Repetitive and Cumulative-repetitive fairy tales
Repetitive and Cumulative-repetitive fairy tales
These two terms were introduced by Sheila Rixon in her article ‘Using “Chicken Licken” and other cumulative-repetitive children’s stories’* where she argued that such fairy tales can be effectively used in teaching for language development of young learners, either of their mother tongue or a foreign language.
In repetitive fairy tales there is one or two events – or actions or situations - that repeat several times throughout the story, and thus the language repeats as well, sometimes with minor changes reflecting either the progress of the story or specifics of a character. Repetition of the action enables listeners to predict what will come next and repetition of the language enables them to take over and continue telling the story. Needles to say, that in this way they can learn the language (i.e. grammar structures and phrases or vocabulary) by heart, without realizing that they are memorizing it. The same can be said about a special type of repetitive fairy tales, cumulative-repetitive fairy tales. In addition, every time the action repeats a new character appears and usually joins in. With the growing number of characters also the language used for the repeated actions can get gradually longer.
As for the use of these fairy tales in foreign language classes, with beginners the language should be kept as simple as possible without using many variations, with more advanced learners we can encourage their enriching the language and using alternative phrases. The learners can employ their imagination and creativity – apart from predicting, by suggesting additional characters or actions that weren’t in the story, by changing or reversing the story etc.
Examples of repetitive fairy tales: The Little Red Hen, The Three Little Pigs, The King and the Mice, Goldilocks and the Three Bears, Three Billy-Goats
|
Title |
Repeated actions |
Examples of repeated language |
|
The Little Red Hen |
asking the others to help,but to no avail doing things |
Who will help me [plant the seeds]? - Not I / Not me. - Then, I’ll [plant them] myself. And so she did. |
|
The Three Little Pigs |
building a house wolf’s visit and threats
running away or being eaten |
The [first] pig built his house of [straw]. I’ll huff, I’ll puff, and I’ll blow your house in. And the [first] pig ran to his brother’s house. |
|
The King and the Mice |
calling the wise men and complaining to them
replacing animals |
The king called for his wise man. He said: I don’t like these [cats]. I’d rather have the [mice]. Send the [cats] away. The wise men brought in [dogs]. The [cats] ran away but the palace was full of [dogs]. They were everywhere. |
Repeated actions can also be found in more complex fairy tales, such as Cinderella (Cinderella’s visit of the ball), Snow White and the Seven Dwarves (queen’s conversation with the magic mirror and her visit to the dwarves’ house) or Rumpelstiltskin (his helping the miller’s daughter and later her guessing his name). The action almost always repeats three times.
*) in Holden, S. (ed.) English at the Primary Level.