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The Story teller Guide for home reading.
To be handed in on March 26th.
Pre-reading tasks
Answer the following questions before reading the story:
1-What characteristics should a good story teller have?
2-How would you entertain children if you were to travel with them on a train?
3-What is the general reaction children have to stories?
4-Look at these proverbs:
a) A good tale is better for being told twice
b) Well began is half done
c) Boys will be boys
d) Easier said than done
e) Necessity is the mother of invention
F) Variety is the spice of life
Choose the right explanation for each one:
1. Children, in part, love to hear a good story again, no matter how many times they have heard it before.
2. It is simpler to talk about doing a thing than it is to do it. It is easier to give advice than to put it to practice.
3. Life becomes very monotonous without some break in the daily routine.
4. If you make a good start, everything follows naturally and easily. The bad start seriously affects what comes after.
5. Boys are normally noisy, destructive, dangerous. It is their nature.
6. When the need for something becomes the reason for creating something
After reading the whole story come back to these proverbs and explain how they apply to the story.
While-reading tasks:
Read the story and do the tasks:
1- Describe the aunt’s personality. Provide concrete evidence for your description
2- Is the aunt’s attitude typical? What about the children? Provide examples to show why.
3- The writer uses a comparison in the first paragraph. Evaluate its effectiveness.
4- What impression did the aunt get of the bachelor? How do you know?
5- What did the bachelor find annoying about the girl?
6- How could the bachelor tell that the aunt was not a good story teller even before she started it?
7- What was wrong with the story? Why did the children question its content?
8- After the aunt finishes her story, what is the bachelor’s attitude? What is the aunt’s reaction?
9- Choose from this list the adjectives that may apply to the aunt and the bachelor:
Intolerant - rude -arrogant -defiant –aggressive- vindictive- polite -ironic -sneering
Aunt: ______________________________________________
Bachelor:___________________________________________
10- What was the children’s first impression of the story told by the bachelor?
11- How was the story teller different from the aunt in the way he told the story?
12- The bachelor uses an oxymoron. Can you find it? What effect does it have on the listeners?
13- In what way is the story effective?
14- What would be the moral in the story told by the bachelor?
15- What is the aunt’s objection to it?
16- What does the bachelor predict about the children? Do you agree with him?
17- In what way would you change the end of the story? Could the aunt do anything?
General analysis of characters
1. What kind of person is the aunt?
a) In what way is the aunt’s handling of the children negative?
b) Why is she unsuccessful in interesting the children in what is going on outside the train window?
c) We are given the aunt’s reactions whilst the bachelor is telling his story. What do they tell us about the kind of person the aunt is?
d) Judging from her story and her reactions after the bachelor has finished his, what does the aunt think the purpose of a story should be?
2. What are the children like?
e) Cyril smacks the cushions and the smaller girl repeats one line of poetry over and over again. Why?
f) Where and why do the children first become interested in the bachelor’s story?
g) What aspects of the bachelor’s story are the children particularly interested in? What does that tell us about them?
h) After both the aunt and the bachelor have finished their stories the children give their opinions. What do they tell us about the children?
General analysis of the plot
1-In what ways is the bachelor’s story similar to traditional fairy tales?
i) Are the opening words of the bachelor’s story a typical fairy tale beginning?
j) Consider the animals and the people in the bachelor’s story. Which of them would you say are often found in fairy tales and which are not?
k) Are there any similarities between such tales as Little Red Riding Hood and The Wolf and The three Little Pigs and the bachelor’s story?
2-What are the surprising aspects of the bachelor’s story?
l) Where is the first sign that the bachelor’s story will be different from a typical children’s story?
m) The bachelor explains why there are no sheep in the park. What is surprising about his explanation?
n) How does the bachelor make fun of Bertha in the paragraph beginning “Bertha was rather sorry to find that there were no flowers in the park”?
o) In what ways is Bertha punished for her goodness?
Now finish task 4 of the pre-reading tasks
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