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Optional Tasks

Voice to Text Task

This narrative was created using the text-to-speech Whisper app, which allows one free transcription but does not allow you to so much as copy the text without purchase, which meant I had to retype my narrative.

What is the right way to conduct oneself on escalators in the Hong Kong MTR? I met a colleague on the platform at Wong Chuk Hong. We were both going to the same place in central and we moved to the escalators to get out. And there was this great bottleneck of people all waiting their turn to get on the escalator at the right hand side according to convention. Leaving the left hand side unobstructed for people who want to walk up the escalator. And I am bemused by this congestion created because I wonder why everyone wouldn’t just walk up the escalator all the time and would willingly submit to standing and waiting and milling about in order to get on at the right hand side. My colleague shares my amusement but gave a tweak to my philosophy by advocating for everyone to stand on the escalator. She got on the escalator and stood next to me on the left hand side and at one point looked behind her to see if anyone was coming up behind. She was a moment of self-consciousness but more so of defiance as though she was militating for a kind of new approach. And she explained this to me as if everyone simply moved to both sides and stood on both sides there would be this prevention of this congestion. So the fundamental difference in her approach was that I agree with the current system that the left hand side should be maintained free. The difference she believes that the left hand side should always be filled by people standing. I believe that the left hand side should always be maintained free if people are not going to be more go-getters and walk up the escalator. She further justified her system by saying that expressing disbelief that anyone could be in such a rush that they needed implying that they didn’t need to walk up the escalator. I’ve been in situations where I’ve confronted a person standing on the left hand side and I’ve actually just pushed through them, which often blesses a reaction of disbelief from the person I’m pushing to the side, but such as my own militancy about the rights of the person to move unencumbered up the left hand side.

For my analysis, I will proceed through my text-to-speech conversion bit by bit, noting linguistic and structural features as they appear in the text. This approach allows me to track how oral storytelling patterns emerge and differ from conventional written narrative.

The only predetermined part was the opening question, a common storytelling device used to generate interest and establish the theme of the story.

The narrative contains an abrupt temporal jump – we meet on the platform at Wong Chuk Hang, and suddenly we’re at the escalators after completing our journey. A written story would smooth out this transition, perhaps by describing the journey or using a clear transitional phrase.

The phrase ‘according to convention’ is inserted rather abruptly, yet its formality serves a dual purpose: it creates a sense of shared knowledge for local readers familiar with escalator etiquette, while potentially intriguing readers from less congested regions who might be unfamiliar with such rigid social conventions.

The transcription includes a sentence fragment: ‘Leaving the left hand side unobstructed…’ This illustrates advice I often give to students – that starting sentences with ‘ing’ words often creates problems. Such constructions need to either connect to the previous sentence as a subordinate clause or be rephrased entirely.

The statement ‘I am bemused’ describes my general, ongoing state of mind – it’s how I always feel about this situation. Similarly, when I write ‘My colleague shares my amusement,’ it could be read as another general truth, parallel to my own permanent bemusement. However, what I’m actually trying to convey is something I discovered during our specific conversation, which becomes clearer in the next part: ‘gave a tweak to my philosophy.’ This shift to past tense reveals that I’m describing something learned in a specific moment, not a general truth about my colleague’s perspective. This mixing of tenses – from what could be read as general truths in present tense to a specific conversational revelation in past tense – is more characteristic of spoken expression, where we naturally flow between timeframes as our thoughts unfold, than of written expression, which typically maintains more consistent temporal framing within a single sentence.

The description of my colleague’s actions on the escalator would be handled quite differently in written form. A written version might read: “As my colleague expounded on her philosophy about the need to fill up both sides of the escalator, she looked back defiantly, as though ready to confront anyone who dared insinuate that they were expecting her to move aside…”

The phrase “She was a moment of self-consciousness” demonstrates how natural speech often produces incomplete or grammatically awkward constructions that would be refined in writing. In a written version, this might have been expressed as “she was displaying a moment of self-consciousness” or “this was a moment of self-consciousness on her part.” This illustrates how spoken language often contains these rough edges that written language would smooth out.

