I would like to share a story I heard from my nephew a few days ago about friendship for this week’s task.
(1) What would you have done differently if you have had the chance to script the story?
If I have had the chance to script the story, I will definitely…
- use punctuations! As I read through the scripted text from speechtexter.com I suddenly realized how confusing a simple story could become without punctuations. Especially the conversations between characters is hard to understand.
- double-check with grammar and tenses to avoid wrong interpretations
- not name my characters as “red blue and green” since the naming seems to be unnecessary to the whole story. Also, I randomly call these birds because I don’t have the time to consider.
(2) What are the most common “mistakes” in the text?
- The online tool automatically capitalized some of my words in the middle of a sentence probably because I had a big pause: “he was Amazed by their adventure stories…” However, I was not going to start the next sentence. Instead, I paused there to select an appropriate word cautiously in my mind.
- The tool skipped scripting some of my words when I spoke too quickly.
(3) Why do you consider these “mistakes”?
Both of the above “mistakes” affect reading and understanding.
(4) In what ways does oral storytelling differ from written storytelling?
Firstly, as discussed above, oral storytelling can be easily misinterpreted by the speaker and misunderstood by the listener compared to written storytelling due to inaccurate wordings and unclear pauses. Secondly, every time a story is being delivered, it could be different. My nephew shared this story with me a few days ago, but when I was going to talk about the story, I found it is hard to recall details such as names of characters, then I had to name them by myself. Then I can’t stop imagining what this story is going to become after many years, after many retelling? The theme could change from the friendship to a love story, and characters can change to wolfs or even aliens. It’s acceptable for storys（there are tons of different versions for every each famous fairy tales), but it could be extremely inappropriate for the delivery of knowledge and facts. Third, when I heard this story from my nephew, I understood the main plots but wasn’t sure about some details. My nephew is 4 years old. When he talked about grains, wheat and pesticides, he got confused often and used his own words instead of the proper names of these subjects. For storytellers, due to their specific conditions (lack of knowledge, emotional feelings, etc.), the tone and plots of a story can be seriously influenced as well.
The story below is scripted by speechtexter ( https://www.speechtexter.com/)
“in the beautiful afternoons of a peaceful village there were 3 birds often coming to the Farmland their names were red blue and green these 3 birds had known each other since they were born and their parents were neighbours in the nearby forest red green and blue certainly liked the leaves and flowers in the forest but they would like to have a private time chatting with friends without supervision from parents too so they thought trips to the farmland was a wonderful idea in the farmland red green and blue could chat with each other and enjoy the refreshing breeze occasionally when they were tired of talking they bowed to pick up a few grains on the ground to eat these little birds still remember the old saying from their mothers a polite bird is always respecting the neighbourhood so they never touch the grains on the body of wheat
among many ears of wheat, there was an ear of wheat called Charlie quickly made friends with red blue and green Charlie is so happy that he had so many adorable friends chatting around him Charlie was a good listener and he is Amazed by the adventure stories from birds he started to have vivid images of the forest he began to fantasize about how it feels to touch the clouds with his brushes on the grains while red blue and green were away and the wind was blowing in the evenings you could see Charlie was shaking his body very hard in hoping to sprinkle more grains on the ground to treat his friends next time
after a few weeks, the farmer saw birds on the field so they made a scarecrow standing in the centre of the farmland to scare off the birds as a result the birds coming to the farmland was getting less and less Charlie was upset until one day he found red green and blue are hovering over his head Charlie shouted to the his friends hey the scarecrow is fake what are you afraid of come down to chat I have lots of grains to treat you the birds grin of course we know we are not afraid then why do you all pretend to be scared and leave me alone these days Charlie got angry in this way farmers won’t sprinkle pesticides on you every time we miss you we can just hover over your head to protect you and our friendships”