How to Write a Story
Natural History Museum, Norfolk
A good story should have the following elements: title, introduction, set-up, confrontation or conflict, resolution, and, exceptionally, application or moral. Read the fable of Androcles and the Lion and decide whether it has all the ingredients to make up a good story. Remember that a narrative may present more than one problem to be solved, like a play within a play, as in Hamlet. For B1 and B2 students.
androcles_and_the_lion_answer_key
Now watch this video Antonio’s niece, Natalie, sent him and break it up into the above components.
Was Aesop right or not?
Now write your own anecdote on true love or friendship in 150 words. Be creative! You may want to take into account what French filmmaker Jean Luc Godard once said about stories: “A story should have a beginning, a middle, and an end… but not necessarily in that order.”
Orlando Multiple-Choice Test
Sally Potter’s adaptation of Virginia Woolf’s biography of Vita Sackville-West is one of my favourite films. It’s a pity that it came out at about the same time as The Piano, for everyone went raving mad about the Campion film and overlooked Orlando. As a consequence, I decided to turn it into a multiple-choice test for B2+ (more like C1, I’d say) students.
If you’d like to know what a brief film review should look like, read what Nick Davis, from Chicago, in Illinois, has to say about Orlando.
