Help with Dialouge
Hi all,
I am planning to give a lesson, this Thursday, on how to include dialouge in personal narratives for a 7th grade English class. I plan to model my own personal narrative for them, making it very juicy and emotional, which I hope will engage them in this basic concept. Is this my only outlet for creativity in this lesson? How else can I model dialouge for them without boring them to death? Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks,
Jesscia
posted by Jessica @ 4:23 PM
3 Comments:
One thing that has always helped me with writing dialogue is to listen to dialogue around me. You could have your students listen to conversations at home or during lunch and try writing them down as they remember them to get a feel for what natural dialogue sounds like. It's also a fun eavesdropping activity!
Another way to help your students incorporate more dialogue into their essays is the "show not tell" philosophy. Dialogue is often a good way to do this. Characters can often reveal a lot through their speech patterns and tone that can be hard to describe in pure exposition.
A way to extend your already model is use it as a tool for the class to edit it. On purpose include mistakes, such as narrative, "She told me I look good," that could be edited into a dialogue - Nancy said, "You look good." Also, have them edit the words attached to the dialogue, such as said, say, screamed. Then, you can also have them create a list of dialogue words they can use as reference for later. Once you have your model with mistakes, put it on the light projector and edit it together as a class. You'll be surprised by the answers your students come up with and they'll learn more when actively doing it. Also, put on an act, pretending, "Oh how silly of me. How did I not see that?"
Both of these are great ideas, really, as there are a number of things that need addressing here. One is the mechanics/punctuation/conventions at play, which are best modeled and practiced - don't be afraid to give a little proofreading homework on dialogue punctuation, especially if you let them review each other's drafts.
Rebekah's suggestion to have them 'record' dialogue around them is key to them understanding that dialogue in their stories should read as it is naturally spoken (well, within guidelines of 'acceptable' classroom speech, of course). Consider the difference between the following:
"Your utterance is offensive to me, sir, and you shall now receive your comeuppance in the form of a sound drubbing about the ears!"
"I can't believe you said that! Now you're gonna get it!"
This is, of course, absurd, but it speaks to Jen's example of intentionally bad modeling. I don't think you necessarily have to put on an act, but that really depends on your classroom personality. For example, you can even have them work on editing "Ms. Jessica's Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Dialogue".
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