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Volume 6, Issue 2

Learning Language & Multiculturalism through Folktales

Welcome back, InterCom subscribers! This week, we continue our dive into the world of storytelling and folktales, focusing on the globalization of language, culture, and storytelling, and the resultant multiculturality of many of the themes present in these tales.

This week’s video discusses the the multiculturality of folktales and what they can teach us about “big C” and “little c” culture in language communities. Check out the Ideas for Implementation for ways to globalize perspectives and deepen cultural understanding of stories and storytelling. In Links We Like, you'll find resource lists for sourcing multicultural folktales, as well as research studies examining the inclusion of culture and storytelling in the classroom.

We invite you to explore these resources and to enrich your cultural and global knowledge through folktales and storytelling!

Using Folktales for Language & Culture Learning

You can learn a lot about cultural variations, traditions, and attitudes from what is included in these tales!

Explore some folktales from your target language or culture, and then try a few of these activities by comparing folktales in different ways!

Option 1: Find a translation of a folktale in another language

First, take note of key events and ideas in your “starting” folktale.
Next, find this same folktale written or adapted to another language! Read through this tale and take note of the key events and ideas in the adapted tale.
Now that you have observed the key ideas of both tales, compare what you noticed. Fruitful questions include:

Is the main plot of the folktale the same? If not, what is different?
What can these similarities and differences tell us about the two different languages and language communities?
What are important cultural or interpersonal values in each of the two languages/cultures?

Option 2: Share a folktale with your friends or peers

Find a folktale that is particularly interesting to you and read through it thoroughly. As you read, think about how you might retell it to a friend.
Gather a friend, or a group of friends or peers, and tell your folktales to each other in your own words. As you listen, take note of key themes, ideas, and events in each folktale.
Then discuss! What do you notice is common or not common in these tales? What kinds of tales are shared? Do they have similar themes or characters? What might this tell you about yours, and your peers’ cultures?

Option 3: Create a visual representation of a specific folktale

Choose a folktale that would lend itself to a visual representation, and take note of important details from the folktale that you would want to include in the visual representation.
Create your visual in a digital or analog medium.
Looking at your visual, reflect on the story that is presented. What do the key visuals and takeaways tell you about the values of the community of practice?
Share your visual with others! Ask them to identify the main ideas you highlighted, and reflect on any cultural takeaways they notice. How do these cultural representations of values compare to their own cultures?

Click on each tile to interact with the original media!

Click on the image to join the conversation!

As 2023 comes to a close, we wanted to highlight some of our favorite projects from the year. We are so grateful for each and every educator who we have worked with. Thank you for being part of our community!

We released our pragmatics repository, a free resource to all teachers to support teaching for intercultural and pragmatic competence. Currently, resources are available in Arabic, Chinese, English, French, Ichishkíin, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Nahuatl, Spanish, Tagalog, Thai, and Turkish. Check out the site for lesson ideas and academic and non-academic resources surrounding the language functions covered. We will keep adding resources as they come available!
We continued our pilot of the I-Agents 21st Century Global Competencies curriculum with Treetop Academics. This mixed-reality, game-based curriculum is designed to expose K-6 learners to a variety of languages and cultures around the world. Currently, we have materials related to Afrikaans, Arabic, Dutch, Gaelic, German, Hebrew, Ichishkíin, Italian, Japanese, Mandarin, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, Swahili, Swedish, Ukrainian, and Yucatec Maya.
We initiated or continued work within various professional development initiatives: a year-long working group focused on intercultural communicative competence, a four-year professional development group with the Eugene 4J School District, and the publication of two free, asynchronous modules on supporting self-directed learners and effective assessment practices.
We continued adding free resources to our YouTube channel. Each of these bite-sized, on-demand videos was created to model effective language learning practices or support professional development. Check it out!

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Center for Applied Second Language Studies (CASLS)
University of Oregon
https://casls.uoregon.edu/
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