written to engage you in pleasure reading – a real-life experience where you enjoy stories written for you as a reader, rather than as a foreign or second language learner. For this reason, you should not regard this collection as just another book for classroom use.

We believe that you will find these stories attractive and engaging as they contain characters and situations that are familiar to us from our daily lives. As a result, you will be able to not only make personal connections between the texts you read and your own life experiences, but also connect the stories to other texts you may have read before. Likewise, you will have an opportunity to empathise with the characters and experience similar or completely new life situations.

The suggested activities are intended to be a motivational tool and provide excellent support for your learning. They promote co-operation, creativity and meaningful communication in the target language. Additionally, they will help you to practise English by discussing individual parts of the texts and predicting the course of events. The text will also encourage you to respond creatively to the content.

We hope you will find this volume a useful resource for your language practice and learning.

The Blue Dragon

by Tracey Seagrove

THE BLUE DRAGON

OUTLINE OF ACTIVITIES

1 Pre-reading: Talking about emotions

1.1 Creating a spider diagram showing emotions and feelings

1.2 Sharing and explaining emotions and feelings

1.3 Group discussion and collaboration on emotions and feelings

2 Visualising and predicting: Focusing on the title and the opening

2.1 Discussing and describing the blue dragon; making notes

2.2 Identifying and discussing the characteristics of a good opening

3 Empathising: Understanding the language of feelings

3.1