SL post from 2016:
Kathrin explains Beniko’s Story Listening in an elegant and simple way. The link is a must-see. In it we see great pacing, nice and slow. We see Kathrin just teaching language using language with the goal that the kids follow along in a general way. In my mind giving up the need to teach our students specific words in favor of overall messages in a general way represents the future of this work. We’ve tried and generally failed with the “use a story to teach them specific words” approach. And this is consistent with the research. It is not the conscious mind that learns the language but the unconscious mind, as it processes what it heard that day in sleep. The unconsious mind parses and arranges everything and after a long time speech output “just happens”:
Kathrin reports:
The method is rather simple. You simplify a story so that you know your students should be able to understand it. Then you tell the story to the students and as you’re telling it you draw on the board what is happening, some key words and figures. You also add writing so that they can see the words they need. They are written in L2, sometimes in L1 underneath, but then you wipe away L1 to not cause interference.
The student’s’ job is to follow the story as a whole. It is NOT to teach anything to mastery. The goal is to tell the story so the students can understand and follow the major events and some details. You can follow this up with reading the story or activities but you don’t have to.
This is an example (in German) that I did in my class. It’s a very simple story with lots of repetitions.
http://www.welovedeutsch.com/story-listening/der-suppenkasper