Let's Tell a Tale: Storytelling Events in English L2

In Italy, cultural organizations and associations promote children's literature and the pleasure of reading through storytelling initiatives. These initiatives support reading from very early childhood to adolescence, starting from parental storytelling and gradually proceeding to autonomous engagements with books. The initiatives are organized and take place in libraries, theaters, cultural centers, and schools where volunteer narrators and librarians run open-access storytelling events based on books for children or adolescents (Nati per Leggere, Crescere Leggendo, Youngster). To cater to the many different languages used in Italy and to promote inclusion through activities and initiatives that are relevant at the intercultural level for children, local libraries in Italy also organize storytelling events in languages other than Italian.

For many years, the collaboration between the University of Udine and the Municipal Library "Vincenzo Joppi" in Udine (Northeast Italy) has given rise to initiatives that promote plurilingualism through children's literature. A few years ago, a lecturer of the University of Udine, Maria Bortoluzzi, and the librarians of the main municipal library decided to offer some storytelling events in English as a second language (from now on English L2) in the main library of the town. For the children and the narrators, English is a foreign language. The main aim was to promote the acquisition of English L2 through narrative and informal modalities in libraries as significant and familiar contexts for children. Thanks to the local librarians, teachers, and educators, a series of storytelling meetings called "Let's Tell a Tale" was organized. The events in English L2 have been taking place in the town libraries and focus on children from four to eight years old. The volunteer narrators have been offering to little boys and girls the opportunity to listen to stories in English inspired by books for children. The initiative promotes English acquisition not only as a second language but also as a multicultural means to offer a wider perspective on children's literature in languages different from the native languages. The events have been taking place in recent years at the children's section of the Municipal Library of Udine, and they are based mainly on picture-books of stories in English.

In June 2018, regional funding resulted in the initiative "Let's Tell a Tale" being transformed into a research project of the Udine University entitled "Storytelling in English L2 for Young Learners and Adolescents in Informal Contexts of Acquisition: Innovative and Inclusive Approaches for Local Library Networks." The project (directed by Maria Bortoluzzi, Udine University) is organized in collaboration with the librarians of the Children's Section of the Municipal Library of Udine, led by Tiziana Danna. I (Elisa Bertoldi) am involved in the project as a research assistant. My role is to identify best practices and effective actions to support students from nursery, primary, and middle school in their approach to English L2 through narration used informally in extra-school contexts such as libraries.

The initiative "Let's Tell a Tale" has been extended to four district libraries of the Udine area. The project is also used to conduct qualitative research about the use of children's literature in informal contexts to approach English L2 in an effective, emotionally positive, and motivating way. This gave me the opportunity to organize and supervise sixteen storytelling events from October 2018 to May 2019. The local libraries that have been chosen to host "Let's Tell a Tale" 2018-2019 share some common characteristics: even though they are quite small in terms of space, they have a large catchment area, and they are not yet equipped with a multilingual section for children.

The decision to host these events in the district libraries was also aimed to reach a wider number of parents and caregivers in order to disseminate the importance of giving children the opportunity of an early approach to a second language through literature. Recent scientific research in the field of second language acquisition has demonstrated the extraordinary advantages of acquiring and learning languages different from the native tongue especially, but not exclusively, at a...