Literary techniques: While techniques common for longer novels, such as flashbacks or leitmotifs are absent in short stories, the genre still shows crucial elements of narrative texts, such as an exposition (usually in medias res), a complication and rising action (usually the part where expectations and suspense is built up), a climax and/or a turning point (in Dahl’s case often an unexpected twist) and a resolution (or sometimes the deliberate absence of it).
Common themes in roald dahl short stories series#
Students can focus on the author’s presentation of a single coherent event or series of events and are therefore less distracted or (in the case of less strong students) less discouraged. Plot: Short stories are usually about one event, rather than a longer period of time.Short stories itself are ideal as an introduction to literature, since they have a limited, more focussed plot, usually a smaller range of literary techniques and they’re bite-sized.In the process, students learn to understand how narrative techniques and indeterminacy lead the reader to expectations that might not turn out to be correct. Dahl’s stories often have an unexpected twist – a fact that makes guessing and expressing one’s expectations about the outcome of his stories a central part of dealing with them.His characters are vividly described, often peculiar or stereotypical, and can easily be pictured or even identified with. Dahl writes for young and adult people alike.Roald Dahl’s short stories are ideal to introduce students to English literature for the following reasons: 96/97), and the characteristics of short stories outlined my analysis (part 2) closely match Thaler's definition and features (p. story-telling, dramatization of the story (p. Moreover, some of Thaler's (2008: 78-99) suggestions for teaching "shorties" are applied in this TU, e.g. "Why does the butler's face get pale?" or "Was the Butler right to drink Mr Cleaver's wine?". While reading they had to watch out for elements of lower and middle/upper class talk, and post reading, students are asked comprehension and opinion questions (e.g. If we take lesson 3, for example, students are put into the mood of "The Butler" by a little discussion of what they expect a Roald Dahl story with said title to be about. I have based my methodological considerations (see analysis, part 3) on Harmer (2007: 62-80)įurther, there are, of course pre-reading, while-reading, and post-reading activities applied over the course of TU (Nünning/Surkamp 2006).
Common themes in roald dahl short stories full#
For the the full bibliographical information see "Resources" in the column on the right. Update (end of June 2013): As asked, I'll add some further reference to theoretical texts on teaching literature in the foreign language classroom. Alternatively (or additionally), student should be given a concise description of the end product, so they can plan the process of getting there themselves.Īll in all, student feedback was positive and they liked being introduced to English liteature in the proposed scaffolded way. This seemed to confuse some students and some just didn't bother reading and following the instructions which made it more difficult for me to orchestrate the the execution of the group tasks.Ī way to avoid this obstacle would be to design cards with well-formulated tasks that students can assign to the individual group members. However, the instructions for the group task are a bit overly ambitious and not always to the point (see worksheets 3 and 4). I would still argue that the three parts of the group presentations are meaningful: retelling, discussing and acting out the resolution of the stories. I found it hard to find the suitable balance between letting students work independently and self-controlled on the one side, and giving them enough guidance in order to achieve a good presentation on the other. Not everybody was a big fan of the presentation task and that's probably also the one weakness of this TU. Every student has to be ready to pick up the retelling where their predecessor left off. In order to make this more interesting, I think the story could have been retold collectively. Moreover, there wasn't much to do for the rest of the class while that one student retold the story that everybody knew quite well by then. In lesson 6, asking one student to retell the story up front seemed rather intimidating to that one student. Lessons 1 through 5 went quite smoothly, but generally the lessons were a bit packed: In lesson 2, we couldn't really go into the details of the song, and in lesson 5, students only got to work in their groups for about 30 minutes instead of 45. They also liked most of the activities and were quite keen on getting to know more about retelling, short story structures and Dahl's style. I think my students liked the selected stories a lot. Update (end of June 2013): As requested, I am adding some thoughts on how the TU went in practice.