On one of the recent discussion boards someone was asking about writing stories for homework and whether students needed a lot of grammar or vocab to be able to do it. Here’s my reply, I thought you might find it useful too!

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I’ve also had great success with stories and it can be really, really simple stuff from even really new learners. It’s the imagination rather than the English that counts. For example a simple comic strip could be:

Pizza?
Yes, please!
Here you go.
It’s hot!
Crash!

Add in the pictures and it’s a fun story. A beginning, middle & end and there you go. With my own picture books I often just use the target lesson language and then just put a twist at the end. The kids like them and then some of them get ideas for doing their own.

e.g.
How did you get here?
I came here by car.
How did you get here?
I came here by train.
etc. etc. then it goes into….
How did you get here?
I came here by hippo!
Well, I came here by chicken!
And I came here by cockroach…

Gradually getting more and more crazy!

If you have the right kids, or right source material (kids newspaper cartoons that you can download etc.) you can produce some amazing stuff.

Be genki,

Richard
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