Voice to Text

Having a 3 year old daughter, we read a lot of bed time stories. To capture her attention, I try to be more animated with my story telling. Whether I am reading a story to my daughter or reading a short story to my English class, I make a conscience effort to bring the characters to life. When the characters are talking, I use the words on the page as an opportunity to add some emotion or feeling to the story. Orally, I want my daughter or my students to picture the emotion that the characters might be feeling as I read the words on the page to them. I also try to vary my voice tones at times because your tone has a way of adding personality to a character. It also helps to create a visual image of the character as well.

With oral storytelling, the goal of the reader is to draw the listener into the story. When telling my short tale, I found myself trying to convince the listener that they should listen to the entire story. In order to do this, I have to add emotion and try to present this as  causal conversation while reading the story. This will enhance the story not only for the listener but for the reader as well. With text reading, I have to use my imagination more and rely on my senses and prior language knowledge to understand the meaning and key phrases in the short recording.

It was interesting listening to the recording of the reading. I found that even before I began reading, I started to picture the audience that I was reading to in this situation. Since, I am always reading to my toddler, I tried to read in a lively manner and over exaggerate certain words. The line, “call up immediately” I find that I emphasized the word to stress how important it was for me to get into the room. I also found that I emphasized “coughing,” because I wanted the listener to know that there was some immediate concern between my wife and I. This would not necessarily be conveyed in the text because individuals reading this story would automatically question why running up to the run was an urgent matter. With out the context of why taking care of a newborn is challenging, the story will not have the same impact on those who do not have kids.  By emphasizing “immediately” and “coughing,” I wanted the reader to remember these specific words. Since these are adverbs, these words are key in helping the reading understand the emotion that I am trying to convey in the story. I also found that once I got into the tale, it was much easier for me to share the parts of the tale that I wanted to share.

I was also intrigued by my voice in the recording. I found that even though I have repeating this tale numerous times, I still stumbled over certain words. I felt that after hearing the recording, I was a bit unsure how I wanted to tell the tale. The spontaneous nature of coming up with the story at that moment forced me to making an interesting decision as to how I wanted to tell the tale and how much information that I wanted to share. I find that the recording might have muted how much I wanted to say. In my head, I pictured myself sharing the tale in the style of Stuart McLean, who is one of my favorite writers and storytellers of all time. His easy going style to find humor in every day situations was my inspiration for sharing this tale with others.

I think if I had a second reading, I would have tried to really think about how much detail that I wanted to give in this situation. I would have also been able to read in a smoother fashion. I would have time to really thing about the words I would emphasis and which sentences to highlight to ensure that the listeners could visualize the story. I would also focus on stopping at the appropriate times while reading. I notice that when I read at times, I rush my words and stumble at certain points. With a second reading, I would be able to pause at the appropriate spots in the story.

This activity made me realize how important voice is in influencing text. Text has a way of recording information that can be passed on for generations. However, voice has a way of bringing those words to life. Voice can trigger the knowledge one has and enhance how the listener or reader interrupts the story and enhance the way we understand the meaning behind the text.