EWR Podcast | How to tell a story in English?

When we talk to someone it’s important to know how to tell a story in English. If you are a beginner, it may be complicated. I understand how difficult it can be to tell someone a simple story, for example to tell someone about how your day was. The problem is not only with vocabulary. In one of my previous lessons I told you that it’s not necessary to know a lot of words in order to speak English at a good level. 

What is more important is to be able to speak automatically without thinking too much about what tense to use – past or perfect, how to build the sentences correctly and so on. 

And today I am going to give you some practical tips that can help to improve your ability to tell a story in English pretty fast. Let’s get started!

As always you can read the text in the PDF which you can find in the description. Follow our podcasts on iTunes and Yandex Music. For more new episodes subscribe to our channel.

Make a story simple!

When you start learning English, try to make as simple sentences as you can. When you tell a story don’t use the perfect tenses. Try to use the Past Simple tense of English. 

For example:

Today I woke up at 7 am. I washed my face, cleaned my teeth and had breakfast. I had two fried eggs with toast and a cup of coffee for breakfast. When I finished my breakfast I took a shower. After that I went to work. I worked the whole day from 9 am till 6 pm. After work I went home. I came home at 7 pm, had dinner, read a book and went to sleep.

Don’t make your story too complicated. You don’t have to use perfect tenses and hard vocabulary. Just remember that when you speak about things that happened one after another in the past, you need to use the Past Simple tense. When your 

English gets better, you will be able to make more interesting stories and speak a higher level of English. It takes time.

Short stories’ retelling!

The perfect exercise that will help you to improve your speaking is telling short stories in different tenses. Let me explain what I mean. Here is a short story written in the Present Simple Tense.

Warm air and a Sandwich.

The window is open. Air comes through the window. It is warm air. It is a warm day. The air smells like bread. It smells like fresh bread. It smells good. It makes the boy hungry. The boy goes to the kitchen. He makes a sandwich. He sits down. He eats the sandwich.

Now let’s try to tell this story in the Past Simple Tense. 

The window was open. Air came through the window. It was warm air. It was a warm day. The air smelled like bread. It smelled like fresh bread. It smelled good. It made the boy hungry. The boy went to the kitchen. He made a sandwich. He sat down. He eat the sandwich.

To make the exercise more effective and improve your speaking skill faster, try to make one more story in the Future Simple Tense.

The window will be open. Air will come through the window. It will be warm air. It will be a warm day. The air will smell like bread. It will smell like fresh bread. It will smell good. It will make the boy hungry. The boy will go to the kitchen. He will make a sandwich. He will sit down. He will eat the sandwich.

This exercise is going to help to improve not only your speaking, but also your vocabulary and grammar. 

How to find short stories like that?

I recommend that you download my free book for students and teachers. It includes 27 short stories for beginners. The stories are written in Present Simple Tense. Your task is to rewrite and retell the stories in the past and in the future. 

Each story includes audio files and a vocabulary list with useful words and phrases that will help you to make your English better. I will share the link below.

Practice makes perfect!

The key to success in a foreign language is practice. If you don’t train your speaking, you are not going to improve it fast. Evetime you work with short stories, try to learn them by heart and tell them out loud with the right intonation and pronunciation. 

Imagine you have a friend in front of you and you want to tell him the story. Make a live conversation and tell the story out loud with your voice. It’s a powerful way to improve speaking.

Never avoid speaking practice. Try to find friends and talk to them in English at least once a week. A perfect website where you can find language partners is interpals.net

Check this out! I will share the link below.

Storytelling is not easy. And it takes time to improve your speaking and be able to speak automatically without long pauses and without thinking too much about grammar. 

Use the tips I shared with you in this lesson. I am sure they will bring you great results pretty soon. Thanks for watching my friends and see you next time. Bye bye!