I used the ‘dictate’ option in Microsoft Word to record my five minute story. I relayed my experience of moving provinces and schools at 13 years old without much previous thought about what I would specifically talk about. I set a five minute timer on my phone and spoke until it went off. The transcript is posted below first, with my analysis beneath it.

Story:

when I was 13 years old my family decided to move from the East Coast of Canada to the West coast of Canada my dad got a job at the Alcan aluminum smelting plant in kitimat and at 13 I was not very keen to move to the other side of the country and leave all my friends behind I remember saying I would rather stay and live with my grandparents but of course that wasn’t an option we moved provinces on December 29th night oh wait 1990 it was a very snowy day our cat made the trip with us and we had to sedate him to put him on an aeroplane we had to take three separate flights and we arrived in a snowstorm I remember the cat making all sorts of funny crazy noises as we were transporting him in his carrier he had to be stowed under the seat in front of us and we had to take a bus from one airport to another because the flight got cancelled I think by then the sedatives were starting to wear off and Gus was not very happy for the first few months that we lived in this town we had to rent an apartment we actually rented 2 apartments that connected so my sister and I had our bedroom on one side and my youngest brother and my parents had their bedroom on the other side eventually we moved into a house not my parents bought going to school was really interesting when you moved to a small town all the people who lived there have really known each other since they were little and have all gone to preschool and elementary school together where I grew up we had junior high school so I went to an elementary school from the time that I was in kindergarten to grade 6 and then went to junior high for grade seven and eight halfway through grade 8 when I moved to BC I was put into high school so the school went from grades 8 to 12 so I was a brand new student 13 years old put into a high school with kids that some of them were 18 years old and in grade 12 and graduating it was pretty intimidating when I moved here my French was pretty good we Start learning French earlier on the East Coast than they do here so I was actually put ahead a year for my French I also enrolled in soccer recreationally and started playing in the summertime soccer season in northern BC starts in may when the snow finally thaws and then we would play through till usually the end of September this eventually led to me joining the school soccer team by the time I was in grade 11 and had gained some skills as a player and had a bit more confidence we made a couple trips to the lower mainland for tournaments one each year one year we went to the island and then one year we went to somewhere in the mainland I can’t remember but I think it was Langley this led me to deciding that I wanted to go to University on the island I absolutely fell in love with it it felt it reminded me a little bit more of being like it was at home it wasn’t a big city and I felt very homey there when I finally graduated I couldn’t wait to leave though I think living in a small town wasn’t the best experience for me an I really don’t keep in touch currently with anyone who I went to high school with even though we have been out of high school for 25 years now my parents don’t live in this town anymore they moved somewhere else and I haven’t really had a reason to go back this past year I think no wait when was it it would have been 2020 so last year would have been my 25 year high school reunion it probably would have been cancelled anyway due to covid but I hadn’t planned on going regardless anyway there isn’t really anyone there I would want to see or connect with after this amount of time even with things like Facebook I don’t really keep in touch with anyone I went to high school with I guess maybe moving at that point in my life I didn’t have a chance to develop really strong friendships and I laughed so quickly whereas lots of my well people that I went to school with stuck around because their family still lived there

 

How does the text deviate from conventions of written English?

The story is just one long string of text. There is no end of sentence punctuation, and there is no organization into paragraphs.

What is “wrong” in the text? 

The text to speech incorrectly ‘translated’ some of my speech (‘I didn’t have a chance to develop really strong friendships and I laughed so quickly’ whereas I believe I said ‘I left so quickly’; ‘we moved provinces on December 29th night oh wait 1990’ was spoken as ‘we moved provinces on December 29th, 19.. oh wait’). There are no capitals for beginning of sentences. One random word was capitalized (‘Start’), and one proper noun was not capitalized (‘kitimat,’ which is the name of a town). There is no punctuation other than apostrophes in contractions.

What is “right”?

It capitalized all the uses of ‘I’ (referring to oneself in the first person), and picked up on capitalization of many proper nouns such as months (December), names (Gus, my cat), names of cities and areas (Langley, West Coast, BC), languages (‘French’) and the names of companies (Alcan, Facebook). All the words in the text are spelled correctly, even if they don’t grammatically make sense. The text to speech did pick up on contractions (wasn’t, isn’t, don’t, haven’t) and added the apostrophe.

What are the most common “mistakes” in the text and why do you consider them “mistakes”?

The biggest ‘mistake’ is lack of end of sentence punctuation. If someone had listened to me to tell this story aloud they would have be able to take meaning from it (assuming they also spoke English like me). Someone who did not hear my story and was simply reading this text would have to work much harder to put meaning into it by having to sort it into sentences themselves. For example, ‘we had to take a bus from one airport to another because the flight got cancelled I think by then the sedatives were starting to wear off’ could be interpreted as ‘We had to take a bus from one airport to another because the flight got cancelled I think. By then the sedatives were starting to wear off.’ or ‘We had to take a bus from one airport to another because the flight got cancelled. I think by then the sedatives were starting to wear off.’

What if you had “scripted” the story? What difference might that have made?

A scripted story would not have have contained interjections such as ‘I guess’ or ‘oh wait’ or ‘whereas lots of my well people that I went to school with.’ I am curious to know if reading a scripted story would have led the speech to text to pick up better on the pauses between sentences and add punctuation. The ideas would have been better organized by topic and not had such a rambling feeling to it. As I know I had to speak for five minutes, I felt some pressure to keep talking which led me to change topics slightly over the five minutes. I also would have made some different word choices.

In what ways does oral storytelling differ from written storytelling?

Oral storytelling is a more spontaneous process. Even though someone telling a story does not say ‘period’ or ‘question mark’ at the end of a sentence, we, in the English language at least, have come to learn to listen to the flow and cadence of oral speech, listening for those little pauses to indicate a sentence is ending. Our intonation tends to go up at the end of a sentence that is a question, which indicates a question is being asked. While you might set out with a topic in mind, I find it is much easier to go off on a tangent when speaking a story versus writing it. Written storytelling requires a bit more forethought before words are handwritten or typed, and I believe we subconsciously filter our thoughts before writing or typing them out. Written storytelling is a process that can be edited afterwards. We can edit for grammar, word choice, and if typing on a computer, it can check our spelling for us. As Gnanadesikan said ‘writing is generally done more deliberately than speaking, so finished written pieces are much more carefully crafted than a typical spoken sentence. Written texts can thus convey their message more precisely, adding to the sense that writing is worth more than speech’ (p. 5). I find that interesting, as I know if given a choice, I would rather read a ‘scripted’ version of someone’s story, because I wouldn’t have to work as hard to understand it. It makes me wonder if reliance on the written word made us lazier?

 

References

Gnanadesikan, A. E. (2011).“The First IT Revolution.” In The writing revolution: Cuneiform to the internet (Vol. 25). John Wiley & Sons (pp. 1-10).