I decided to do my assignment on the reading of “Coyote Makes A Deal with King of England”. I was fascinated by this question when I first read it because I always thought that reading aloud made storytelling so much more entertaining. Moving to Vancouver from Hong Kong, English was my second language. I picked up on English fairly quickly with the help of the new friends I had made. Because English was my second language, I always tried to make sure I pronounced words correctly. As a result I was taught to enunciate clearly. I stressed each syllable with enthusiasm, and so my speech always came off as bubbly and a bit theatrical. No wonder why I agree with King that patterns, structures and themes come from oral literature! I feel like storytelling is a type of performance, therefore we should always engage with the audience by making use of the tone in our voice.
When I read the story silently the first time, I found myself stumbling and re-reading the line over and over again. It was a bit difficult to comprehend because the grammar did not always make sense. The enjambment also made the content of the story hard to follow. There just wasn’t much flow to the story because I kept stopping and re-reading the same sentence.
As I read it aloud, I found myself building confidence as I read. I didn’t stop reading until I saw a period so the enjambment didn’t hinder my reading as much. I also thought that I was narrating the story, so when I got to the part where it said “And one time, they see somebody in the water”, I changed the tone of my voice to make it sound like I was curious. By changing the tone, the story definitely sounded more intriguing and interesting. In contrast to reading it silently in my head, reading it aloud changed my thoughts of the story. It was definitely a different experience.
When I got my friend to read the story to me, she too, read it with a theatrical and convincing tone in her voice. I was actually quite engaged with her due to her amusing storyteller voice. She also used hand gestures that reeled in my attention; I wanted to know more about the story. As she got to the end of the story and said “but they never can get close”, her “but” was an exaggerated one – it was like the climax of the story where the coyote was just about to find out who was in the water, BUT they never got close enough to see. Her hand gestures and amusing voice undoubtedly contributed to persuasive storytelling.
References:
Robinson, Harry, and Wendy C. Wickwire. Living by stories: a journey of landscape and memory. Talonbooks Limited, 2005.