Humanising Language Teaching
Year 2; Issue 5; September 2000
The written versus the spoken word
By Marical Boo
"Let us try the following definition: You are reading when you derive the reproduction from the original. ... But why do we say that he has derived the spoken from the printed words? Do we know anything more than that we taught him how each letter should be pronounced, and that he then read the words out loud? ... [Or that] he shows that he is deriving his script from the printed words by consulting the table."
Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, § 162
For the teacher:
Does the spoken word precede every written text? When you read a text, what are you re-creating in your mind? Is it a set of words which someone has once spoken? Or was it originally a written text? What is the difference? What happens when you write? Do you 'say' things in your head, or does it appear for the first time on the page?
For the classroom:
1. You will need to play a cassette for your students - something from the radio, perhaps, like 'Thought for the Day' or a play on Radio 4 - something that is spoken but that could (or could not) have been written first. What follows will depend on what you record, with a greater or a lesser emphasis on the written or the spoken aspects. Perhaps you could record a variety of programmes - each no more than a couple of minutes - to see what the differences are. Perhaps you can transcribe one of the extracts so that your students can read it as well.
2. Ask your students to look at and listen to written and spoken versions of the same text. Can they tell which is the original? What are the clues that tell them that one has been derived from the other? With some texts, it's easy - cumbersome sentence structure with sub-clauses can indicate a written text, whilst lots of repetition and hesitation can indicate a spoken text.
3. But sometimes it's not so clear. How about a poem? How do we know whether it was the written or the oral version which came first? What does it mean for something to be written to be spoken?
4. Ask your students in groups to think about the differences between speaking and writing and the relative importance of each. Which came first historically, the written or spoken form? Does that make it more important? Why do you think writing developed? What function did it serve? Which is more important to our society today? Get your students to think about the role of speaking and writing in our own societies. What is the function of each? And what can be best done by speaking and what by writing. Can you say whether one is more important than the other? What do your students consider to be the role of speaking and writing in the future?
5. Get one group to imagine that they belonged to a society that does not write, but only speaks. Another group belongs to a society which only writes but doesn't speak (an internet society?) What would be the consequences of this on the way the society is organised?
6. What relative priority do your students attach to learning to read and write, as opposed to learning to listen and to speak, in English? Have they advanced more rapidly in one than the other? Why might that be? Is learning to speak more important than learning to write or vice versa? How might they both be important in different ways? What are their own priorities and how should they focus their energies and their time?