The phrase ‘So the fundamental difference in her approach was that I agree’ exemplifies how spoken language often expresses comparisons awkwardly. Written language would favour parallel structure: ‘While we both agree that the congestion is problematic, we differ in our solutions: I believe everyone should walk up the escalator to create better flow, while she believes no one should walk up the escalator at all.’ This demonstrates how written language can achieve clarity through careful structuring, while oral storytelling, though effective in conveying meaning, often takes a less elegant path.

The phrase “more go-getters” exemplifies informal spoken language that would be inappropriate in formal writing.

There’s a clear instance of self-repair, a characteristic feature of spontaneous speech, where I begin with “She further justified her system by saying that…” then switch to “expressing disbelief.” This happened because I wanted to use the word “disbelief” but had to adjust my syntactic structure to accommodate it – “expressing” better collocates with “disbelief” than “saying” does.

The voice-to-text transcription was remarkably accurate, with only minor errors. It transcribed “elicits” as “blesses” and “such is” as “such as” – the latter presumably because “such as” is a more common pattern in English than the somewhat pretentious “such is.”

Interestingly, the Whisper app adds punctuation such as full stops, which are constructs of written language. In oral speech, there are rarely clear indicators of where “punctuation” should go – we rely instead on pauses, intonation, and rhythm. The app’s automatic addition of punctuation represents an attempt to bridge the gap between spoken and written conventions.

This analysis reveals how oral storytelling differs fundamentally from written narrative in its handling of time, perspective, and grammatical structures, while still managing to convey meaning effectively through different means.

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Mandatory Tasks

What’s in my bag?

 

I’m David Jalsevac, an English Language and Literature teacher at Victoria Shanghai Academy in Hong Kong. What follows is my contribution to the “What’s in my bag” exercise, completed on January 19 2025.

This picture was taken after returning from the Hong Kong Public Library after going on a marking tear marking student exams. These are the last formal in-school exams for Year 12 before they write their IB exams. However, because I teach them tomorrow, I was marking Year 11 papers, these are their FIRST in-school formal exams of the Diploma Programme.

The pens in purple, green and black ink of various thicknesses are significant – they are chosen in different colors to contrast with the student’s blue or black. The best pen I’ve found is a uniball Signo 0.7 which feels smooth to write with and does not bleed excessively through the paper like the thicker zebra two-sided markers.

My half-full hydroflask water bottle bears my last name printed in permanent marker by my mother – I have to keep reminding myself to drink during the workday and end up not doing so at all. I took one sip as I left the library today.

My laptop rests in a felt case bearing a digitally rendered image of our school campus – one of hundreds distributed when our new building wing opened. There’s something telling about seeing these identical cases everywhere on campus, each teacher toting the same mechanically reproduced image of our shared space. The usual accessories trail along: laptop charger, iPhone cable, and my Bose Quiet Comfort headphones that help maintain focus during marathon marking sessions.

My staff identity hangs from a replacement lanyard (the original lost en route to ball hockey) – a white digital card with a laminated overlay. The overlay displays my photo, name, and role as “Secondary Teacher,” with the school’s identity presented bilingually in English and Traditional Chinese, accompanied by our accreditation markers (IB, CIS, NEASC). This card mediates access to the school’s electronic gates and secondary staff room, and lets me print at any of the school’s printers.

Colleagues view me as an AI enthusiast, but I see it more as a practical compulsion, no different from any other teacher’s methodological preferences. A deeper tension lies in my linguistic limitations – despite two decades of intermittent life in Hong Kong, I remain stubbornly monolingual. In our English-privileged educational environment this rarely creates practical issues, but it marks a personal shortcoming I’m acutely aware of.

