The storyline approach is a group centred and cross-curricular teaching method focusing on the creation of a story and a fictive world in the classroom. The story develops by the pupils’ answers to different key questions, which represent tasks and activities. One of these questions often concerns the making of characters, which then are used throughout the story. The storyline approach has become a quite well-used method in first language contexts, but is less used in foreign language teaching, especially when it comes to the younger learners. This study will therefore discuss if the method could encourage pupils’ motivation for English language learning and if the creative aspects of the storyline approach may enhance the pupils’ English learning. The essay is a literature study, using scholarly studies of the storyline approach, young language learners, motivation in language learning and creativity related to language learning. By relating and comparing these studies, I find that the storyline approach may be used in English teaching for younger learners, that it may indeed be used to motivate pupils and that the creativity that the approach encourages may affect pupils in a positive way.

The Swedish curriculum emphasizes the importance of pupils’ active learning, influence over the education and communicative skills in language learning. The Storyline approach has since its entry in the educational context in the 1960s, influenced teaching all over the world. The approach emphasizes pupils’ interest, meaning-making processes and creativity and thus agrees well with the content of the Swedish curriculum. This research overview aims to offer insight into how the Storyline approach can affect pupils in an English as a second language context, in different ways. It focuses primarily on how the Storyline approach can promote pupils’ second language acquisition, what impact the story and its characters have on pupils’ motivation and what effects the aesthetics in Storyline have on pupils. It also gives an overview of challenges that pupils and teachers might encounter while working with a Storyline project. The findings of the study indicate that the Storyline approach, through group work and communicative, meaningful tasks, promote pupils’ learning of English. Moreover, the context of the story and the characters seem to enhance pupils’ intrinsic motivation to learn the English language and the aesthetics can make pupil active agents in their learning process and mediate their knowledge. However, the Storyline approach also involves different challenges for both pupils and teachers, such as trying to find a balance between the teacher’s and the pupils’ control, keeping the story and the characters alive throughout the whole project, dealing with lack of time, group work issues and presenting the work in front of other pupils.