The Language of Stories

The Language of Stories PDF Author: Barbara Dancygier
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1139499238
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 241

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Book Description
How do we read stories? How do they engage our minds and create meaning? Are they a mental construct, a linguistic one or a cultural one? What is the difference between real stories and fictional ones? This book addresses such questions by describing the conceptual and linguistic underpinnings of narrative interpretation. Barbara Dancygier discusses literary texts as linguistic artifacts, describing the processes which drive the emergence of literary meaning. If a text means something to someone, she argues, there have to be linguistic phenomena that make it possible. Drawing on blending theory and construction grammar, the book focuses its linguistic lens on the concepts of the narrator and the story, and defines narrative viewpoint in a new way. The examples come from a wide spectrum of texts, primarily novels and drama, by authors such as William Shakespeare, Margaret Atwood, Philip Roth, Dave Eggers, Jan Potocki and Mikhail Bulgakov.

Once Upon a Time

Once Upon a Time PDF Author: John Morgan
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521272629
Category : Foreign Language Study
Languages : en
Pages : 136

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Book Description
A wide range of motivating and engaging stories from many cultures and sources.

Stories in Another Language

Stories in Another Language PDF Author: Yannick Murphy
Publisher: Alfred A. Knopf
ISBN:
Category : American fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 168

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Book Description


Stories

Stories PDF Author: Ruth Wajnryb
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 0521001609
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 249

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Book Description
An exploration of story-telling as discourse through a wide range of teaching activities.

The Language of Stories

The Language of Stories PDF Author: Barbara Dancygier
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1139499238
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 241

Get Book Here

Book Description
How do we read stories? How do they engage our minds and create meaning? Are they a mental construct, a linguistic one or a cultural one? What is the difference between real stories and fictional ones? This book addresses such questions by describing the conceptual and linguistic underpinnings of narrative interpretation. Barbara Dancygier discusses literary texts as linguistic artifacts, describing the processes which drive the emergence of literary meaning. If a text means something to someone, she argues, there have to be linguistic phenomena that make it possible. Drawing on blending theory and construction grammar, the book focuses its linguistic lens on the concepts of the narrator and the story, and defines narrative viewpoint in a new way. The examples come from a wide spectrum of texts, primarily novels and drama, by authors such as William Shakespeare, Margaret Atwood, Philip Roth, Dave Eggers, Jan Potocki and Mikhail Bulgakov.

Perfect Picture Stories for Language Learning

Perfect Picture Stories for Language Learning PDF Author: Lonnie Dai Zovi
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780935301823
Category : English language
Languages : en
Pages :

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Book Description
Includes a collection of 36 stories pictured in 6 frames with suggested vocabulary lists and stimulus questions for each story in English, Spanish and French. The stories can be used for listening comprehension, TPRS (Total Physical Response Storytelling), speaking practice, dialogue or play suggestions, or writing practice.

The Language of Cats and Other Stories

The Language of Cats and Other Stories PDF Author: Spencer Holst
Publisher: Graymalkin Media
ISBN: 1631682520
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 93

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Book Description
Spencer Holst is a legendary underground storyteller. He writes his stories by telling and retelling them until they are phrase-perfect. Collector’s items, his handcrafted books always sell out before publication. Kirkus said reading the short stories in this book “is like sitting at the knee of a delightfully demented fairy-tale grandfather.” Holst’s short stories are endlessly entertaining and always surprising.

Language Teachers' Stories from their Professional Knowledge Landscapes

Language Teachers' Stories from their Professional Knowledge Landscapes PDF Author: Lesley Harbon
Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing
ISBN: 1443873861
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 199

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Book Description
Language Teachers’ Professional Knowledge Landscapes is a collection of fourteen narratives from teachers of different languages, at different school levels, in different contexts across Australia. This volume brings together not simply language teacher stories, but also more political stories of the problems associated with school programs and contexts. Highlighted through these stories are some of the major political issues in schools that impact language teachers’ work, and their students’ success in sustained language study. The book is conceptually framed by the work of Clandinin and Connelly (1996) and their notion of ‘levels’ of stories told by teachers about their classrooms: the secret, the sacred and the cover stories. The term ‘professional knowledge landscape’ is used to indicate how teachers can critically situate their work, and thereby understand it better. The collection includes the stories of two outstanding primary language educators, and a story of mixed success in a rural program in teaching the local Aboriginal language (Ngarrabul). There are stories of frustration with policy failures, particularly in supporting the learning of Asian languages. Many of the teacher narrators ask the confronting question: ‘What blocks language learning in Australia?’ They offer the strategies which they have developed, that they see making a difference. Other narratives offer autoethnographic tracking of careers, for example, as a teacher of Latin and Classics, Japanese, French, Spanish, Russian, and of teachers’ ongoing vigour and creativity in advocacy. A number of teachers examine their own identity story for the intercultural learning, which they then offer and extend in student learning. Consistently expressed, there is the need for teachers to take up individual responsibility, while still being strongly supported by their professional community: ‘It is us’ who make the difference, one teacher concludes. Supported by a strong Foreword by Canadian scholar F. Michael Connelly, this ground-breaking collection of narratives represents a form of social research in providing critical illustrations of the issues needing attention for national language education enhancement. It is the only extended inquiry into language teaching in the context of an active policy initiative environment, and the first volume to address the language education landscape through the voices of active language teachers.

