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Welcome to TEFLtales!
Stories are a wonderful resource and can be fact (memories, true stories..) or fiction - it doesn't matter who you are, you probably enjoy a good story of some sort. Hopefully this wiki will, with time, bring together stories from many teachers and learners for many teachers and their learners.
This wiki is a Creative Commons, crowdsourced collection of short stories for learners of English to read and enjoy. You can add activities or leave them.
Please feel free to add any stories of your own, so long as they are copyright free. If they have been published or posted elsewhere first, please credit the original source, thanks.
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Happy reading!
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673995847806401689===El Amor Brujo===
What does the world think of Seville? Narrow, winding, cobbled streets with cast-iron gates, geraniums and studded wooden doors the height of horse and rider offering shutter-fast views of tiled, jungle-like patios with their rough pillars and ancient Al-Andalus fountains; picturesque pocket-sized plazas enclosed between blinding white-washed houses, with gazebos, jasmine-trellises, wrought iron crosses and, as dusk begins to ponder its arrival, the sound of the flamenco guitar breaking the early-evening silence, accompanied by the agony contained and modulated in the voice of the singer; no other sounds, not even street dogs, apart from the rasping quiver of the heat. Proud, raven-haired women hanging out washing, with baskets balanced on their swinging hips, haughty chins thrust upwards, breasts imitating their chins. Deep, throaty, consonant-free voices as they shout to each other and pass on the news of Rocío’s pending wedding to Jacinto, speculating as to how she knows he’s such a man. Horses pulling shiny traps along the walkways and orange tree-lined avenues, hooves slipping on the cobbles, passing the cigarette factory as the girls pour out onto the street, eying the greased-back-haired, wiry, tanned young men. Sweat, cigarettes, horse dung and orange blossom, the Guadalquivir and Triana, the Torre del Oro and the Giralda, cathedral bells and Christmas carols played out on anis bottles, the echo of high heels, the whisper of nuns.
Oh it’s all here – apart from Carmen and her sassy friends. But it’s a tiny part. Seville sprawls lazily without so much as a heave or a sigh from the Guadalquivir River to Alcala, where it changes name and encounters the Guadaira. It is penned in by the six-laned ringroad and outlying once-independent-now-swallowed-up townships. The outskirts of the city are the Badlands, the seemingly half-built, green-free, low-ceiling state housing where the undesirables, the less-than-pretty were sent to keep them from the sensitive eyes of the People with Surnames. Many people were re-housed here after parts of the centre were flooded in the early 1960s, yet the inner ringroad which separates these downbeat ‘barriadas’ from ‘civilisation’ is built on top of a river which floods into these housing complexes, filling the washing-adorned, pokey homes with water and sludge, yellow sand and rubbish. Out of sight. Here, the young people are heavily laden with local bling, chains enslaving the backs of hands, gold medals honouring saints and virgins, the boys bowing to the altar of Reebok and Nike, the girls to the goddesses Lycra and Thong. Pierced eyebrows, peroxide bleached crests, the girls competing for the longest locks in town, mane scraped back into a ponytail, ears decorated with yet more gold and coral. Voices abused, worn out at 15, the sandpapered, bellowing tones of youth. Mopeds and step-throughs, pushbikes or quads, neither pilot not pillion wanting to spoil their hair.
Los Remedios, faceless, red-brick, four-storeys-hiding-shared-swimming-pool-and-gardens-district nestling next to the river between Triana and the Feria, the area reserved for the annual April Fair. The women gym-toned, nipped and tucked, bejewelled, blonde. The Audis and BMWs, family-sized Peugeots or sleek, sporty Volvos either housed in garages or preening in the street. Tomy Hilfiger, Purificación García, shoe collections, leather and fabric bracelets proud with the Spanish colours, the children slouching elegantly in the Wealthy Surfer look with pearls in their ears or polo shirt in pastel shades. These sun-bleached straw-haired enfants entirely unterribles are the paunchy, caseta-owning, cufflink-wearing, flop-haired lawyers, company directors and civil engineers of tomorrow. The voices rasp but more quietly, the laughter is more guttural, less ear-splitting. The struggle to make it to the end of the month the same.
The area around the Alfalfa and the Alameda is the area where foreigners are gradually edging out the artists, intellectuals and bohemians. The poets, performance artists, dance-teachers, architects, painters and character actors are being swamped by a deluge of overseas students, English (American, Australian, Scottish, Irish, Welsh….), French and German teachers, the occasional foreign journalist, and editorial staff from colder climes. The families who have been there for seven generations still hold their ground, though, and can be seen in the evenings, standing with glass of wine held aloft, over plates of shrimp fritters or ‘hortiguillas’, deep-fried sea anemones (oh, sheer, utter, gastronomic ecstasy!), in the Barbiana or the bottle-festooned half of the Morales. Ham, white prawns, the wines brought up from Sanlúcar and down from La Rioja, the men dressed down for the evening in shirts, pale beige jeans, webbing or plaited belts, sockless loafers, the hair stuck back with large amounts of gel, the sideburns clipped to exactly the right length just below the mid-point of the ear. The women are somewhere else, where is not clear, perhaps still shoe-shopping, perhaps enjoying similar fare at a chic pavement café. Elsewhere.
