Humanising Language Teaching
Year 4; Issue 2; March 02

Percussion Punctuation

( coursebook section)

By Herbert Puchta and Mario Rinvolucri

Language focus:
Reading aloud, intonation, pausing and punctuation. Ideal with passage from the coursebook

Proposed M.I. focus:
Musical, kinesthetic and very intensely linguistic

Level:
Elementary to advanced

Time: 20-30 minutes

Preparation:

Decide which coursebook unit to use and count the number of punctuation marks in the passage you have chosen.
Alternatively, use the passage given below. These are the punctuation marks in the text " ! " . , : ?

In class:

1. Write the punctuation marks in the passage you have chosen on the board. Check that they know the English words for them.
   
   
2. Divide the class into groups. There should be as many people in each group as there are punctuation marks in the passage + one. Ask the students to turn to the text in the book.
   
   
3. Explain that one student in each group is to read the text aloud and that the other six are each to choose one of the punctuation marks and to choose a sound to represent it. One student might clap once for the full-stop and another might crackle a crisp bag to represent inverted comas and a third might cough for a comma.
   Tell the students to take their time choosing sounds they like and then ask each group to practice reading the text aloud with sounds in place of punctuation marks.
   ( The reader is the person in each group extra to number of punctuation marks ).
   
   So the sentence " kiss me," she said! would go like this:

   Student A: inverted commas sound
   Student B: ( reader) kiss me
   Student C: comma sound
   Student A: inverted commas sound
   Student B ( reader) she said
   Student D: exclamation mark sound.

   The students need to practise the piece several times so that the reading is fluent and the punctuation / sound people come in on cue.

4. Ask each group to do a sound-punctuated reading.

5. Ask the whole group to decide which is the best sound for the full stop. The full-stop people from each group adopt this majority preferred sound. Do the same with the other five marks.
   Finally ask one student to read while the whole group punctuate with the sounds they have decided they like best.
   Repeat, but this time slower.
   Repeat, but this time faster.
   Repeat , but this time softer etc.....

A possible reading text ( just in case you don't use a coarsebook)

Looking for something.

John was out in the garden , looking for something. He was on hands and knees in a flower border. His wife saw him from an upstairs window, opened the window and called down to him:

" What are you doing? "
" I'm looking for my keys."
" Your keys? Lost them in the garden, did you? She asked.
" No, in the house.?"
"Then why are you looking for them in the garden? "

" The light 's better in the garden! "

Acknowledgement

We learnt this activity from Maggie Farrer, principal of the University of the First Age, Birmingham, UK, where all the work done is along M.I lines. In 1998 the UFI offered summer courses to over 2000