Short stories are amazing. They’re immersive. They tell you so much about the cultural ideas behind a language. They help learners expand their vocabulary in context, making it much more likely to be retained.

But far beyond the immediately obvious advantages, they also offer a priceless hidden benefit — the chance for students to escape their daily lives. Many of my students have to deal with incredibly complex geopolitical circumstances, or very demanding jobs (often both) and literature gives them, they tell me, ‘breathing space’ in their week. If yours are the same, you could be giving them more help than you ever realise. 

This guest blog post was written by Kayte Fawcett.

Who benefits from studying stories?

The short answer is — everyone. Stories can be suitable for children or adults, beginners, or very experienced students. The secret is choosing an appropriate level of story.

In this guest blog post, I’m going to focus on the age group and level I most commonly teach — adult students who want to move from Advanced to Proficiency level. My students are used to using a highly sophisticated level of vocabulary in their first language and are very well-read. They want to achieve the same level in the language they’re currently learning, so they can still feel like themselves when they use it.

Why short stories?

Short stories can be more suitable than novels for this kind of work for one simple reason — time.

Students can feel the great satisfaction of ‘completing’ something relatively quickly, rather than being overwhelmed by the amount of text they have to read. Each suggested task for working with the text is also fairly bite-sized for this reason. 

Poems also work well timewise, but sometimes the non-typical nature of their grammar can be a barrier to understanding.

Moreover, short stories are tools that are suitable for any kind of lesson. With a bit of adaption, they can be used for groups or one-to-one lessons, in a classroom setting, or online. (A hybrid approach is also an exciting possibility.) 

What kind of stories are suitable?

One of the major considerations when choosing material is that it’s out of copyright. This means it can be used freely, without fear of legal consequences. For this reason, I love working with the stories of Virginia Woolf, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Edgar Allan Poe, and Charlotte Gilman Perkins, although this list is by no means exhaustive.

Of course, nowadays it can be quick and simple to create your own texts incorporating the words you want to teach, using AI. This certainly has its place, but I believe there’s nothing like learning from masters of the language. 

The following example activities are based on A Haunted House by Virginia Woolf. The focus here is on vocabulary teaching, but, of course, short stories can also be wonderful tools for teaching grammar and pronunciation. 

Stage 1 — reflecting on themes of short stories

Help your students enter the world of the story while activating existing, possibly passive, vocabulary.

Before even showing them the text, invite them to reflect on some of the themes or topics it tackles. For example, when using A Haunted House, I might encourage them to recount unusual or unexpected feelings they’ve experienced in particular buildings. Do they believe that the good/bad feelings of former owners persist in a place?

Very short ghost stories could aid the process. Have they ever felt anything like the examples? 

Now introduce students to the text itself. 

Encourage them to make predictions about it. Ask them to describe the cover (if applicable). Then ask them what they think about the title, and if they’ve come across the writer before. Have they read any of his/her works? (In their first language or English.) What type of stories is he/she famous for? Do they know anything about the writer’s life?
Share interesting details about the story. For example, when introducing A Haunted House, I show photos of the property Virginia Woolf based it on, and read a quote from her husband explaining how the story was ‘inspired by real events’.

Stage 2 — reading the story

Hopefully, your students are now curious and keen to read the story.  

Ask students to read the story in whichever way is best for them. (Out loud, in silence, accompanied by an audio, whichever way they prefer.) You know your students best. 

At this stage, focus on the gist. Ask your students to summarise the story, then use questions to check their comprehension. 

Make links to previous learning: have they read any similar stories before? You can then make the question more focused: have they previously read any stories where inanimate objects are given human-like qualities (the literary technique of pathetic fallacy), like the house in Woolf’s story?

What’s their overall impression of A Haunted House? 

Stage 3 — focusing on grammar and vocabulary

The following stages work with any type of word. For the purposes of this article, I’m going to focus on adverbs.

It’s useful if each lesson has a strong focus. Trying to look at every word in a story at once can quickly become huge and messy. If you want to move on to, say, adjectives, it’s best to go through the process again later, either with the same story or a different one. Some stories are particularly good examples of different types of language. For example, Sherlock Holmes stories contain lots of verbs. Edgar Allan Poe’s tales are excellent for adjectives.

That doesn’t mean you should ignore questions on other types of words if students ask, but it does mean keeping it manageable, so students don’t feel overwhelmed. (Which, of course, can very easily happen when someone’s trying to learn a language containing more than one million words.)  

Example 1

So, in this instance, you could start by asking what the purpose of an adverb is, then brainstorming a list of examples and their meanings in collaboration with the students. Using a dictionary can be helpful here. 

Let’s use the example of the word ‘happily’:

Happily – in a happy way

Ask the students: which verbs does it commonly collocate with? 

Play happily

Smile happily

Can you write/say a sentence?

The children played happily in the garden.

She smiled happily at the dog.

What else can you find out about the word?

Related phrases – happily ever after

Common contexts – fairytales

Other possible meanings – willingly

Synonyms – merrily (although informally it has a sarcastic usage, and suggests that someone doesn’t think about the results of their actions)

Near-synonyms – chirpily (in a happy way, but also in an energetic way)

[I’ve chosen these examples because my students often still don’t use adverbs. Instead, they only tend to use adjectives, for example, ‘happy’. In fact, many of them rarely use adverbs at all. I’ve used ‘happily’ as it has interesting other usages, typical phrases, and near-synonyms, which Advanced learners would appreciate.]

Example 2

Let’s look at a further example, the word ‘curiously’:

Curiously – in a way which shows you’re interested in the world around you

Which verbs does it commonly collocate with? 

Ask curiously

Eye curiously

Can you write/say a sentence?

“What are you writing?” she asked curiously.

She eyed the newcomer curiously.

A Haunted House, by Virginia Woolf

What else can you find out about the word?

Other possible meanings – in a strange way, in a way that’s unusual 

Related phrases – curiously enough, used to introduce an odd fact

Common contexts –  describing education or mysteries

Synonyms – strangely (second meaning), has related phrase of ‘strangely enough’, used to introduce a surprising but true fact

Near-synonyms – interestedly (similar to first meaning, though usually used about a specific person or thing)

Further notes – both ‘curiously enough’ and ‘strangely enough’ can be used sarcastically, to introduce a fact that the speaker doesn’t consider odd or surprising.

“Strangely enough, when I asked him to help me move house, he said he was busy.”

A Haunted House, by Virginia Woolf

Stage 4 — activating the knowledge

Ask students to find adverbs in the story, and write the word and the sentence in which it appears. If the word is new, they should write the definition and create three more example sentences. You can demonstrate writing several example sentences of your own before they begin. I use a set of slides with prepared example sentences for all the adverbs in A Haunted House.

Stage 5 — writing a story

Students should write a story (or poem) of their own, using as many of the adverbs from A Haunted House as possible.

Here’s my example:

Words: quietly, softly, coolly, gladly, straightly, proudly, slightly, gently, wildly

I crept quietly into the room.

“Are you awake?” I asked softly.

“No,” he answered coolly.

I got the message.

“I’ll gladly go back to Australia then,” I announced, looking him straightly between the eyes. (Or as straightly as I could – his were still half-open.)

Proudly, I scooped up my worn-out suitcase.

On the way out, I found that I was crying slightly, tears coursed gently down my cheeks as I looked back one final time.

Then my heart raced wildly as I sprinted down the stairs, into my new future.

A Haunted House, by Virginia Woolf

A group situation is perfect for sharing stories and poems.

If you teach one-to-one, you could (with your students’ permission, of course) create a blog post of compositions.

Stage 6 — writing using visual aids

Ask your students to write sentences using the adverbs from A Haunted House, then use an AI picture generator to illustrate them. (I use Canva.) 

An interesting exercise is to try generating pictures with and without the adverb. For example, I entered the prompt: ‘Children running wildly through classroom, in the style of Victorian book illustration.’ I then entered the same prompt, without ‘wildly’. As you can see in the video, I got quite different results. 

So this is a great exercise for highlighting the impact of adding adverbs to sentences. (Which might inspire your students to use them more often.)

If you find visual reminders particularly useful, you can put the pictures onto a mood board, adding your sentences as captions.

If you’re lucky enough to have a classroom, you could create a wall display for the classroom. An alternative is to create an online gallery for your students.

Stage 7 — speaking

Students should create questions for their group or teacher to answer, using the adverbs from A Haunted House.

Extension activity

Students can search for other texts using the adverbs, and then share their examples with the class or teacher.

In the long term, they should be encouraged to notice and work with unfamiliar adverbs (and other types of words) when they come across them in any text.

Final thoughts

I hope you’ve been inspired by these ideas. Best of luck with helping your own students discover new worlds — vocabulary, culture, and the world of their imagination.

You can find the full text of A Haunted House by Virginia Woolf here.

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