What's the story? Motivating e-learners with fiction.
Résumé
Fiction (e.g. short stories, feature films) has long been used in language courses to expose learners to authentic material in which a strong narrative is seen as a motivating element. This presentation reports on the elaboration and use of a story specially written as an e-learning course for non-specialist learners of English in French universities. Issues addressed when designing the course were the type of exercises that should accompany the story and the order in which these exercises should be presented. The first issue relates to choices to be made by course designers in terms of content and aims; the second, which can be seen in the light of the self-determination theory of motivation, relates to choices made by learners as to when, if at all, they do the exercises proposed. After describing the context for which the material was developed, an analysis of its use by learners on a blended learning course is presented. Results are discussed in terms of linguistic progress, motivation and autonomy.