TESOL Essay SEVEN

Essay Seven

The Never Ending Story Method

By Syrbastyian Vzampfyier

Activating the brain and getting the mind ready for learning is vital in acquiring new knowledge. In an EFL/ESL class you may find that the students may be tired at some point in the course due to various reasons such as early morning classes, after lunch or long day at work. You may wish to activate the student’s passive knowledge to review or re-enforce previously learnt material. May be you wish to introduce new vocabulary into the lesson. Whichever reason and, or purpose you, as an EFL/ESL instructor, may have the ‘Never Ending Story’ method is a using technique to accomplish the reason and, or purpose for the student (class).

Let’s quickly review how the ‘Never Ending Story’ method works. Basically, one student (A) make a statement or says a word then student (B) repeats what student (A) said and add their own statement or work next student (C) repeats what student (A9 and student (B) said and then adds their own statement or word, etcetera. The point is to build the students retention and indirectly have the students help each other to remember the sequence.

I will now go on to how the ‘Never Ending Story’ can be applied in the class to (A) activate passive knowledge, (B) review previously learnt material or (C) introduce new material.

NOTE: It is most important and beneficial for the students that the EFL/ESL instructor add a physical element to the exercise, for example: have the students use facial expressions, hand or arm movement, and, or body movements. This physical part of the exercise will help the students by activating more areas in the brain, remember the sequence and allow the students to help each other to remember with visual prompts.

Single Word:

This can be used to (A) access the passive-vocabulary stored in the students’ minds, (B) review and re-enforce previously learnt vocabulary or (C) introduce new vocabulary of the lesson you are going to teach that day.

(A) Passive vocabulary access.

(A1)  The instructor provides a theme for example: The Beach. The instructor asks the students to think of nouns (while the students are doing the activity the instructor writes down the nouns the students say). The students go around in turn repeating the noun of the previous student(s) and then adding their own noun. Depending on the size of the class, go around 2 or more times.

(A2)  The instructor writes all the nouns on the board. Then the instructor asks the students to repeat the same process using adjectives that are connected to the nouns.  The students go around in turn repeating the adjective of the previous student(s) and then adding their own adjective. Again the instructor notes down the adjectives used by the students and at the end of the exercise writes the adjectives on the board next to or underneath the respective nouns.

(A3)  Repeat the same process for verbs and again for adverbs connected to the verbs. Each time noting down the vocabulary and when that part of the exercise is finished, writing the vocabulary the board.

(B) Review of learnt material.

(B1)  The instructor asks the students to open their textbooks and notebooks to a particular lesson or lessons.

(B2)  Next, the instructor asks the students read through and review the material of the select lesson(s). And ask if the students have any question about the material.

(B3)  As described above, A1 to A3, repeat the same process breaking the material into nouns, adjectives, verbs and adverbs.

(C) Introducing new material.

(C1)  Again the process is the same, only this time the instructor will write the new material on the board or have the students read through in their textbooks. The instructor will or have the students organise the material into lists of nouns, adjectives, verbs and adverbs.

(C3)  The will either explain any unknown material or have the students explain it to each other.

(C4)  Repeat the same process as described above in A1 to A3.

For an extra challenge or for students with a higher ability the instructor can have the students make two word sentences (big wave / surf happily), a short sentence (A big wave / I surf happily), a full short sentence (I happily surf a big wave / I surf a big wave happily), or long complex sentences. They ways to use the ‘Never Ending Story’ method in a lesson are endless and only limited by the instructor’s imagination.