Week 6: Literature dossier: short stories

• Engels
• Middelbare school
• havo
• Leerjaar 2

Welcome! Let's get started

This week: 

Literature dossier! 

We will have a look at some short stories 

Let's check your homework

A - Watching

Strategy - Taking notes

What is a short story?

What is a short story? 

• A short story is any story between 1,000 and 10,000 words.
• Tells about a single event or experience.
• Fictional (not true)
• It has a beginning, middle, and end.
• Creates an impression on the reader.

Short Story Elements 

1. Setting
   
2. Characterization
   
3. Plot
   
4. Conflict
   
5. Climax
   
6. Resolution
   
7. Theme
   
8. Point of view

Setting 

              Tells the reader where and  the story takes place.

Characterization

Creation of imaginary people 

who appear to be real to the reader. 

The writer gives information about 

the characters in the story.

Plot

A series of events through 

which the writer reveals what 

is happening, to whom, and why.

Conflict

Is a problem in the story 

that needs to be resolved.

Climax

When the action comes to 

its highest point of conflict.

Resolution

The story’s action after 

the climax until the end 

of the story. 

How the conflict is solved.

The “conclusion” of the story.

Theme

Thestory’s main ideas.

The “message” the

writer intends to

communicate by

telling the story

Theme

The position of the

narrator of the story 

and what the writer sees 

from that vantage point.

Roald Dahl

Charles Dickens 

Ernest Hemingway 

Harry Harrison

Welcome! Let's get started

18 Reading literature - page 199

In Reading Matters you read literature: short stories, songs, comics, books, or poems. You read literature in a different way to other texts. The goal is to read for fun. Reading literature helps you become better at reading in English.

Get started on: 

Reading matters on pages 176, 177, 178

Today

We will read some and do exercises 

Short stories have age audiences as well 

Kids -> Fairy tales, stories about morals and behaviour

Teens -> Somewhere in between (as usual..), coming of age has a very important place here

Adults -> A lot of different themes and genres such as love, death, illness, 

The boy who cried wolf

Edgar Allan Poe (40)

Edgar wrote in the gothic style, horror was 

his main genre

He married when he was 27 and his wife was

13, she died 11 years later. 

Edgar became depressed and died not long

after. 

Apples & trees 

For the literature dossier

You are going to answer a few questions. 

The questions + their answer must be put in your literature dossier. 

Make a new subchapter called: Short stories 

The questions: 

Q1: Explain in your own words, what is a short story? 

Q2: What is typical for a short story? (Name 3 things) 

Q3: Name 3 short story writers and 2 of the stories they wrote

Q4: Imagine being a short story writer, where would you get your inspiration? 

Q5: If you would read a short story: what genre would it have to be and why?