BBC 6分钟英语学习 什么是好故事？

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BBC Learning English. Hello. This is six minute English from BBC Learning

English. I'm Neil, and I'm Georgina.

Let me tell you a story, georgina, are you ready?

Yes.

Grandma had

always warned me not to look

into the mirror at midnight. There was something strange about that mirror, she said.

How childish

to believe silly stories. Later that night, I heard a noise.

I woke up dark and alone.

A clock chimed midnight. The floorboards were creaking.

As I walked towards the mirror, I looked into my face, reflecting in the glass, when suddenly my eye winked.

Ah, stop, neil, you're scaring me.

Sorry, georgina. OK, let's try another story.

Once upon a time, there was a beautiful servant girl who lived with her wicked stepmother and two jealous step sisters.

Ah, that's Betanil. And I know this story.

Cinderella, more romantic and much less scary, as you can see from georgina's reaction.

Telling stories is a powerful way to connect and communicate with people, and the topic of this program stories help us make sense of the world, which is why we've been telling them to each other for millennia, and why some of the earliest folk tales, stories that paren'ts have told and passed on to their children over many years, are still being told today.

According to the novelist Sandra Newman and other academics, there are seven classic plot lines which are constantly being recycled into new stories.

They include rags to riches, plots like Cinderella defeating the monster, plots like Dracula, and other plots such as comedies, adventures and tragedies.

So my quiz question is this Which of the following well known folk tales Is it defeating the monster story?

Is it a bear, wolf, b beauty in the beast?

Or see Goldilocks and the three bears?

Well, they all have beasts, bears or wolves in the title, so I'll guess B Beauty in the beast.

Okay, georgina will come back to that later.

It's interesting to ask how we can explain the lasting appeal of these classic plot lines.

Someone who might know is anthropologist and writer Professor Jamie Tirani.

Here he is talking to BBC World Services The wife factor.

See if you can spot his answer.

Often, the reason why we feel so motivated to pass on stories is because the stories do tap in to certain universal human fantasies and fears that will often transcend the concerns of particular times and places.

We are intensely moralistic most of the time.

The bad guys have unhappy endings and the good guys have happy endings.

We know that in the real world, it doesn't actually work like that, so there's an element of wish fulfillment that somehow satisfies our moral appetite.

Stories from very different cultures often have plots with similar fantasies and fears.

These human emotions are universal meaning.

They exist everywhere and relate to everyone in the world.

Classic stories work because they tap into basic human emotions.

They understand and express what it means to be human.

Unlike in the real world, stories can reinforce our sense of morality.

Evil stepmothers get punished. Cinderella marrys her prince, and everyone lives happily ever after.

In this way, they create wish fulfillment, the achievement of what we really want and desire.

Well, so much for plot lies now, but that still doesn't explain how stories have the power to catch and hold our attention.

Let's hear from novelist Sandra Newman, author of How Not To Write a Novel, a handbook of over 200 common mistakes.

Here, she tells BBC World Services the why factor that her absolute number one storytelling rule is comprehensibility.

People need to understand your story.

There are some people who actually are so, unfortunately, bad at communicating, that even when they tell a story to another person, it becomes incomprehensible.

And gradually, as they stop making sense and ramble and digress and don't know where they're going, you see everybody not only lose interest, but become hostile.

People become very frustrated when someone is not getting to the point.

According to Sandra, the biggest mistake is incomprehensibility, on not understanding the plot, because the story teller is rambling, talking in a confused way, going off the subject, or not making sense.

When listeners give a story their time and attention, they want the storyteller to get to the point, start talking about the most important and relevant information.

But to cut a long story short, georgina, it's time to return to the quiz question.

Remember, I asked you which famous folktale had a defeating the monster plot?

What did you say? I said the answer was, be beauty and the beast was I right?

Your answer was, oh, do get to the point, neil?

Wrong. In fact, the answer is a bare wolf, an old English epic about the hero Barewith who defeats dragons and beasts.

Well, neil, there are two sides to every story, as the saying goes.

So let's recap

the vocabulary we've learned,

starting with folk tales,

popular stories that have been told and passed down over generations.

Many folk tales

contain universal ideas, ideas which exist everywhere in every age and culture.

Stories tap into these ideas, meaning they understand, connect to and express them.

Wish Fulfillment means the achievement or realization of things you really want and desire.

A good storyteller will never ramble, talk in a confused way, often going off the subject or not making much sense.

And instead, we'll get to the point, start talking about what is most important and relevant.

That's all we have time for.

But remember to join us again soon for the insides story on trending English topics in vocabulary, here at six minute English.

Bye for now. Good Bye.

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