Story Listening is simple. You tell a story. You use the marker to draw it as you say it. The kids listen. They don’t test on any of it. They don’t talk. They don’t count reps. They aren’t being taught words from some targeted list, semantic set, high frequency list, to prepare them for a novel, etc. There is no agenda. There is no massed reps of targets. There is no circling. Meaning is not established before the story is told. The kids don’t have to supply cute answers, which is stressful for them. The story is not lengthy. The kids are not gesturing. All they are doing is listening. Notice in the two clips (link below) from Kathrin Shectman in Germany how the kids, after about seven minutes, start to utter their amazement glee about what is happening and they keep it up for the next 14 minutes.
All Kathrin Shectman has to do (link below) is tell the story and bring some emotion to the telling of it, helping it come alive in the minds of the students. The kids are 500% focused on meaning and 0% focused on form. This lesson will stay with these kids for the rest of their lives. This is masterful teaching. Watch both links.
In these clips we see what Dr. Mason says to do: if you just speak the language, and not too slowly, choosing texts that go deep in terms of our shared human experience, supporting everything with images, bringing meaning, you are doing Story Listening.
In my opinion this is the future of foreign language education in the 21st century:
http://www.welovedeutsch.com/story-listening