For this task, I used the Notes application on my iPhone, and used the voice to text option. Here is what I ended up with after about five minutes:

“All right so I guess for the story I’m going to talk about on my background and just kind of how my life is been up until now so I was born on September 27, 1996 in Vancouver my mom is Filipino and my dad is Vietnamese and so they decided to name me Phiviet because they took the fee from the Philippines and yet from Vietnam and put them together Finally enough and the second child in this family so my older brother his name is Viet-Phi I guess they decided to just take his name and reverse it and that’s how I got mine I was born and raised in Vancouver for the first part of my life up until about grade 4 until that’s when I moved to Burnaby and I really enjoyed playing sports when I was younger and just trying out new things I I made a friend here who lived in the same complex as me and Burnaby and he show me how to do a lot of different things like skateboarding scooter ring mountain biking and so I’m really thankful for him because it gave me the beast to do all the things I do now I think that athleticism that physical ability I also went to the cadets program when I was younger set it off in the Navy league which was in Stanley Park for first five or six years and then I transitioned to the aircraft program that had a squadron here in Burnaby that was from ages 12 to 18 and an hour I learned about leadership discipline aviation and I think the best part of it was I got to go on these summer camp sort of expeditions in Victoria where we would stay on a military base and learn about different things there I learned how to exercise there I took a basic fitness in sports camp I learned how to play in a marching man there and just a lot of different things and and the best part was that we actually got paid to go there during the summers so it was almost like my first little taste of a job back then and about grade 11 or 12 I decided I wanted to be a teacher like my mom is high school physics teacher so I looked at what programs are available here in the lower mainland and I stumbled across this dual degree program at UBC in science and education and I decided to pursue that thankfully I was able to get into UBC with my application and it was a five year program it was really difficult because I had to major in other math and physics I decided to major in physics and yeah that was that was very difficult time but thankfully the education courses I took alongside was with those were a nice break and a change of pace again just very thankful that I made it through and yeah so I graduated in 2019 with my dual degree in science and education specializing in physics I COC for three years in various school districts and I’m just recently I decided that I wasn’t really feeling it and I Chi wanted to try something new before I really committed to the teaching profession and so now I am an admin assistant at University Canada West”

Analysis

If I paused for too long it would automatically turn off voice to text, which was kind of annoying because I felt like I had to keep talking. Upon doing this task, I thought of how a lot of my Asian friends and my grandparents use voice messages as their main communication method, which is similar in nature but instead records the voice audio from the person and sends it as a message. It is quite helpful for people who want to use digital messaging platforms but lack the fine motor skills (or motivation) to type out their messages. It is faster than typing, and it can convey more emotion due to being able to hear the way people are speaking. Also, in some Asian languages such as Chinese or Vietnamese, accent and intonation can completely change the meaning of a word, so these voice recordings are less likely to be misunderstood in conversations.

How does the text deviate from conventions of written English?

• My text is missing any form of punctuation, period. This basically reduces my monologue to a very large run-on sentence. There is a way to add punctuation using voice to text, but it involves literally saying the names of the punctuation, which nobody does naturally when communicating orally.

What is “wrong” in the text? What is “right”?

• Along with the missing punctuation, some words were not correctly translated from voice to text, as highlighted in my text. There was also a case where I stuttered/repeated myself and that was transcribed. However, all of the words themselves are spelt correctly. I bet that if I had a strong accent like my mother or father, there would be even more incorrectly transcribed words.

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

• The most common mistakes are not using punctuation where it is needed and using the wrong word in a sentence. They are considered mistakes because they do not follow the rules/conventions that we abide by when reading and writing English text.

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

• It would have been clearer in terms of progression, I jumped from topic to topic, or whatever came to my mind when describing my background. It would have been more concise and used more sophisticated words, as I would have had more time to think of what expressive words to use. It also would have taken longer because I would have to read it exactly as I scripted it before accepting the finished product, whereas I completed this text in one take. Although,  I would have felt less nervous and less pressured to not mess up because I could do multiple takes with the scripted version.

In what ways does oral storytelling differ from written storytelling? 

References

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