And there are barrios like mine, inhabited by cousins, uncles, aunts, sisters-in-law, everyone is related to at least half the barrio, by marriage and by blood, but any outsiders willing to do The Local Thing will be welcomed, adopted, invited to share the family table on Christmas Eve. People say Hello on the streets, the children play together outside and annoy the snootier neighbours not originally from around here. Everyone joins in at Easter and in May, everyone is on first-name terms, Mr and Mrs Surname are banished to other parts, along with ambition. Life hasn’t changed much in several generations, they have more food than fifty years ago, the mobile phones are – oh- twentieth generation and the plasma TVs are as a big as a pool table, but essentially they eat the same, they run the business their grandparents set up, they married a neighbour, a childhood sweetheart, they go to Church, they have pictures of Cristo de la Sed and the Virgen del Amor Hermoso on their walls and they train as – well - Virgin-bearers from one year to the next.
What is a costalero in English? The function is similar (though the attire is totally different) to that of a pall-bearer, but the coffin is replaced by a sea of candles and flowers topping a wobbling, four-poster-bed-like structure carrying figure of a Christ or a Virgin. I say ‘a’ because far from there being only one, there are lots! Oh, the paucity of being a Protestant………
This is a city of many types, all typical of here, all sharing the same lack of subtlety, the love of their religious ritual and bling or kitsch ( I mean no disrespect, it does somehow grow on even a Renegade Celt like me, though not to the extent of wanting to don a black comb the size of a sheet of A4 paper, an intricate black lace veil, and walk the streets at dirge pace holding a candle in the wind, following the beat of the funereal drums every Easter) – and their worship of the Feria, when all the women are beautiful, all the men dashing, suits and ties replace Reebok and company, tight-bodiced, swirling, tiered dresses with plunging backs, fringed shawls, floral hair decoration, garish earrings and perfect skin oust the Goddess Lycra. A whole city alive and celebrating its identity.
It may not have the melancholy, the poetry, the utter enchantment, depth and beauty of Granada, or be as compact and cute as Córdoba, it isn’t as elegantly decadent and full of laughter as Cadiz or as cosmopolitan as Malaga, but it’s where I live. I like it, pretty much, and for all its love of kitsch and it sense of Self, its various tribal uniforms, its three religions – Catholicism, Sevilla FC and Betis – and its infinite number of velvet, gold and seed-pearl clad Virgins – it is, for now, home.
And it’s certainly a contrast to where I came from.
(Originally posted on Blood, sweat and gazpacho )
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3548820503804080565===Praise the dawning===
“Come on! Quickly! Hurry up! Your coat or your cape?” Decisions. If I wore my cape, I could pretend I was a superhero, but the cape had a stupid cap to match; the coat was pink, a colour both loathsome and loathed, but it had big buttons that I could do up myself, and the hat was a fuzzy white beret with two pompoms. “Coat.” “Right. Pop it on then. Daddy’s getting the car out. Gloves? Pop your penny inside your glove so you don’t lose it. Ready? Oops. Lipstick. Don’t tell your grandmother.”
Sunday. Phew. There were so many Sundays in life! “Quick. Hop in. Mind the gear stick. Sitting down? Right. We're off then.” The Beetle juddered and jiggled to life instantly. What was it Woody Allen said in Sleeper? Wow, they really built those things. And with my father at the wheel, a perfect driving combination I deeply resented on Sunday mornings. “I’m cooooold!” “Have you not got your buttons done up? Don’t suck your fingers, now, you’ll ruin your glove…” The Sunday odyssey. The other church was nearer, but my mother’s parents-in-law would be there, my grandfather taking the service with his quasi-apocalyptic sermons, all fire and thunder, his voice expanding to fill the cavernous nave and rattling the bells before dropping to a mere coaxing, beady-eyed whisper. He thorough enjoyed making people squirm, watching them start to feel uncomfortable in their skin, particularly my mother. And my grandmother was….my grandmother. Turban, brooch, black Sunday coat. My mother and my grandmother together, “Hello, good morning, good morning my dear, it’s terribly cold, isn’t it, yes, yes, but of course it is February, yes, yes, goodness look at all the fallen leaves, you would think someone would…yes yes you would wouldn’t you terrible isn’t it…” Thin smiles on the lips only, words muttered as quickly as possible then look away, dig for something in handbags, spot a neighbour.
So we went to the other church, the one across the road from the Big School. A strange thing happened at that church, though, every Sunday: as soon as you set foot through the door, families, the veritable pillar of the community, were separated. Children this way, gentlemen to the left, ladies to the right. For me, trustingly herded off with the children, the greatest excitement of the morning was seeing who was leading Sunday School that day.