Speaking of bilingualism, I carry a secret shame that I’ve lived here on and off for over 20 years now and I am still a monolingualist. In the environment I’m in which privileges English above Chinese this doesn’t matter, but they don’t see someone who views himself as linguistically lacking.

The exam papers follow a consistent format: booklet-style papers with front matter covering course details, instructions, and academic honesty declarations. Inside, students analyze a blog transcript, mirroring the structure of the IB Paper 1 exam. Their responses are written on lined paper embossed with our school crest, in blue or black ink.

Text Technologies

Since the most significant contents of my bag reflect my marking practice – the exam scripts, pens, and AI-equipped laptop – I’ll focus on how these tools represent my evolving assessment process.

My marking process has evolved significantly. What began as purely individual analysis has transformed into a collaboration with AI. I feed selections from student scripts into Claude-3.5-sonnet, offering my initial thoughts and seeking validation of my feedback (it is very agreeable). I often get it to adjust its responses to a Year 12 comprehension level. These comments often expand to 1000-1500 words – multiplied across 28 students in two classes, it represents a substantial body of detailed feedback.

Let me share a typical example of how AI assists my marking process. When evaluating a student’s podcast analysis, my initial thoughts often emerge as a stream of questions and potential feedback points:

I basically agree with this analysis
Does she need to be more explicit about linking the point about enjoyment to change, by saying that it makes the listener more amenable to the ideas presented to them
She doesn’t have to say that it is stypical of podcasts to use a conversational tone, that’s kind of robotic – “The text is a podcast, which uses a conversational tone” She could simply mention that THIS podcast is conversational
Shoudl I point here, This analysis is fine, but also consider the conversational dynamic between Robin Chatterjee, how they pass each other off as quite convivial (is there a more Y12 friendly word than that), as though they are long-time friends, which also makes readers more susceptible of the message

She could specify that the phrase “Yeah Right” is a colloquial phrase, the colloquialism creates the informal tone

It’s also kind of robotic that she says “as opposed to “yes, I agree”

Should I give her checkmark when she says – or is it better to say it creates an atmosphere of intimacy/familiarity

Grabbing readers’ attention is superficial – should I say that?

When the student says “nformal tone and enthusiastic language can not only make the podcast more engaging, but also create a positive relationship between the listener and the topic of wealth. – Should I say good connection to the guiding question

This positive interaction gives a positive association with wealth – should I say here Specify that this is Sharma’s expanded concept of wealth, not your garden variety wealth = money kind of wealth

Through AI collaboration, these scattered thoughts transform into focused, student-friendly comments:

“No need to generalize about podcasts – focus on how THIS podcast uses conversation”
“Good observation. You could specify that this is colloquial language, which creates the informal tone”
“Consider also how Robin and Vishen interact like friends – their rapport makes listeners more receptive to the message”
“✓ Good connection to guiding question”

There’s an odd tension in how we approach AI in education. While we encourage students to think critically about technology, there’s still an unspoken expectation that teachers should maintain the illusion of purely human assessment. The IB’s stance remains notably vague and non-committal. I find myself in an odd position – knowing that AI-assisted feedback often provides clearer, more consistent insights, yet feeling pressure to downplay this tool’s role in my process.

While AI assists my process, it hasn’t fundamentally changed my commitment to thorough assessment – I can take up to three to four hours on a single script when needed. But now that time is spent differently. Instead of struggling to articulate feedback, I’m collaborating with AI to refine and perfect it. Even my teaching materials evolve through this human-AI partnership, with Claude helping to shape class discussion slides.

Fifteen years ago, my toolkit would have been simpler – pens, notebooks, but no exam scripts as teaching wasn’t yet my profession. Looking at these tools now – the colored pens, the paper scripts, the laptop with AI assistance – they represent a transitional period in education. While younger students increasingly prefer keyboards to pens, showing the digital shift in progress, there remains something uniquely valuable about the physical act of writing and marking on paper. Perhaps that’s why, even as digital assessment becomes more prevalent, these tangible tools persist in our practice.

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