Background to the Study

In the Storyline approach, a fictive world is created in the classroom. The learners, working in small groups, take on and retain the roles of characters in a story, which is set in a particular time and place. The story develops through the use of open key questions (for example, who are you?, what is your house like?, what is your typical day like?), devised by the teacher on the basis of the curriculum content to be covered. Work on the key questions integrates theoretical and practical subjects. In the case of English the aim is to create meaningful tasks which practise in a holistic way the skills of reading, writing, speaking and listening, and which provide practice for grammatical structures and vocabulary with which the learners are familiar, at the same time as creating conditions for the learning of new grammar and vocabulary. In other words, tasks within a Storyline framework are intended to develop learners ’ all-round communicative competence, the stated aim of the Swedish national curriculum (Lgr11). As a teacher trainer, I have worked with Storyline, with student teachers and teachers, for ten years, and during this time have been able to observe children working with Storyline topics. Both adults and children usually describe the experience as fun.