STORY TELLING AN AID TO VERBAL EXPRESSION
Nearly all children find fluent speech as readily as birds find song
and flowers find perfume. Occasionally, there is a “different” child,
though, who through shyness, slow motor reaction or a retarded brain
development has difficulty in using words as a medium of expressing
himself.
There is always the problem, too, of the foreign-born child. We find
him a patient, tongue-tied little scrap of humanity clad in the garb
of Italy or Russia or Germany clinging to his mother’s skirts when the
big vessel docks and as dazed as she is at the babel of strange speech
that deafens, stuns him. Then we see him in school and his linguistic
problem becomes more complicated. He is put into a class where the
ordinarily complex matters of reading, writing, and ciphering are
made increasingly more complex because they are presented to him in a
foreign language. The school curriculum leaves small space in the day
for teaching a child to talk. Tony, discouraged, baffled, puzzled,
drifts farther and farther into his great silence and is dubbed a
dunce, because he doesn’t know what his teacher is talking about.
What shall we do with Tony who forms a big unit in our ever increasing
foreign population? How shall we quickest help him and every child to
that ready expression through speech that means power, efficiency,
self-control in later years?
There was my own, special Tony--a quaint little man of five in yellow
breeches, a green shirt and a fur cap, which latter he persisted in
wearing during his entire school day for fear that some one might
steal it. Tony was, “out of Naples.” His melting brown eyes danced
with delight at a bit of crimson paper, a gold orange produced as a
model for the painting lesson, a red rose that meant a sense game. But
Tony’s warm, red lips remained persistently closed. Days melted into
weeks and then were months and still Tony was dumb. Ideas he had.
Words he had not, although I had tried daily to teach him to say, _good
morning_, _good-by_, _ball_, _clay_, _blocks_ and like words.
One day Tony electrified me, though. He was always an attentive, close
listener during my story hour that ended the morning. Because the
children were, in the majority, foreign, I selected short, repetitional
stories for telling. The children were fascinated with the quaint old
folk tale of “The Teeny Tiny Lady.” As I told it, they had formed a
habit of joining me when I reached a familiar phrase.
“Tell the Teeny Tiny Lady,” they begged again and as I finished the
story, Tony’s eyes danced, his lips parted--
“Once upon a time there was a lady, who lived in a house in a village,”
he began in clear, pure English. With a little help he almost retold
the story. It was amazing, but through the inspiration of the other
children’s enthusiastic story interest, the many repetitions of the
story and its simple, cumulative structure Tony had learned nearly a
hundred words. He talked after that, and he told us stories. The story
had unloosed his tongue.
_Stories help children to verbal expression._
In the case of a foreign child who must be taught English, or the
American-born child who is shy and so lacking in the power of
expressing himself through words, we will use the old folk tale that
repeats its words and phrasing with happy familiarity and so teaches
speech.
_It will not be necessary to make the child or group of children feel
that the story is being used as a lesson in English._
Just select the _right story_.
Tell it _over and over again_, as long as the children are interested
in it--and you will find that their interest will exhaust yours.
And encourage the children to _tell the story with you_.
This method spells success in using the story to increase a child’s
vocabulary.
Certain stories stimulate the child to repeat certain jingles or
phrases _with_ the story teller. This explains their popularity and
adds to their value. The good old cumulative story of the “Cat and the
Mouse” is built around a nonsense ditty:
“First she leaped, and then she ran,
’Till she came to the cow and thus began.”
After a child learns and repeats this verse he begins to add to it the
sentences of the story that precede and follow it. When the foreign
child is able to tell the last paragraph of the story:--
“So the good baker gave the mouse some bread; the mouse gave the
bread to the butcher who gave him some meat; the mouse gave the
meat to the farmer who gave him an armful of hay; the mouse gave
the hay to the cow and the cow gave the mouse a saucer of milk for
the cat. Then the cat drank the milk and gave the mouse his little
long tail. And they went on playing in the malt house.”
--he has acquired a good working vocabulary of English.
So there are a score of similar repetitional stories that help a child
to learn ready speech. The Greedy Cat repeats the tale of his prowess:
“I have eaten my friend the mouse. I have eaten an old woman, and
a man and a donkey, and the King and all his elephants. What is to
hinder my eating you, too?”
Chicken Little bewails to every one she meets:
“The sky is falling.”
And in answer to the query “How do you know?” she assures her
questioner:
“I saw it with my eyes, I heard it with my ears, and a bit of it
fell upon my tail.”
