I have always felt there was something central to the role of narrative in the human psyche. And recently, as I evaluate myself and my progress as a teacher, I have come to realize that if I assess my "toolbox" (those various tricks and gimicks and techniques that I've accumulated over my recent several years of teaching EFL), there is one thing that stands out as a consistent "winner": telling stories. Telling good, interesting, compelling stories is possible at all levels of EFL instruction, and I have yet to have a bad reaction to a story, as long as I've taken the time to make sure it is well-structured (beginning, middle, end, character, etc.). I used to give away prizes or play games with my students, but nowadays, when they clamor for some kind of reward, they generally say, "tell us a story."
So, to be a better, and better-equipped teacher, I need to work on building my repertoire of narratives. Many of the narratives I tell the students are semi-fictionalized (some more, some less) episodes from my own life: the time I cut my hand on a machine at work, the time I got shot at by a drunk man in Mexico, the time I was in a small airplane struck by lightning. Lately, I've been telling purely fictional stories about mad scientists transplanting brains, since we're doing a unit in my Goldrush classes reviewing parts of the body. They really seem to enjoy these — I came into class today to cries of "draw the man with the brain." That's reference to the sketches I do on the whiteboard.