Comparative Storytelling Unit: An Overview

What is your favorite story? This is a question I love to ask people. The answer can tell you a lot about the person as both an individual and a member of a culture or society in general.

Storytelling and literature are crucial elements of many cultures. While they help to define individual cultures and their histories, they are also common to most, if not all, cultures and in this way, help to unite us. There is something uniquely human about telling a story. The act of creating and sharing stories helps make us who we are. Whether designed to explain the mysteries of nature, teach moral lessons, pass along the history of a people or just entertain, storytelling has been at the heart of human evolution since we began communicating with one another.

In short, stories let us explore common bonds between cultures and help emphasize the vital role that reading and writing have played in the development of humanity. As Collie and Slater (1987) note, stories offer “a full and vivid context in which characters from many social backgrounds can be depicted. A reader can discover their thoughts, feelings, customs, possessions, what they buy, believe in, fear, enjoy; how they speak and behave behind closed doors” (p. 4). Stories take one to places and times he/she may never have been able to visit and offers insight into the inner-workings of the mind that would be otherwise unavailable. Literature also affords learners exposure to and the chance to work with rich, unique and poetic language.

This reading and writing unit provides the opportunity to develop various skills to help increase student English reading and writing proficiency through interaction with various storytelling traditions and genres. It is intended to help foster the perspective that storytelling is an integral part of the human experience and an expression of our humanity that evolves along with us (and helps us to continue evolving). Its target audience is advanced English learners. The course will meet once a week for six weeks (to ensure students have enough time to do the course readings).

Additional objectives include:

• Exposing students to a wide variety of storytelling genres and traditions
• Relating the importance of storytelling to the development of cultural identities 
• Increasing student reading proficiency through the use of literary texts
• Increasing student writing proficiency through the use of journaling activities, story summarizing and a critical analysis portfolio (or additional final project option)
• Promoting critical thinking skills through the use of a variety of intensive reading activities and contrastive genre analysis
• Improve student summary writing skills by practicing summarizing stories
• Raise student awareness about the benefits of reflection and have them employ reflective skills at the end of the unit

The unit organization is described in brief below. For a more complete picture, please review the "Unit Syllabus" link that's part of the "Class Links" link list to the right.

• Lesson 1.1 "Comparative Storytelling: An Overview (Common Elements)"
• Lesson 1.2 "Comparative Storytelling: Mythology"
• Lesson 1.3 "Comparative Storytelling: Fables & Fairy Tales"
• Lesson 1.4 "Comparative Storytelling: Fantasy" 
• Lesson 1.5 "Comparative Storytelling: Science Fiction"
• Lesson 1.6 "Comparative Storytelling: Project Presentations & Reflection" 

Best of luck! Hopefully you (and your students) will be able to lose yourself in the stories presented in this unit and the wonderful alternate realities they unveil in front of your mind's eye.