In Maud Lindsay’s story of “The Little Gray Pony” there is a
delightfully interpolated jingle that repeats itself and adds to itself
in such fascinating fashion that children cannot resist saying with the
story teller:
“Storekeeper! Storekeeper! I’ve come to you;
My little gray pony has lost his shoe!
And I want some coal the iron to heat,
That the blacksmith may shoe my pony’s feet.”
and its answer:
“Now, I have apples and candy to sell,
And more nice things than I can tell;
But I’ve no coal the iron to heat,
That the blacksmith may shoe your pony’s feet.”
Ever popular Little Half Chick with his happy-go-lucky, daring
journey to Madrid compels children to tell his story as he “_hoppity
kicks_” through his adventures. The Three Pigs with their three ever
interesting fates help a child to do his own story telling. There is
an exhaustless fund of folk lore to draw upon that has few words in
its story construction, frequent and happy repetitions of those words,
and inspiration for a child to make those words a part of his own
vocabulary.
These bits of repeated phrasing in a story, scraps of incorporated
lyrics and jingles and built-up cumulative paragraphs are like the
beads that help to make the child’s necklace. On them he strings the
thread of the story narrative, making it so thoroughly a part of his
mental life that he is able to give it out again in the remembered
words of the story. Long after the loved, “huffing and puffing” of the
wolf in the story of the “Three Little Pigs” has become only a memory,
a child uses the words, _furze_, _blazing_, _scramble_, _fortune_--and
a hundred other words that came to him in this happy story connection
and so into his every-day conversation.
The older child who has passed the nursery tale and folk lore turnstile
in his story road finds help to a greater power in verbal expression
by means of the beautifully written story, told in its original pure
phrasing by the story teller and enriching him because of its wonderful
English. A truly well-wrought story suffers often at the hands of the
story teller. It isn’t necessary in telling such a story to bring it
down to the plane of the children’s intelligence; rather we will bring
the children up to its heights of beautiful imagery and mellow phrasing.
In telling Henry Ward Beecher’s story of “The Anxious Leaf,” in
“Norwood,” the story should be memorized by the story teller. No word
of its vivid picturing should be lost. It is a short story so this
method of preparing it for telling will not be irksome. A little
girl six years old who had been told this story several times was out
walking one fall with her mother. She picked up a dead leaf, from the
ground, and holding it tenderly in her hand, she repeated softly:
“Then the little leaf began to _want_ to go and it grew very beautiful
in thinking about it.
“And a little puff of wind came and tossed it like a spark of fire
in the air and it fell gently down under the edge of the fence among
hundreds of other leaves; and it fell into a dream and never waked up
to tell what it dreamed about--”
This child’s vocabulary had been deeply enriched by a story.
In Laura Richards’ stories we find pure English that will help
children. In Rudyard Kipling’s “Jungle Stories” and the “Just So
Stories” there is virile wording that every child needs. Dean Hodges’
“Bible Stories” preserve for children the line phrasing of the Hebrews
as almost no other Bible story teller has succeeded in doing. Hans
Christian Andersen’s best translators have kept for us his matchless
word painting. Such stories as these teach a child purer use of
English. Eugene Field’s few child stories; “The Legend of Claus,” “The
Mouse and the Moonbeam,” “The Maple Leaf and the Violet” sing in their
classic wording. No child can hear them without having his vocabulary
enriched.
It is quite possible to accomplish a great deal through story telling,
not only in teaching English to the child who is foreign born or
dormant mentally, but in giving the average child new and more colorful
examples of word painting than he has heard before.
The steps in story telling for verbal expression in children are:
_Selection._ The story must be worth while telling from the point of
view of its phrasing. In the case of the child who really needs to be
taught to talk, short, rhymed or cumulative tales are useful. With
older children we will select those beautiful examples of classic story
telling that should form part of a child’s mental life and so help him
to express himself in pure diction.
_Presentation._ These stories that are selected by the story teller as
being particularly adapted to English teaching should be most carefully
prepared and presented happily, compellingly, and in their exact,
original form with almost no variation in subsequent telling so that
they may present good models to the children.
_Repetition._ A story selected for its English value should have
frequent repetitions that the children may become very familiar with it
and gain the power to repeat it themselves, or at least learn certain
parts of it, not as a task but naturally, inspirationally.
STORIES THAT HELP A CHILD TO VERBAL EXPRESSION
THE WOODPECKER WHO WAS SELFISH
There was once a little Lady Woodpecker--such a trim, tidy little Lady
Woodpecker--who wore always a natty red bonnet, and a white apron
and who lived in a hole in a big Pine Tree. Her house was cozy and
comfortable, all lined with moss and wool, and protected by a little
brown bark door so that it was cool in the summer time and warm when
the winter winds blew.
