Learning to tell and write effectiv

Learning to tell and write effective stories necessarily includes language learning as students increase their knowledge of vocabulary and grammar. Cortazzi and Jin (2007) tracked the progress of a group of young learners who were using keywords and story maps to tell and retell simple stories, both in their first language (L1) and in English (see also Morgan & Rinvolucri, 1983). They concluded that, as L2 learners are encouraged ‘to tell their personal stories, this may help their linguistic and metacognitive development and give credibility to the voice of their experiences’ (p. 646). The researchers suggested that a curriculum struc- tured around storytelling would be beneficial to learning and argued for ‘the potential of narrative learning: learning to tell stories better and learning in and through the telling’ (p. 658).