Among my intentions with my writing and recording assignments next semester is to have them paired so as to work in concert to increase each student’s awareness of their voice and clarity. This is why each student recording will be accompanied by a reflective essay requiring them to respond in detail to having both spoken and then listened to their essay. This creates at least three obvious levels of aural editing: speaking, which hopefully will focus on fluid syntax, listening, which should focus on clarity of expression, and reflecting, which may lead them to more conscious thought about how they are representing themselves and their ideas in language.
To assist with their reflections on the recordings, I want to create a short set of questions to generate insight into their experience. I haven’t decided precisely what questions I would list, but these are some possibilities:
· Did you notice anything about your draft as you read it aloud? About your diction? Your variety of sentence length or structure? Your transitions between key points?
· What is your first response to hearing your voice?
· Which parts of your essay were easy to read aloud and which were difficult? In both cases, the easy and the difficult, why do you think this was so?
· Describe what you heard that you found most effectively persuasive.
· Describe what you heard that lacked persuasive force.
· What would you like to do next to improve the quality of your draft? Why, that is, what outcome do you want?
· Did you discover anything unexpected, either positive or negative, about your essay when you read it or when you listened to yourself reading it?
I believe it likely that I may gain some insight from their responses to these and similar questions as well. And, of course, I’ll need an alternate assignment in the event that I have students with significant speech or hearing difficulties. I may also consider emphasizing the possibility of an audio component for the students’ semester eportfolios since they are required to incorporate artifacts into the finished product anyway.