2.  Tell about something that you have done this week, so that the class may know exactly what you did.

3.  Name some things in which you have been interested within the last two or three months.  Tell the class about one of them.

4.  Tell the class about something that happened during vacation.  Have you told the event exactly as it occurred?

+5.  Interest.+—­In order to enjoy listening to a story we must take an interest in it, and the story should be so told as to arouse and maintain this interest.  As you have listened to the reports of your classmates you have been more pleased with some than with others.  Even though the meaning of each was clear, yet the interest aroused was in each case different.  Since the purpose of a story is to entertain, any story falls short of its purpose when it ceases to be interesting.  We must at all times say what we mean and say it clearly; but in story telling especially we must also take care that what we say shall arouse and maintain interest.

+6.  The Introduction.+—­The story of an event should be introduced in such a manner as to enable the hearer to understand the circumstances that are related.  Such an introduction contributes to clearness and has an important bearing upon the interest of the entire composition.  In order to render our account of an event clear and interesting it is usually desirable to tell the hearers when and where the event occurred and who were present.  Their understanding of it may be helped further by telling such of the attendant circumstances as will answer the question, Why?  If I begin my story by saying, “Last summer John Anderson and I were on a camping trip in the Adirondacks,” I have told when, where, and who; and the addition of the words “on a camping trip” tells why we were in the Adirondacks, and may serve to explain some of the events that are to follow.  Even the statement of the place indicates in some degree the trend of the story, for many things that might occur “in the Adirondacks” could not occur in a country where there are no mountains.  Certainly the story that would follow such an introduction would be expected to differ from one beginning with the words, “Last summer John Anderson and I went to visit a friend in New York.”

It is not always necessary to tell when, where, who, and why in the introduction, but it is desirable to do so in most cases of oral story telling.  These four elements may not always be stated in incidents taken from books, for the reader may be already familiar with them from the preceding portions of the book.  The title of a printed or written story may serve as an introduction and give us all needed information.  In relating personal incidents the time element is seldom omitted, though it may be stated indirectly or indefinitely by such expressions as “once” or ‘lately.’  In many stories the interest depends upon the plot, and the time is not definitely stated.