Compelling Stories for English Language Learners

Compelling Stories for English Language Learners PDF Author: Janice Bland
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1350190004
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 377

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Book Description
An International Research Society for Children's Literature (IRSCL) Honour Book for 2023 This book is a comprehensive and thorough introduction to children's and young adult literature in English language education. Reading is promoted as central to language education in order to experience perspectives from around the world, and the book demonstrates the many opportunities for teaching with compelling story, encouraging an active and engaged community of second language readers through challenging picturebooks, motivating graphic novels, dynamic plays, enchanting verse novels and compelling young adult fiction. Using many examples of literary texts that are well suited to the primary or secondary classroom, the book focuses on the advantages of deep reading and the vital importance of in-depth learning. In-depth learning is an approach that involves the students as motivated participants, working collaboratively and with empathy while preparing for and confronting the challenges of the 21st century. Illustrating the approach with a Deep Reading Framework based in research and theory, Janice Bland guides the reader to discover and learn how to make use of literary texts in a way that challenges students to become involved in interculturality, creativity and critical literacy. Throughout the book the emphasis is on an approach that puts the reader and language learner in the centre – not a study of literature but a study of how readers learn through compelling story.

Stories from Exceptional Language Learners Who Have Achieved Nativelike Proficiency

Stories from Exceptional Language Learners Who Have Achieved Nativelike Proficiency PDF Author: Katarina Mentzelopoulos
Publisher: Channel View Publications
ISBN: 180041434X
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 235

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Book Description
It is generally understood that most language learners beyond a certain age are unlikely to ever reach nativelike proficiency in their second language. However, there exists a unique population of gifted adult learners who do triumph against all odds and achieve nativelike proficiency, and their learning experiences have thus far remained a largely untapped gold mine. The companion to Lessons from Exceptional Language Learners Who Have Achieved Nativelike Proficiency, this volume presents the autobiographical learning stories of 30 such exceptional individuals, opening a narrative window into their learning experiences. This rich corpus of success stories reveals the many steps of these language learning journeys and the learners’ pathways to success. A fascinating and readable collection of personal stories, this volume will be of interest to non-specialist language learners as a motivational primer for their own studies as well as researchers working in language learning psychology, who will find the unique database of learner narratives a useful tool for future research.

A Worker's Writebook: How Language Makes Stories

A Worker's Writebook: How Language Makes Stories PDF Author: Jack Matthews
Publisher: Personville Press
ISBN:
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 285

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Book Description
This quirky writing guide by Jack Matthews (author of 20 literary works) offers insight about how successful writers mold raw experiences into a story and how language helps you to do that. Erudite, witty, idiosyncratic, serendipitous, mischievous, sesquipedalian, entertaining, introspective and colorful: these are adjectives which come to mind when reading this book. Less For several decades Jack Matthews distributed a photocopied version of this guide to students in his fiction writing classes at Ohio University. A Worker's Writebook offers insight about how successful writers mold raw experiences into a story and how language helps you to do that. It offers good examples and practical advice for getting a story idea off the ground; it analyzes several stories (including one of Matthews’ own) and offers paradigms for understanding how stories work. Erudite, witty, idiosyncratic, serendipitous, mischievous, sesquipedalian, entertaining, introspective and colorful: these are adjectives which come to mind when reading this book. The book consists of essays and dialogue (called interludes). These interludes punch holes in the rules and pronouncements made in the essays; they also help the book avoid seeming too dogmatic. The two voices in the interludes are not exactly "characters" but the author and a contrarian voice within the author. The comparison to Platonic dialogues is apt; Matthews received his undergraduate degree in classical Greek literature and has always found echoes of the classical age in contemporary art and life. Still, the "poetics" of Writebook is grounded less in Aristotle than Aristophanes. Although Writebook touches upon practical aspects of writing fiction (such as naming characters and writing speech cues), it focuses on helping the writer to write more boldly and with more attention to the linguistic vehicles of thought. For Matthews, most stories fail through under-invention, not because the rules of narrative have been disregarded. Chapter 2 (Taxonomies) and 3 (Structural Matters) cover paradigms for plot and character development. These are worthy subjects and Matthews has interesting things to say (especially when he tries to analyze his story Funeral Plots with these same paradigms). At the same time Matthews recognizes that there is no magic paradigm or archetype capable of explaining what makes all stories successful – these are just guides. At some point you just have to trust writerly intuition. Writebook helps the potential storyteller to cultivate this intuition and be flexible enough to bend rules when necessary. Matthews writes, "Anything can be done if it's done in the right way: with style, panache and cunning." At another time, he wrote, "Literature is the least pure of all the arts, and that is its richness and power. It's a temporal art like a symphony; it has periodicities, it has rhythms - prose itself has sound, it evokes visual imagery like painting...." Many writing books include a chapter or two listing literary cliches to avoid. For the most part, Writebook doesn't do that. Instead it goes deeper and analyzes why some metaphors succeed and others do not. The funny "Parable of the Indifferent Ear" provides a good case study about how linguistic inventiveness doesn't always translate into effective writing. Literary insights from Writebook can be applied to drama, novels and poetry; but they are especially applicable to smaller forms like the short story (though Matthews' claim that a short story of more than 10,000 words rarely succeeds is sure to be controversial). Writebook introduces lots of new ideas and terminology: the non-sequential time opening, the Swamps of Antecedence, pointedness (which is how stories gain enough momentum to escape the gravitational pull of the author), linguistic vehicles (the actual words which transport the thought) and why flat characters aren't always bad. "Mr. Matthews is a master of prose conversation and deadpan charm. He is ironic, cool, and shrewd, and he writes a lucid prose." (Tom O'Brien, NEW YORK TIMES) "Matthews' always graceful prose finds that precise telling detail. It's easy to fall in love with such writing." (Perry Glasser, NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW)