Story time for English students - part one

Over the last month, my (Felicity) Upper-intermediate English class have been studying different kinds of stories, including mini sagas and more traditional tales.

This has been a useful tool to help the students learn different narrative tenses, as well as reviewing a lot of other grammatical tenses. I gave my wonderful class a variety of pictures and asked them to choose a location, some characters and a mode of transport. After that, I let their imaginations go crazy and I will be uploading their stories one by one to keep you all interested. Here is the first installment - please post your comments below to let us know what you think.

Tom and Tradgedy
by Nori and Jaeho

It was three o’clock in the morning when the phone rang. Tom picked the phone up and answered very angrily, “Who is calling so early?” The call was from his stupid old friend who had been living in London. He told Tom that he had to go to the Sydney Opera House to watch Phantom of the Opera. Tom decided to go there with his stunning wife, Penelope. They immediately got up and prepared to set off.

Unfortunately they lived in a tiny village called Ayers Rock, in the centre of Australia, and they only had a retro tractor made by John Deer for transport. After breakfast they set off on their long life-changing journey. In the middle of their journey they noticed two tiny dots in the sky.

A few minutes later they realised that those two dots were skydivers. When the skydivers touched down, Tom and Penelope were extremely shocked because they were two of the most famous politicians in the world. Unbelievably, they were Tony Blair and Colonel Gadafy!

Obviously, they looked miserable. Tom and Penelope asked them “What has happened to you?” They briefly explained that they’d had a horrible accident and they were forced to jump out of their jet. As soon as they had cleared the plane, it exploded into a ball of fire.

Tony and Gadafy asked them to pick them up and take them to the nearest city. However, unfortunately Tom’s tractor didn’t have any extra space, so Tony and Gadafy had to take a seat on the cover of the plough.

A few hours after they met, the tractor suddenly broke down. Sadly, they didn’t have any food or water, so they died in the desert. The whole world mourned their death.

THE END