“Good morr ning, chill dren” the short hiatus of well-spoken Glasgow. “GOOD MORRRNING” “Have you all left your coats on the coat pegs?” “YES, MISS CAMPBELL”. The slowly drawn out chorus of twenty or thirty freshly washed, shiny scrubbed faces and necks, and comb-slicked heads. “Lettuce spray.” A unison soprano mumble, slow, monotonous “Forgive us our debts and we’ll forgive our daughters” “Well done, children. Sit down please.” Thwump. Splatch. Twenty or thirty Sunday-clothed bottoms hit the floor, twenty or thirty moon-pale faces look expectantly at Scotland’s answer to a young bespectacled Nana Mouskouri in a short tartan skirt and white leatherette knee boots with zips up the side.
It was the job of this school boys’ dream to share with us stories of the tribes of Israel, loaves of bread and fishes (and a Mummy fishy too), lame men who picked up their beds and walked, tombs with huge stones that could move by themselves, and affable young men with multicoloured coats. “..and his brothers were really very jealous of him – do you know what jealous means Kenneth?” “Aye, Muss Cambull” “…and so they stole his….” I wonder what we’re having for lunch today. I wonder if they’ll make me go with Grandpa to pick up Aunt Mabel. “…. And does anyone remember what his Daddy was called?” “Jacob! It wuz Jacob!” “Aye, it was, dear, well done…”. Aunt Mabel is scary, she’s older than the Bible and the multicoloured coat and Jacob all put together. Even older than Miss Campbell. Her voice is made of greaseproof paper and she shakes and her cup rattles and her cutlery clatters and her soup goes ssssssslpsssst as she extracts it from the spoon and she holds her bowl the wrong way round so it tilts away from her and if she ever falls over she'll snap. Oh I hope we’re not going to get Aunt Mabel today. “Halleluyah. Amen!” AMEN. LET’S COLOUR!
It was also Miss Campbell’s job to take us single file – in a crocodile, as we called it – into the church, where we occupied the front pews, dangling feet swinging wildly, and answered a question or two cast our way from the pulpit during the “family” service. Then a hymn or two, and home, after the weekly up-date on the life of the parish and its nephews, outside on the crunchy church driveway. To keep myself awake during the sermon and, later, to stop myself from dozing off while vertical as I stood behind my parents’ legs during the ‘after-chat’, I resorted to my white hat. The one that meant the wearing of the pink coat. This hat, essentially a beret, had two small holes in the centre of the crown, and a white cord had been thoughtfully threaded through these holes before having a fluffy white pompom-ball attached to each end. If I pulled on one ball slowly, it slid downwards causing the other pompom to glide upwards. And if I did it fast enough, I could disconcert the minister. “ ..AND JUST THEN….mmm…I think I just saw…no…umm….so…what?... as I was saying… AND AN ANGEL…”. Once outside, while my parents discussed the progress of the pregnancy, a recipe heard on the Jimmy Young show, or the bleak outlook for the Scottish shipyards dependant on US investment given the precarious situation in Vietnam, I played at helicopters, moving my head in ever faster circles so that my pompoms whizzed around and around with glee, completely oblivious to my sister’s pending arrival, Charlotte pudding or mass unemployment and My Lai.
(originally posted on Blood, sweat and gazpacho)

Suddenly, a voice. “It was only me, don’t worry”. Steve jumped so high, he thought his heart had come out of his mouth. She was sitting on the edge of the bath, looking at him. Her purple eyes burned with a yellow light. “Close your mouth and follow me. We have things to do,” said......said who? Steve stared at the creature in front of him in his bathroom! She had broad shoulders, impossibly long, fluid legs, and scales, like a fish, on her arms and cheekbones. But what made her the strangest, most beautiful creature Steve had ever seen was her colour: turquoise, like tropical waters and mint ice-cream. And she was carrying a battle-axe.
‘Are you coming?’ she asked impatiently. ‘How can I argue with a huge, beautiful green woman with an axe?’ thought Steve and nodded weakly. The ‘woman’ swung round and jumped through the bathroom wall, as if it was a waterfall. As Steve stepped cautiously through the liquid tiles, he heard her voice ‘By the way, I’m your sister.’
F. Mauchline (published in Motivate, by Edelvives)
Think about these questions and decide how the story continues:
a. What was the woman’s name?
And now he had won the lottery! A young journalist had come to see him this morning and had asked him ‘How are you going to spend the millions?’ and the question had seemed surreal in its innocence. ‘Who are you going to leave it to?’ was the question on many people’s lips: the nurses and carers were treating him like a cute newborn baby, the hospital priest had been to visit, and the relatives were already stuffed into their cars and on their way ‘to celebrate’.
Henry reached out to the bedside table with his shaking hand and picked up the lighter his son-in-law had left there. He smiled and flicked the flame into action. His smile grew into a grin as the flame touched the ticket and ate it greedily. Henry didn’t see the flame go out. He had gone.
F. Mauchline (published in Motivate, by Edelvives)
Write about what another character was doing / saying at the same time as the story.
Write what happened next.