Monday, I asked my evening students, “What do you remember from last week?” They thought for a minute, then Grielda said, “Paco lost his leg!” Ana chimed in. “There was a fire, a . . .an explosion.”

It was not the present simple, conjunctions, or paragraph organization. It was not even the coursebook activity about the two plumbers. It was the plot of the graded novel that we are reading one chapter at a time. Of course it makes sense. We remember stories, and it stands to reason that they can help with vocabulary, grammar, community and connection. And so I was inspired to write this post.

First, I should probably disclose that I am the author of the novel, so I’m not exactly objective, but if the project hadn’t turned out well, I wouldn’t be writing on a precious Saturday. (And my wrist hurts!)

So now that I’ve confessed, and if you are still with me, here are the details. I wrote the novel with A2 students in mind. This means there are fewer than 800 word families and loads of high frequency vocabulary.  I also made sure to repeat instances of a word so students would get multiple exposures. The grammar is also basic. There are very few sentences that have passive voice, adjective or noun clauses (except when it makes sense). Finally, I am a playwright at heart, and I used a lot of dialog, which is an excellent way to introduce highly useful conversational language, such as What’s the matter? I’m on my way.  I hate to bother you, but . . . ,

My class was an intensive, high beginning, integrated skills course. The students had jobs, and many showed up straight from work. Seeing them drift in from the overheated parking lot, I knew there was no way I could double-down on language lessons for three hours at a time, three nights in a row. Reading a novel seemed like a great way to give them a rest and some entertainment. I choose Warehouse 54 because it included themes of community and workplace safety, which students could relate to, and because it had a few cliffhangers that might keep them engaged.

We started doing a chapter a night after the break. The module usually began with a picture (I used Microsoft copilot to create images, which I have mixed feelings about, but that’s another post.)  The picture included images that I thought might clarify vocabulary or situations. For example, one image shows a man and an intimidating woman in a chemical plant. He is wearing a hard hat and safety googles. She is not following the same safety protocol. The illustration helped teach the vocabulary but also the concept of safety culture.

The opening photo was followed by a quick vocabulary exercise, mainly to clarify  6 to 8 expressions in the dialog. Here are some examples;

• The smoke alarm went off
• We have everything under control
• Her heart jumps.
• He passes out.

Then I set a gist or prediction questions to focus their attention. So far, none of this is particularly unusual for a reading module, but when it came to actually reading, things got interesting.

I started out letting them read silently. One group spontaneously started taking turns reading aloud. I was intrigued. We had a discussion, and they said they wanted to practice pronunciation. They then requested that I read the chapter out loud for them. The other students agreed, so I did. It was fun! I exploited the dialog to communicate emotions, intentions and other prosodic features. There were also opportunities to model contrastive stress in a back-and-forth exchange or demonstrate the rising intonation in information questions.

Next, students took turns reading, and they were able to follow through with some of these same pronunciation features. It turned out the action and personalities in a novel informed pronunciation in ways that regular texts do not. Interestingly, we all also noticed that many were not sounding out the endings of both present and past tenses, which led to a discussion of why they are so hard to remember and use in speaking. Is that missing /t/ due to grammar or pronunciation?

After reading, we discussed the events of the story, which led to interesting insights and critical thinking. The thread often started with a variation of one of the following.

• What are the different points of view?
• Why did X do that?
• Who are you most like?
• What would you do?
• What might happen next?

The topic of the chapter often flowed into other skills work as well. For example, when there is a fire in chapter 10, the students also looked at a public service flyer about home fires and what to do/not do. When Paco lost his leg, we read and discussed a short text  about assistive technology and bionic limbs.

The emotional connection to the characters and events in the novel also proved to be a nice jumping off point for writing. Students analyzed their own workplace safety culture and made distinctions between human error and mechanical errors. We then practiced writing an incident report. Students also told stories about accidents that they had witnessed or heard about. At one point, after a strong-willed grandmother gets involved in the plot, they wrote about their relationship with their own mother or mother-in-law. (I got some very interesting papers on that one!)

All in all, Warehouse 54 not only made the evening pass by pleasantly, but it also supported language learning in ‘novel’ ways by introducing conversational expressions in context and providing meaningful text for pronunciation as well as critical thinking prompts.

I know there are many teachers who have been successfully using novels in language lessons for years. I just wish I’d started doing it, sooner!