Chapter 20: Getting Youth on Your Side: Coping with Young Learners 287
Some famous lines from stories provide a context for introducing other
tenses:✓ Future simple: ‘I’ll huff and I’ll puff and I’ll blow your house down’, from
The Three Little Pigs.
✓ Present perfect continuous: ‘Someone’s been sleeping in my bed’, from
Goldilocks.
✓ 1st conditional: ‘I’ll give you the child if you guess my name’, from
Rumpelstiltskin.
You can use stories to teach modal verbs too. Summarising the moral of the
story from fables and fairy tales lends itself to this topic. You may start a
discussion like the following:Teacher: What do you learn from ‘The Tortoise and The Hare’?
Student 1: We shouldn’t rush.Student 2: We mustn’t boast.
Student 3: We can’t judge by looks.Expanding vocabulary
Many story books for children are designed so that you can just point at the
picture and introduce the vocabulary. However, there should be a structure
for learning, so it’s good to introduce vocabulary within topic areas. Once
you decide on the topic you can find a story that lends itself to it.Some modern TV characters are also shown abroad, not to mention
Hollywood movies, which have international appeal. Use any story that’s
appropriate for the age group. So for example:✓ Food: Hansel and Gretel
✓ Buildings: The Three Little Pigs
✓ Family: Cinderella
✓ Animals: The Jungle Book
✓ Jobs: Fireman Sam/ Bob the Builder
✓ Environment: The Ice Age