The Landlady by Roald Dahl

The Landlady is a short story written by Roald Dahl. He has written many books addressed to children but he also enjoyed creating amazing, catchy and even frightening stories. This is one of them!

Click on the following link to have an idea of the setting and the main elements in this story:

http://www.glogster.com/miracle22/pinboard-glog-by-miracle22/g-6lib7rbjf9jva383dimmua0
Do you think it is going to be a happy ending? Has the landlady got a dark side?

NOW, READ THE SHORT STORY CLICKING HERE: http://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/sites/teacheng/files/landlady_text.pdf
Once the short story is read, write a 50-100 word composition in which you continue Roald Dahl's tale. To get yourself inspired think of what will happen to Billy Weaver. Is he going to run away? Is he under the landlady's spell? Has she already poisoned Billy with tea?

First of all, a glog containing aspects related to the author, the plot and the site of the short story will be shown to students. The aims are to awaken students’ minds and engage them from the very beginning. This glog contains the book's main elements, so they can get familiar with them. Moreover some pictures symbolise the main character's end (i.e. chrysanthemums symbolise death).
Then a reading activity of the first paragraphs will have the same purposes as the first pre-treatment activity. Students will be asked to read the first paragraphs with the intonation required by the text.

As a treatment activity a writing activity is proposed. Students have to continue the story that Roald Dahl leaves somewhat incomplete. By doing this students practise past tenses, develop their imagination, fix new vocabulary and practise spelling, punctuation and other subskills related to writing.

Taking advantage of some fantastic material which the BBC and the British Council offer at http://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/britlit/landlady, I propose a listening activity designed to work with stress. Students are asked to listen to a podcast (The Landlady part 1) from BBC learning English and identify the unstressed function words. As many of English learners do, they have problems with listening because they do not master the intonation patterns, and the key role of stress in English language. In my opinion this weak point must be worked upon.