26 Telling Your Story in Speaking

Why Do We Tell Stories?

Telling stories is an important skill because it helps you connect with others, share experiences, and help people remember your ideas better. Stories can entertain, teach lessons, and help you talk about yourself and your life. Learning how to tell a good story will improve your speaking skills and make you a better communicator.

This chapter will help you tell a better story in speaking. It includes ideas for how you can add details and description, connect your ideas with common phrases, change your voice to sound more interesting, and use the correct verb tenses so your meaning is clear.

Add Specific Details

To make your stories interesting, use descriptive language and include details that show the five senses. Imagine yourself in the story, and pay attention to everything that is happening around you. As you tell the story, describe what you see, hear, smell, taste, and touch. This helps your audience feel like they are there with you in the story.

Use Descriptive Language

• Sight: What do you see? Don’t just say you saw the sunset. Instead, say, “The sunset painted the sky with beautiful shades of orange and pink.”
• Sound: What do you hear? Be specific. Don’t just say you heard the wind. Instead, say, “The leaves rustled softly in the gentle breeze.”
• Smell: What do you smell? This one can be difficult to describe! Is it a good or bad smell? Is the smell strong or weak? If you know what you are smelling, say it like this: “The aroma of freshly baked cookies filled the air.”
• Taste: Is there a taste in your story? Describe it! Here’s an example: “The lemonade was sweet with just a hint of tartness.”
• Touch: How do you feel in the story? This can be about physical things, like how hot or cold, or how comfortable or uncomfortable it is. Use adjectives, like in this example: “The kitten’s fur was soft and fluffy.”It can also be about emotional or mental things, like what emotions you felt and what that was like for you. For example: “I was so nervous my knees were shaking, and it felt like my stomach was in my throat.”

Read this book’s chapter on descriptive language for more help. Remember that a thesaurus is a great way to help you find the specific word for what you want to say!

Use Phrases to Introduce or Connect Ideas

You want your audience to be able to understand the organization of your story easily. For example, they should be able to know the order that things happened (use time order words). They should also know when you are introducing a new idea, adding more details, showing that something is important, or finishing your story.

Look at the table below for some example phrases that can give you ideas for how you can structure your story and keep your listeners interested.

Using Your Voice to Tell a Story

Good storytellers use their voices to keep the audience interested in what they are saying. This happens in all languages, but English is a very expressive language. This means we expect speakers to change the sound of their voice a lot and to put a lot of emotion into their speech.

Changing the sound of your voice and adding lots of emotion can also help your audience better understand the story you are telling. That’s because we do not only listen for what someone says, but how they say it.

Review this book’s chapter on intonation and emotion for more help. Then, practice this with a partner using the examples below. For each tip, practice changing your voice with the example sentence.

Change Your Intonation: Change the pitch of your voice to show nervousness or suspense in this example.

Try It Out: “Suddenly, the door creaked open…”

Change Your Pitch: Use a higher pitch for excitement or a lower pitch for seriousness. In this example, lower your voice to show the seriousness.

Try It Out: “He whispered in a deep voice, ‘Be careful.'”

Pause for Effect: Pausing (waiting a couple of seconds before continuing to speak) can create suspense and give your listeners time to imagine the scene. For this sentence, pause where you see the ellipsis (…) before reading the rest of the sentence.

Try It Out: “And then… the lights went out.”

Narrative Verbs in the Past

Using the correct verb tenses is also important when telling a story. Most of our stories include things that happened in the past, and for many new speakers of English, using different past tenses correctly while speaking is a big challenge.

Let’s Practice!

Think of a story you can tell that happens in the past. Use the chart below to help you decide which verb tenses you should use. Try to use at least two of the tenses below in your story.

Let’s Practice!

Story Circle

1. Sit in a circle. One person starts a story with one sentence using one of the storytelling phrases.
2. The person to the right of the first speaker goes next. Each person adds a sentence to continue the story, using a new storytelling phrase each time. Try to use different emotions in the story, and practice showing this with your voice. Also be sure to include descriptive language and correct verb tenses. Make the story as interesting as possible!
3. Continue until the story has a clear ending.

Tell a Longer Story

1. Think of a longer story (3-4 minutes) you can tell the class.
2. Organize your ideas using notecards or a personal story planning guide like this one or the guide in the previous chapter.
3. Use descriptive language to add detail and make your story more interesting.
4. Add phrases from the table above at important points in the story to introduce topics, add details, show importance, or finish the story.
5. Check your verb tenses!
6. Practice telling this story with a partner or in small groups. Make sure you use good intonation and emotion.
7. Tell the story to the class or record it as part of a digital story with pictures and music, like the examples here.