But the little Lady Woodpecker was a selfish bird and she never,
_never_ asked any other birds to come and visit with her in her house
in the Pine Tree.
In the next tree to the little Lady Woodpecker lived a Fluffy Sparrow.
His nest was loosely built and untidy and it rested insecurely in a
fork of a tree so that the wind blew it this way and that way. This was
because all sparrows are poor nest builders and it was not the Fluffy
Sparrow’s fault at all. One day there was an unusually heavy storm and
down from the tree blew the nest. So the Sparrow had now no home.
Then the Fluffy Sparrow flew and hopped and twittered beside the little
brown bark door above the little Lady Woodpecker and said:
“Oh, little Lady Woodpecker with the red bonnet, have pity on me and
take me into your house, for the rain falls and I am very, very cold.”
But the little Lady Woodpecker tapped with her bill on the wall of her
house and answered:
“I can’t let you in to-day, Fluffy Sparrow. I am cooking juniper
berries for a batch of pies. Come again some other time and perhaps I
will let you in.”
So the Fluffy Sparrow hopped away and the rain made him very, very
cold.
The next day the Fluffy Sparrow flew and hopped and twittered again
beside the little brown bark door of the little Lady Woodpecker and
said:
“Oh, little Lady Woodpecker with the red bonnet, have pity on me and
take me into your house, for the cold and cruel wind blows and it
ruffles my feathers.”
But the little Lady Woodpecker tapped again with her bill on the wall
of her house and answered:
“I can’t let you in to-day, Fluffy Sparrow. I am washing the pot in
which I cooked a batch of juniper berries for a batch of pies. Come
again some other time and perhaps I will let you in.”
So the Fluffy Sparrow hopped away and the cold and cruel wind ruffled
his feathers.
The day after that the Fluffy Sparrow flew and hopped and twittered
again beside the little brown bark door of the little Lady Woodpecker
and said:
“Oh, little Lady Woodpecker, have pity on me and take me into your
house, for the biting frost nips my feet.”
But the little Lady Woodpecker tapped again with her bill on the wall
of her house and answered:
“I can’t let you in to-day, Fluffy Sparrow. I am making the crust for
my batch of juniper berry pies. Come again some other time and perhaps
I will let you in.”
So the Fluffy Sparrow hopped away and the biting frost nipped his feet.
But the fourth day the Fluffy Sparrow flew and hopped and twittered
once again beside the little brown bark door of the little Lady
Woodpecker and said:
“Oh, little Lady Woodpecker with the little red bonnet, have pity on me
and take me into your house, for the snow blinds me.”
But the little Lady Woodpecker tapped _very_ hard with her bill on the
wall of her house and answered:
“I can’t let you in to-day, Fluffy Sparrow. I am cleaning my floor
before I sit down, all by myself, to _eat_ my juniper berry pies.”
So the blinding frost blinded the Fluffy Sparrow’s eyes.
Then the last day of all the Fluffy Sparrow flew and hopped and
twittered beside the little brown bark door of the little Lady
Woodpecker and he said:
“Oh, little Lady Woodpecker with the little red bonnet, _please_ have
pity on me and take me into your house, for I do not like the rain and
the wind and the frost and the snow.”
But the little Lady Woodpecker did not answer the Fluffy Sparrow. And
the Fluffy Sparrow lifted one claw and poked open the little bark door
and he saw that _no one was inside_. The little Lady Woodpecker was
away buying a key with which to lock her door while she ate her batch
of juniper berry pies.
So the Fluffy Sparrow went inside the house in the tree that was so
cozy and comfortable because it was lined with moss and wool. There he
was sheltered from the rain and the wind and the frost and the snow. He
ate up all the batch of juniper berry pies.
When the little Lady Woodpecker came home the Fluffy Sparrow was living
in _her_ house and she had to find herself a new one because she had
been such a selfish bird.
_An Indian Folk Tale._
THE LITTLE RABBIT WHO WANTED RED WINGS
Once upon a time there was a little White Rabbit with two beautiful
long pink ears and two bright red eyes and four soft little
feet--_such_ a pretty little White Rabbit, but he wasn’t happy.
Just think, this little White Rabbit wanted to be somebody else
instead of the nice little rabbit that he was.
When Mr. Bushy Tail, the gray squirrel, went by, the little White
Rabbit would say to his Mammy:
“Oh, Mammy, I _wish_ I had a long gray tail like Mr. Bushy Tail’s.”
And when Mr. Porcupine went by, the little White Rabbit would say to
his Mammy:
“Oh, Mammy, I _wish_ I had a back full of bristles like Mr.
Porcupine’s.”
And when Miss Puddle-Duck went by in her two little red rubbers, the
little White Rabbit would say:
“Oh, Mammy, I _wish_ I had a pair of red rubbers like Miss
Puddle-Duck’s.”
So he went on and on wishing until his Mammy was clean tired out with
his wishing and Old Mr. Ground Hog heard him one day.
Old Mr. Ground Hog is very wise indeed, so he said to the little White
Rabbit:
“Why don’t you-all go down to Wishing Pond, and if you look in the
water at yourself and turn around three times in a circle, you-all will
get your wish.”
So the little White Rabbit trotted off, all alone by himself through
the woods until he came to a little pool of green water lying in a low
tree stump, and that was the Wishing Pond. There was a little, _little_
bird, all red, sitting on the edge of the Wishing Pond to get a drink,
and as soon as the little White Rabbit saw him he began to wish again:
“Oh, I wish I had a pair of little red wings!” he said. Just then he
looked in the Wishing Pond and he saw his little white face. Then he
turned around three times and something happened. He began to have a
queer feeling in his shoulders, like he felt in his mouth when he was
cutting his teeth. It was his wings coming through. So he sat all day
in the woods by the Wishing Pond waiting for them to grow, and, by and
by, when it was almost sundown, he started home to see his Mammy and
show her, because he had a beautiful pair of long, trailing red wings.
But by the time he reached home it was getting dark, and when he went
in the hole at the foot of a big tree where he lived, his Mammy didn’t
know him. No, she really and truly did not know him, because, you see,
she had never seen a rabbit with red wings in all her life. And so the
little White Rabbit had to go out again, because his Mammy wouldn’t
let him get into his own bed. He had to go out and look for some place
to sleep all night.
He went and went until he came to Mr. Bushy Tail’s house, and he rapped
on the door and said:
“Please, kind Mr. Bushy Tail, may I sleep in your house all night?”
But Mr. Bushy Tail opened his door a crack and then he slammed it tight
shut again. You see he had never seen a rabbit with red wings in all
his life.
So the little White Rabbit went and went until he came to Miss
Puddle-Duck’s nest down by the marsh and he said:
“Please, kind Miss Puddle-Duck, may I sleep in your nest all night?”
But Miss Puddle-Duck poked her head up out of her nest just a little
way and then she shut her eyes and stretched her wings out so far that
she covered her whole nest.
You see she had never seen a rabbit with red wings in all her life.
So the little White Rabbit went and went until he came to Old Mr.
Ground Hog’s hole and Old Mr. Ground Hog let him sleep with him all
night, but the hole had beech nuts spread all over it. Old Mr. Ground
Hog liked to sleep on them, but they hurt the little White Rabbit’s
feet and made him very uncomfortable before morning.
When it came morning, the little White Rabbit decided to try his wings
and fly a little, so he climbed up on a hill and spread his wings and
sailed off, but he landed in a low bush all full of prickles, and his
four feet got mixed up with the twigs so he couldn’t get down.
“Mammy, Mammy, Mammy, come and help me!” he called.
His Mammy didn’t hear him, but Old Mr. Ground Hog did, and he came and
helped the little White Rabbit out of the prickly bush.
“Don’t you-all want your red wings?” Mr. Ground Hog asked.
“No, _no_!” said the little White Rabbit.
“Well,” said the Old Ground Hog, “why don’t you-all go down to the
Wishing Pond and wish them _off_ again?”
So the little White Rabbit went down to the Wishing Pond and he saw
his face in it. Then he turned around three times, and, sure enough,
his red wings were gone. Then he went home to his Mammy, who knew him
right away and was so glad to see him and he never, _never_ wished to
be something different from what he really was again.
_Southern Folk Tale._
STORIES SELECTED BECAUSE OF THEIR STIMULUS TO VERBAL EXPRESSION IN
CHILDREN
THE CAT AND THE MOUSE _In Firelight Stories_
THE LITTLE GRAY PONY _Maud Lindsay, in Mother Stories_
THE LITTLE BOY WHO FOUND HIS FORTUNE _In Firelight Stories_
THE STORY OF IBBITY _In Firelight Stories_
THE CAT, THE COCK AND THE FOX _Kate Douglas Wiggin, in Tales
of Laughter_
TOM TIT TOT _Kate Douglas Wiggin, in Tales of Laughter_
THE LITTLE PINK ROSE _Sara Cone Bryant, in Best Stories to Tell
to Children_
THE LITTLE TRAVELER _Maud Lindsay, in Mother Stories_
TOM, THE WATER BABY _Charles Kingsley, adapted in For the
Children’s Hour_