Numerous publications try to encompass the rhythm of change in classroom and attempt to guide foreign language teachers. This chapter describes how using the methodology of short stories and storytelling to teach ESL/ELT to children opens new ways of renewal, enhances the quality of teaching, breaks routine, and brings novelty to the monotony of lessons. A second purpose of the following pages is to present the advantages of teaching English to children using storytelling while trying to build a bridge between theory and the applications of stories in the classroom. To accomplish this goal, the chapter explores some instruments that offer visual support, and which maximize the impact of short stories' narration. These elements transform the act itself into a multilayered and multimodal experience with numerous benefits, such as the improvement of literacy, enhancement of imagination, the development of children's cultural awareness, the broadening of their general knowledge, the fostering of personal growth, the fomentation of group interaction and collaboration.
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Teaching a second language nowadays requires creativity, a great amount of diverse and attractive resources, and distinctive approaches that attempt to fusion old methodologies and new techniques, being this much propelled by the vertiginous technology transformation affecting classroom management. Moreover, globalization with its typical multiculturalism fomented by porous physical boundaries between countries and the connections established by permanent migratory processes, exert continuous pressure in the designing of multicultural and multilingual materials considering the existent inclusivist and pluralist necessities of the aulas.
Literature itself stands symbolically for the wide variety of countries, with their different cultural flavors entangled in mazes of rich texts written in English. It seems that long gone are now those days when the study of literature in the English as a foreign or second language classroom was limited to canonical, celebrated texts, those belonging to the category of literature written with a capital “L” (McRae, 1994) from the United States or United Kingdom.
As an attempt to follow the rapid rhythm of change and provide some solutions to some of the problems that might appear in daily teaching routine, current theories struggle to offer new perspectives on teaching using literature. Many scholars have insisted in their contributions — at times carried out into practice — upon the vital importance of teaching English employing literature, referring to its positive impact on the student’s cultural and linguistic enrichment and formation, but also to its applications in the creation of a different and appealing class atmosphere (Cruz, 2010; de Riverol, 1991; Khatib, Rezaei and Derakhshan, 2011; Kırkgöz, 2012; Lazar, 1993; Mc Kay, 1982; Salih, 1986; Smallwood, 1996; Saviddou, 2004; Tomlison, 1986; Yeasmin, Azad, and Ferdoush, 2011; Yueh Wu, 2008).
Novels, plays, poems, short stories, fables, legends and other fictional texts are powerful pedagogic tools that create incredible and realistic worlds, inhabited by multitude of characters belonging to different social strata with their thoughts, internal conflicts, real-life or fantastic experiences, feelings and customs captured lively in the pages of infinite numbers of books.
Rather than being an innovative method, teaching English through literature has suffered recently a recovery of its usage and a renovation of its applications in the classroom. As a matter of fact, stories and other types of narratives such as, for example, fables, folktales, myths and legends are the oldest form of education exploited in different and appealing ways and for different purposes, for example “Quintilian (A.D. 35-95) advocated the use of Aesop’s fables for acquiring Latin as a foreign language. Later, Erasmus (1466-1536) used pictures and then Comenius (1592-1670) wrote a picture book for acquiring Latin as a foreign language” (Chen, 2014, p. 232). This is how since ancient times the use of storytelling has been crossing the limits of language teaching, being applicable to other fields of study such as mathematics, science, chemistry etc., considering that
artistry in teaching [is] crucial for the effective and efficient education of children, with narratives and stories playing a central role in nearly all of their subjects, not just their native language classes. For example, instead of teachers giving students a great many facts and figures and formulas and abstract theories of science, mathematics, or history, (…) teachers [should] bring these subjects to life for the students through narrative and by telling stories of the people, both famous and common, involved in the ideas and the implications and consequences of those ideas, then and now. (Bresnihan, 2015, p. 109)
Because of their nature, then, apart from being instructional and educative, short stories and storytelling bond people and shorten distances between them, as
[since the dawn of time, the short story] it has been a medium for spiritual alchemy in the exploration of meaning and purpose. In the modern age, with all our sophisticated technology, we seem to have lost our way. We need the magic of ancient times; we need the power of the personal dynamic. We need the power of the personal dynamic. We need to listen to our soul; storytelling is our soul listening. (Allen and Krebs, 2007, p. 64)