Transcript of my story:

So in the summer I decided to take my four children to Taiwan to learn Chinese through formal classes and you know I had been planning this since January of this year so in March finally pulled the trigger we bought tickets direct flights on Eva Airlines from Vancouver saipei and type in Vancouver and we were going to spend three weeks there now my husband was not able to join us because he works for the Airlines and is the busiest season probably ask me why don’t you just take a stand by Trump kids and stuff and I said yeah I know I can’t totally but as a teacher I like certainty and planning having standby travel with four kids is just not it’s just not a not not something I’d like to entertain in the summer drink peak season so we anyways you know we’re looking forward to this trip we went to the airport or you know that date line 29th is Friday and the kids are so excited so pumped I’ve been hoping up this whole trip and go to the counter and the guy there he just kind of looks at me and looks at the kids and were you singing then just so excited to support the plane and he has over our passports to his younger colleague female and she asked me do the kids have your kids have Taiwanese passports I said no they’re Canadian so then she said well these two children cannot or the plane I said what so the passports were only good for 4 months and he needed six months at least to go to town but we have like we’re coming back in 3 weeks I mean it’s just you know and she said it doesn’t matter it’s the name immigration thing and I said well we’ll pay a fine or something like that because in my mind you know I was thinking we definitely had to get on that plane because all that went down planning and then I had a very booked a hotel for three weeks I had my sister coming for visiting who’s traveling southeast Asia and was going to join us in Taiwan to help me with the kids and another sister who’s in Korea who was going to join me at the latter half of our trip to help me watch the kids and so I had all these things like Orchestra like you know kind of scenes and you know I paid the tuition deposits for the deposit I should say for the kids schooling and so I my mind there’s no way I cannot get on this plane anyway turns out there’s nothing I could have done there’s nothing I can do so we peel away my oldest upon finding out we were not going to board the plane she starts Wheeling as if somebody had passed away and it were in the airport and it’s trying to keep it together and feeling a little bit stressed and I call my mom and she’s our travel consultant she does that for a living and she’s on her everything for us and so I told her and I guess long story short I mean there’s so many details I could explain but she had Eva Airlines and Eric Canada confirm that despite not making it on to this plane on this boarding this playing two Taiwan we still had tickets going home from Taipei to Vancouver well the next day it seems there are too many hands just in the pie and the Air Canada somebody in Air Canada basically sold off our tickets returning home so we now had no tickets going there no tickets returning home and I still have all these non-refundable and and like it was a lot of money so anyway I decided to just take a step back and take the kids out to Bubble Tea in where we lived and so this is next day I guess so you know I wanted you know we had a bunch of bubble tea and we had some popcorn chicken and we had all some of my favorite dishes from Taiwan there just to you know pretend that we were in destination I also wanted the kids to refocus and and despite the massive disappointment I you know I kind of felt this was a test I said you know I’m going to focus on what’s good and and I have you guys for you with me and you’re healthy and safe and that’s what’s most important and we’ll figure this out and we may not get there but you know mom’s going to try very hard to to figure this out and so I asked them to trust me and you know we prayed about it as well and we were able you know to go on standby as as crazy it sounds were able to go stand by direct flight to Taipei and then had a great time and kids wanted classes and everything and then coming home it was funny cuz we we had to it was very difficult going home we home oh my goodness it was kind of a story and a half there but we managed to get home through LA and then LA to Vancouver and this is all with we landed in Taipei with the typhoon there was a typhoon day the next day coming back home we landed in LA with the it was an earthquake and it was also hurricane and then flying back to Vancouver it was like forest fire so I joke to everybody that you know probably should buy a lottery ticket or something like this because we just kind of escaped you know without having really Calamity so that that’s my story there so the more the story is make sure if you travel internationally you have at least six months on your passport please learn from my mistake

How does the text deviate from conventions of written English?
Since this was my first time using a speech to text application, I was unaware of the special prompts needed to signify a period or comma. Therefore, not surprisingly the text is like a stream of consciousness but one full of errors. There is no punctuation, there are missing words, misinterpreted words, inappropriate capitalization of words, repeated words (though this could have been due to my stuttering) and no paragraphs for structure and ease of reading.

What is “wrong” in the text? What is “right”? What are the most common “mistakes” in the text and why do you consider them “mistakes”?
The general sense of my story was recorded correctly. Reading my text, you would need to put on your detective hat in order to figure out some of the incorrect parts. The most common “mistakes” include the lack of periods because without them it is hard to separate the beginning and the end of sentences and ideas. I spoke candidly as if I were speaking to a friend so I did not slow down or use punctuation prompts. Some words were spelled incorrectly but its sound was mostly preserved. For example, “Air Canada” was transcribed as “Eric Canada”.

What if you had “scripted” the story? What difference might that have made?
If I had “scripted” the story, I would have had a tighter flow, my words would be carefully crafted, and the details of the story would be clear and deliberate. There would be no stuttering, no excess of words and in short, my story would be a polished version of the raw one recorded above. Certainly the sequences of events would flow better and not jump back and forth as my mind often does.

In what ways does oral storytelling differ from written storytelling?
Oral storytelling is more concerned with capturing the emotion and excitement of the story so that the listener is following along as though the story had come alive to them and they are participating in the story too. As such, the sentences are a bit messy and imperfect, full of my common sayings like “you know” as a sort or check-in with the listener. Written storytelling is more concerned with a visual engagement with the story whereas oral storytelling additionally engages the sense of sound through my voice inflection, intonation, and sound effects. Seeing that oral storytelling is more adaptable, retelling the story will likely have variations as it is recounted through memory. Written storytelling has a sense of permanence from the authority of unchanging text (Gnanadesikan, 2011). He also makes the point that where spoken language unfolds in time, written language unfolds in space and is a medium of communication (p. 4). Ong (2002) mentions that where speech from oral storytelling is inseparable from our consciousness, writing enhances it giving rise to the art of rhetoric making it possible to “organize the ‘principles’ or constituents of oratory into a scientific ‘art’, a sequentially ordered body of explanation that showed how and why oratory achieved and could be made to achieve its various specific effects” (p. 9).

References:

Gnanadesikan, A. E. (2011). The first IT revolution. In
The writing revolution: Cuneiform to the Internet (pp. 1-12). John Wiley & Sons.

Ong, W. J. (2002). Chapter 1: The orality of language.Links to an external site. In Orality and
           literacy: The technologizing of the word (pp. 5-16). Routledge. (Original work published                     1982).