From Scripts to Books: Changing Educational Mediums in the Classroom
Michael Rabbidge
When working with audio visual materials it is common enough to use the language given in a scene as a source to get students practicing target language forms. Students can be asked to recreate the scene and practice their oral communication skills as an effective method for practicing not only the language in the scene, but also paralinguistic and other non-verbal aspects involved in a given exchange.
Quite often script writing and analysis is incorporated as a form of preparation for such scenes, allowing students to focus on a variety of different linguistic skills in preparation for what often turns out to be an oral performance of some kind.
What I’d like to discuss today is a little different. Instead of using scripts to enhance oral proficiency skills I’d like to discuss how scripts from educational series such as My Name is Lucky from Chasing Time English can be used as an outline for different genres of writing. The steps are basically the same, but there may be different opportunities for educators and learners depending on what writing genre you may want to focus on.
For example, from the first episode of My Name is Lucky, we have the script form the opening scene of episode one, which reads as follows:
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
INT. COUNSELLOR’S OFFICE
Lucky sits in a chair facing a desk, her head down.
Are you going to talk to me Lucky?
Sitting across a desk from Lucky is a COUNSELLOR, an earnest bespectacled woman.
Finally, Lucky raises her head.
LUCKY: I don’t know what to say.
COUNSELLOR: Your teachers are worried.
Lucky nods her head. It is a nod associated with guilt, shame.
COUNSELLOR
(softly) We all are.
LUCKY
I’m fine.
A look of genuine concern passes over the counsellor’s face.
COUNSELLOR
If that’s true then why do you want to leave?
LUCKY
Can I go now? Please.
COUNSELLOR
Soon, okay?
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Turning this part of the script into a writing activity means first understanding what possible genres could be employed to express the scene. For example, as the scene is quite serious and dramatic, it may fall into a form of narrative that utilizes descriptive, informal language rather than a more formal writing genre. Several stages of preparation would be needed to create a descriptive paragraph that represents the content of the scene effectively.
After previewing the scene and then reading the script, a brainstorming activity that asks students to think of descriptive words that could be used in the paragraph is a good first step. A good activity to help with this is to create a chart that asks students to write down words or expressions that capture what they imagine the characters feel, see, hear, want etc. in the scene. These are all things that the actors portray, so watching the scene a few times can help students complete the chart with enough language that could be used in the actual paragraph.
Example chart
Feel
See
Hear
Want
(one other)
Then once this has been completed, deciding upon the point of view is required. Will it be a 1st person narrative told from the point of view of the main character, in this case Lucky. This means Lucky is telling the entire story and the reader is inside the head of Lucky. Or possibly it could be from a third person perspective, where the narrator exists outside the events of the story, relating the character actions by referring to their names or by the third-person pronouns he, she, or they. Whatever choice is made here needs to be accompanied by activities that allow students to understand how to write from a chosen perspective.
Next students need to think about how they would organize the flow of ideas in the scene. Teachers can scaffold this by providing an outline that students may want to follow. A possible outline for this scene may start with a description of the setting before moving into how the characters interact. An outline might look like this:
Setting:
Physical setting
Emotional setting
??? setting
Character- Counsellor:
Physical description
Thoughts the character is having
Character – Lucky
Physical description
Thoughts the character is having
Main interaction sequence
Motives of each character
Possible links to next scene
Etc.
This could set students on their way to writing an effective descriptive paragraph, that when pieced together with other scenes from the series, could turn into collaborative writing that the whole class works on. Working collaboratively on such writing could mean different scenes are turned into different paragraphs by different groups of students, and peer feedback on different scenes as written by different groups can be employed to create a certain level of uniformity across the story in terms of language choice or overall mood of the writings. Ultimately the scenes converted into paragraphs can be brought together to form a book version of the series, possibly something akin to a graded reader, that students can then use to extend their learning experiences with the series.
Different series offer different opportunities for students to explore different genres of writing. Chasing Times English’s series allows for the exploration of genres such as mystery, drama, and detective stories. Alternatively, these could also be rewritten by allowing students to figure out how to change the genre, changing a drama into a comedy for example. Such choices give control of the learning back to the students and work further to enhance student motivation.