Week 8: Using Letters to Tell the Stories in the EFL Classroom

Using Letters to Tells Stories in the EFL classroom

Writing skill is important productive skill like speaking skill. When we write about something formal or informal, we should think of writing letters and writing process. When we write stories, they may be our personal life using our imagination, social experience and how to affect us. In addition, writing may be easy to understand, when we develop it within piece of writing. In this article, I will tell two ways how to use letters for telling stories with different students, beginner and advanced students. Using letters can develop English Language Learning. It is based on teaching English as Foreign Language (EFL) with authentic materials and communicative ability.  In this section, I will describe two activities exploring with secondary school students. The first activity is how to use writing letters for beginners. The second one is activity (epistolary story) for advanced students.

The first activity is how to use writing letters for beginners. Teachers can start a letter exchange in a class of beginner who is 11-12 years old in secondary school. The letter-writing activity can be part of lesson as the following: Class is focused on beginning EFL students. There are several materials used such as copies of a letter found in an EFL textbook, a small box, paper, and envelopes. In warm-up step, teachers photocopy letters of learners and tell them to introduce themselves. Students write their name in upper left-hand and address in the center of envelop like making from post office. During class, teachers ask students using letters in the modern world. After that, teachers give them copying of the letters and ask them some question. Let students see the letters’ structure and know how to use them. Teachers announce received letters to their students and allow students to find their delivery letters. Homework, teachers tell students to reply their letters. After the lesson, teachers can collect the letter and read it. Teachers ask the class to guess who the author is. The first activity is helpful students can write and read received letters.

The second one is activity (epistolary story) for advanced students. The target students are advanced. Materials are used: paper and time used about 1 month. During the lesson, each students write a letter to “Dear you.” The letters can include a true, assuming, or imaginary story. Each student signs their full name in the letter. After finished, teachers collect all the letters and give students the letters that are not theirs. Teachers ask students to reply the letters. In their response they need to ask, “What happened?” Each student has the letters relationship with another, and asks them to continue for a month. Everyone have exchanged like the stories wrapped. After the lesson, teachers give feedback students while they develop the stories through the letter exchange. In the second exchange, teachers organize them to work in small group and brainstorm to develop their story or ask them how the story may be finished. After finished story, let them edit their stories in small group and put all of them for the others read.

Conclusion, using the letters can help students how to make stories. According to two exercises, these activities help beginning student school aged 11-12 and advanced students. Using letters can enhance students to directly gain new experience for learning English to communicate their feel­ings, and emotions. In addition, the activities are related to writing skills for developing social interaction, constructionism, creative skill coupled with using imagination. Using the letters can help students understand how to make up the stories easily and be fun with game in the EFL classroom. In my opinion, both activities can be applied into larger projects or new units lead to spoken development.  If teachers ask students to present what they have written, describe the writing process and how the stories finished. The most important of these activities is focused on student-centred, allowing students truly create, write and edit their task to develop English as Foreign Language

Vocabulary	Pronunciation	Meaning
Engage (v)	/ɪnˈɡeɪdʒ/	ข้องเกี่ยว to succeed in attracting and keeping somebody's attention and interest Ex: Their pleas failed to engage any sympathy.
Envelope (n)	/ˈenvələʊp/	ซองจดหมาย a flat paper container used for sending letters in Ex: It might be a bit big but this envelope will do just fine. It's better to be too big than too small.
Personalize (v)	/ˈpɜːsənəlaɪz/	ทำให้เป็นส่วนบุคคล [usually passive] personalize something to mark something in some way to show that it belongs to a particular person Ex: All the towels were personalized with their initials.
Autobiography (n)	/ˌɔːtəbaɪˈɒɡrəfi/	อัตชีวประวัติ the story of a person's life, written by that person; this type of writing Ex: His autobiography was released today and was sold out by noon.
Permission (n)	/pəˈmɪʃn/	การอนุญาต the act of allowing somebody to do something, especially when this is done by somebody in a position of authority Ex: The school has been refused permission to expand.
Autonomous (adj.)	/ɔːˈtɒnəməs/	อิสระ able to do things and make decisions without help from anyone else Ex: Teachers aim to help children become autonomous learners.
Mainstream (n)	/ˈmeɪnstriːm/	หลักสำคัญ the ideas and opinions that are thought to be normal because they are shared by most people; the people whose ideas and opinions are most accepted Ex: He was never part of the literary mainstream as a writer.
Epistolary (adj.)	/ɪˈpɪstələri/	จดหมาย written or expressed in the form of letters Ex: What made you want to look up epistolary?
Illustrate (v)	/ˈɪləstreɪt/	แสดง to make the meaning of something clearer by using examples, pictures, etc Ex: Last year's sales figures are illustrated in Figure 2.

Reference:

Dario Luis Banegas.  Using Letters to Tell Stories in the EFL

               Classroom.  Assessed from:  americanenglish.state.gov/

                Files/ae/…/49_4_4_banegas.pdf (On July 20, 2013).