The power of narrative in language learning

Why stories teach us best, and how to write them well

Nov 01, 2024

Before we get into the meat of today’s post, I just wanted to share some exciting news: pre-orders for Ōsweald Bera are now live! When you pre-order, you will not only be among the first people to get your hands on the book, but you’ll also receive a special 50% off coupon for our upcoming fully voice-acted audiobook version of Ōsweald Bera, which will be released next year. Visit oswealdbera.com to pre-order your copy today!

Ōsweald Bera with his Advance Reader Copy of *Ōsweald Bera.* Original Artwork: Alex Swanson

When I began to write a graded reader for Old English, I had no idea just how important story could be as a teaching tool, and how the same flaws that make for a bad novel also make for bad language teaching.

But this was an evolutionary process: as I wrote in a previous issue, my first idea was to use a rather generic story about a bear having adventures with a family which could be adapted for use with any language.

I soon realized that the book would be much better if it introduced readers not only to the language but to something of the history, culture, and literature of the language and its speakers. That was the first big change in my conception of the project.

As a result, I decided to organize the book around excerpts from authentic texts. This would introduce students to Ōsweald’s world. Ōsweald’s story itself would then act largely as a device for making these texts flow smoothly together and to prepare students to read the texts by slowly introducing the vocabulary required to do so.

This plan of organization, which uses a lightweight story to guide the reader through more-or-less adapted authentic texts, is one that has been used in the teaching of Ancient Greek: the Athenaze series does this, in large part, in its second volume. Reading Greek does the same, albeit with much less of a connected narrative than Athenaze has.

The texts I had in mind to use were, in the order in which they would appear throughout the book:

Henry Sweet’s simplifications of Bede’s Astronomy and Ælfric’s Colloquy on the Professions (published in 1897 in his First Steps in Anglo-Saxon, now in the public domain)
An excerpt from The Wanderer
An excerpt from The Battle of Maldon
Parables drawn from The Wessex Gospels
Excerpts from The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle
The Orpheus and Eurydice episode from the Old English Boethius
A second excerpt from The Battle of Maldon

In fact, this second conception of the book is not so far removed from what it eventually became. For example, all of these excerpts remain, in one form or another. However, what did not last was the idea that the story was simply a kind of glue that took us from one authentic text to another.

The reason for this is twofold. For one, I found that the story ran away with me. Once I had set Ōsweald’s adventure in motion, it didn’t stop gathering momentum until it had come to its climactic conclusion.

Without my intending it, the stakes of Ōsweald’s story kept rising until much more was happening than a simple frame narrative could sustain. In short, I fell in love with writing it – almost in spite of myself, I started concocting plot twists, cliffhangers, and shocking revelations.

The other reason that I moved on from this bare-bones idea of the story is that, after having experienced this kind of story as a learner of Ancient Greek, I came to believe that it’s pedagogically less than ideal.

For one thing, when the story is simply a way to get from one authentic text to another, the seams between the (adapted) authentic texts and the frame story tend to be very apparent: things are moving in the frame story, you’re following along, and then things grind to a halt so that you can read a (dubiously connected) new text.

This is the same problem that conventional fiction has with dream sequences. Unless the dream sequence matters in some way to the larger story (such as providing the dreamer with the resolve to make a difficult decision in reality), it destroys narrative momentum. It ends up feeling like a waste of time.

This isn’t such a problem if there is a strong narrative connection between the frame story and the authentic text, but this is challenging to achieve as a writer.

(By the way, there is a dream sequence in Ōsweald – feel free to judge me if I have failed to make it narratively cohesive!)

Perhaps I’m an excessively judgemental reader in these matters. But even if you aren’t particularly bothered by these kinds of pointless dream sequences in your reading for pleasure, the stakes are higher in a reader for learning a language.

Any time the narrative loses momentum, comprehension can suffer.

This is because narrative has a kind of logic that we are familiar with. One common variation on this narrative logic works like this: A character has a need. The character tries to meet that need. Things go awry. The character tries to deal with the new problem and things go even more awry. This cycle continues until things are so momentous that total success or failure is on the line. The character does something, and total success or failure results. End of story.

As a reader of novels (or a watcher of tv or movies, etc.) you’re familiar with this “story logic”. Not only does it keep you reading, but it provides a framework of familiarity – a backdrop against which the truly novel – as in new – elements of the story (the setting, perhaps, or a particularly interesting character) can stand out more clearly.

In writing a reader for language learners, I had something big to present – something that I wanted to stand out very clearly: the language itself. So it behooved me to couch that novelty as much as possible within the familiar.

In other words, the fact that the story works like a normal story is itself an aid to comprehension. And normal stories don’t stop every few scenes to tell an unrelated sub-story, or introduce a dream that has no impact on the character dreaming it.

So Ōsweald’s story was to be a proper one – the Old English novel there never was.

“No plan,” as the saying goes, “survives contact with the enemy.” I could say the same about textbooks and students. You cannot truly know how a textbook, however lovingly crafted, will work until you use it to teach. So I am grateful to the first three cohorts of students for bearing with me as Ōsweald’s story took shape around them.

Whenever something in class was unclear to these intrepid students, either in the language or the plot, I took it as an opportunity to improve the book to make that section clearer. And, section by section, the book improved tremendously.

One big change was that I added a frame story around Ōsweald’s story: the story of Ōsweald ended up being a story told to a little girl named Mildþrȳþ by her father.

This allowed me to break out of Ōsweald’s story every so often and have Mildþrȳþ retell the story so far in her own words, repeating words the readers have seen before in slightly different forms, introducing past tenses for verbs the readers have only seen in the present, etc.

But, Colin – you might ask – how did you avoid the “dream sequence” problem you just wrote about?

Ah, dear reader, I would tell you how, but it would involve major spoilers. So I’ll ask you to trust me… for now.

Beyond the Schwa

I recently spoke with Danny Bate on his podcast A Language I Love Is… Our conversation ranged from what I love about Old English language itself to my advice for learners of ancient languages. Danny also got me to talk a little bit about my origin story. Check it out here:

I also returned to YouTube to talk about what I think makes for a good graded reader – these are, not coincidentally, the same principles I applied in writing Ōsweald Bera. But they’re also good principles for us to use as language learners when seeking out material for other languages. Check it out here: