Lesson video

Hello everyone.

It's Mr. Brown with your English lesson for today.

And it is a big one.

We are practising writing speech.

One of the trickiest things that you do, but one of those things that will add so much to your writing.

I can't wait, so let's get started.

Okay, so our learning objective is quite simply to practise writing speech.

Our agenda, we're going to look first of all at why we should include speech in our writing.

Then I'm going to show you how to write speech.

We're going to go through this really slowly, one tiny step at a time.

And then I'm going to have a look at how we write a conversation and you're going to get a chance to put that into practise as well.

That was where two characters are both speaking in your writing.

Okay? In this lesson, you will need an exercise book or a piece of paper, a pencil, a pen, something to write with.

And most definitely you're going to need your brain.

This is tricky, but I have so much confidence in you that you will be able to get through this really easily, if you focus and listen very carefully.

So why should we include speech in our writing? Including speech in your writing will allow you to show the reader what a character actually says in a certain part of the story.

For example, I could write Mr. Brown told the children to get to pencil.

But that doesn't say what I said, does it? It just says a kind of overview of what happened.

Whereas this, "Gets pencil," said Mr. Brown that's direct speech, it's quoting me.

It's telling you what words that actually were coming out of my mouth.

There it is.

Get a pencil.

That's the speech.

It gives more detail.

It ensures that nothing gets lost in translation.

Nothing is glossed over.

It's detailed and precise.

It breaks up your writing.

We are always in our writing, striving to become varied writers.

We don't want to fall into that trap of writing the same sentence types again and again and again.

And speech is a great way to break up your writing.

So it's interesting for the reader.

It helps the reader to picture a character and the scene.

By knowing exactly what the character says, it helps the reader to be able to picture what's going on.

Definitely, something you need to include in your narrative writing.

Okay.

So how to write speech.

It all starts with the speech sandwich.

Now I have been teaching for a long time, and the speech sandwich, I have seen it help so many children to be able to write speech confidently and accurately.

You have to picture speech as the cheese, inside a cheese and tomato sandwich.

It's in the middle.

Around that cheese, you have a slice of tomato on top and a slice of tomato underneath.

And then of course, every sandwich has bread on the outside at the top, and bread on the outside at the bottom.

Otherwise when you pick it up, you'd get the sandwich all over your hands.

Whereas the bread keeps your hands nice and clean.

Now, when you're writing speech, the bread acts as your speech marks, the speech marks help to keep everything that's inside clear.

It helps to show what is the actual speech and what's not.

The cheese is your speech.

A capital letter at the start is your tomato and your punctuation at the end is another tomato.

Don't worry, I'm going to go through this really slowly.

Okay.

Here's an example, you can see in my example "Get a pencil, said Mr. Brown, there is my opening speech marks.

Now some people like to remember that they're opening speech marks look a little bit like a 66, the number 66.

And if you look closely, you can see they do, don't they? I have then done, my capital letter.

You will always have a capital letter at the start of your speech.

Then I've got my speech.

That's, get a pencil.

That might be two words, three words, 10 words.

It depends on what your character has said.

Then I have my punctuation.

Now, it could be a comma, it could be an exclamation mark, it could be a question mark, and it could be a full stop.

But for our purposes, we are going to not be using a full stop in our speech at the moment.

We're only going to be using comma, exclamation mark, or question mark.

We then have our closing speech marks.

So that tells us that the speech is over.

And all that's left is to say, who said it.

Okay.

Let's have a go ourselves by using the actual speech from the buildup of a Christmas Carol.

Can you remember who spoke in that scene and what they said? We've watched the buildup before in previous lessons, but can you remember which characters spoke and what they actually said? Just pause the lesson and have a go at writing it down and see if you're right.

It will interesting to see how good your memory is.

Pause the lesson now.

Okay.

Let's see if you are right, because we are going to watch the buildup of A Christmas Carol, and remember write down anything that is said and who says it.

Let's watch the clip.

How now? What do you want with me? Oh, much.

Okay.

Did you manage to catch who was speaking and what they said? Let's have a look.

I've made a table for you so we can see the characters that are speaking, and then what they said.

And we know that it was Scrooge speaking and the ghost and Scrooge said, how now? What do you want with me? And the ghost said, oh, much.

Now, I'm going to trim this speech slightly.

We're going to take out, how now, and we're going to take out, oh.

And we're going to do that because it doesn't change what that person has said at all.

It doesn't change the intention or the message that they're getting across, but it slightly shortens the speech, which is going to help us when we're writing.

So Scrooge is just going to say, what do you want with me? And the ghost is going to say, much.

Okay.

Let's have a go at writing Scrooge's speech, which is, what do you want with me using our speech sandwich to guide us.

What I suggest you do is take a pen or a pencil and write along with me so that we can do this one step at a time together.

Okay.

The first thing in our speech sandwich is our opening speech marks.

So let's put those in.

Now, you'll notice they are not on the line, they are floating above the line at about the level of the top of a capital letter.

So that will help you to know where to put that in.

The next thing we will do is, our capital letter.

And you can see my speech marks are about the same height as the capital letter.

Then we will write the rest of our speech, which is, what do you want with me? Now, our speech is finished, but before we can close our speech, we have to get our punctuation on the inside of our closing speech marks.

If you remember our sandwich, the speech marks are the outside and the punctuation has got to be inside.

It's the tomato, you wouldn't put a tomato on the outside of the sandwich, would you? So we've got a choice of a comma, a question mark, or an exclamation mark.

Now, a comma is used when someone is just delivering some information, it's pretty normal, there's nothing particularly special about this information.

I'm not sure that works for our purposes here.

This is a very unique situation.

A question mark works if someone is asking a question, they are asking someone to give them a response, an answer.

What do you want with me? That does sound like a question, doesn't it? Let's just check the last option, an exclamation mark.

Now an exclamation mark is for when someone is perhaps shouting, speaking something loudly saying something very, very important with a lot of intention, perhaps there's some drama in the scene, they're very, very angry.

That works as well, because there is a lot of drama in the scene, but it definitely is a question.

So I think a question mark is the way to go here.

Okay, is my speech done? No, I haven't closed my speech using the closing speech marks.

So there they are.

And you can see again, you've got a 66 speech mark at the start and a 99 speech mark at the end.

That always helps me to remember which way round my speech marks go.

Now, all I need to do is, say, who said it, so, said Scrooge, full stop.

I must remember my full stop because this is still a sentence.

Even though it's a speech sentence, it still needs a capital letter and a full stop, and it has a capital letter, doesn't it? At the start of my speech.

So it still needs a full stop.

Great.

All looking good.

Oh dear, this isn't good.

I can't believe I made this mistake.

I'm so sorry, everyone.

Stop, said is banned in this room.

Said is not allowed in our classroom.

And the reason for that is it is not descriptive at all.

Let me show you what I mean.

"What do you want with me?" chuckled Scrooge.

Does that work? Was Scrooge chuckling when he said it? I don't think so, not in this scene.

"What do you want with me?" sang Scrooge.

I don't think he was singing.

Was he? How about this one? "What do you want with me?" bellowed Scrooge.

Was he really loud and confident at this moment? No.

These are all synonyms for said.

Synonyms for said are just words that could replace said.

They mean the same thing, but they have a different way of describing how something has been said.

I've given you some synonyms for said and I've put them into three categories.

One's for when someone is speaking quietly, one's for when someone is speaking loudly and synonyms for when questions are being asked or answered.

So let's have a look through these then.

Quiet ones, we have whispered, muttered, mumbled, breathed, breathed is nice, isn't it? When you're so quiet that it's almost the word is almost just on your breath.

Purred, purred is good.

Like a cat, very quietly, just purring.

But none of those work for Scrooge, do they? He was quite loud at this time.

Let's try the loud words.

Boomed, when someone is speaking so loudly with a deep voice, yelled, cried, called, shouted, and screamed.

That's not bad, screamed perhaps for Scrooge, or yelled.

Let's have a look at the question ones though.

Cause we know he does ask a question.

Questioned.

Of course just questioned, asked.

And then if someone is responding to a question, answered, or replied.

Which one do you think we should use for our writing? Okay, I like your thinking.

Let's put it in.

"What do you want with me?" asked Scrooge.

Nice.

Okay.

Now we're looking great.

Yeah? All done? Happy? Thumbs up? Okay.

Let's move up.

Oh, oh dear.

Sorry guys.

I've just realised.

Asked is a verb.

It's a doing word, is something you do.

You ask someone.

Scrooge has asked the ghost.

And what do we know that verbs need? What do we know that verbs need? Adverbs.

Exactly.

So our adverb will go at the end of our speech sentence to say how Scrooge asked.

I've got a few examples here.

What do you think? "What do you want with me?" asked Scrooge happily.

Was he happy? Don't think so.

When the ghost was approaching him, no.

How about this one? "What do you want with me?" asked Scrooge lovingly.

Was his heart full of love towards the ghost? No.

"What do you want with me?" asked Scrooge confidently.

But he wasn't confident.

No, none of these work.

Do you have any suggestions? Any adverbs you think I could use? If you do, can you pause the lesson and write them down on your piece of paper? 'Cause remember an adverb describes a verb and we are describing the verb, asked.

Now, here are some adverbs that we've already generated previously in our other lessons, nervously, anxiously, cautiously, apprehensively, hesitantly and desperately.

Fantastic adverbs, well-suited to the buildup of A Christmas Carol.

Which one do you think we should use? Good idea.

Okay.

Let's put it in.

"What do you want with me?" asked Scrooge desperately.

'cause he is so desperate, isn't he? He's desperate for the ghost to give him answers as to why the ghost is here.

He's desperate for the ghost to go away.

Works very well.

Good thinking.

Okay.

Let's use a writing speech checklist just to mark our work.

If you have got your sentence down in front of you then you can tick each of these off as you go.

Okay, number one, opening speech marks.

Yes, there they are.

Capital letter at the start of your speech.

I've done mine.

Have you done yours? Written the speech? Yep, I've written my speech in, I've used a comma, a question mark or an exclamation mark at the end of my speech, I have.

Closing speech marks, my 99.

There it is, yeah.

A synonym for said, I definitely didn't use said, I've used asked instead.

Said who is speaking.

I've gone for Scrooge.

An adverb to say how they said it.

Desperately, yes.

And end your sentence with a full stop.

Remember this is still a sentence.

It needs a full stop.

I've done that.

Good job, me and good job, you guys.

Okay.

Have a go at writing speech for what the ghost said back to Scrooge.

So, we've written what Scrooge said to the ghost.

Can you have a go now out writing what the ghost said back to Scrooge? Here is your writing speech checklist, your speech sandwich and what the ghost said.

Can you have a go at writing his speech now? Okay.

Let's see if you managed to write his speech correctly.

There's my opening speech marks, my capital letter M at the start of much I've written then my speech, which was just the word much.

I've used my punctuation.

I went for an exclamation mark here.

I've closed my speech with my closing speech marks, my 99, a synonym for said, I have used replied.

I wonder if any of you used that too? I've said who was speaking, the ghost.

And then my adverb, I went for ominously.

I love the adverb, ominously.

Ominous means when someone is giving the impression that something bad might be about to happen.

And it goes the way he says much, certainly feels very ominous.

He wants Scrooge to know that something bad is around the corner.

He wants much from him.

And then of course I've ended my sentence with a full stop.

Okay.

Let's look at how to write a conversation then.

Because if you're writing a scene like The Buildup, there's more than one person talking.

So how do you write a conversation? Can you work it out by looking at my example here? What's the rule then for writing a conversation? Have a look at my example, can you spot it? "Good morning everyone!" exclaimed Mr. Brown happily.

"Good morning," replied the class cheerfully.

But what's the rule for when you're writing a conversation? Let me give you a clue.

Oh, of course.

What do you notice is happening on that line? That second line, what's happening? There is a huge empty line.

I have written the word happily, and then instead of just carrying on my line, like I normally would, I've left the whole rest of the line blank and gone to a new line.

And the reason I've done that is because when you are writing a conversation between two or more characters, you need to remember, new speaker, new lines.

Say that with me.

New speaker, new line, it's so important.

One more time.

New speaker, new line.

When a speaker has finished talking and you're going to move on to a new character speaking, you must jump to the start of a new line for that character's speech.

Now you might be lucky and it might end naturally at the end of a line.

And then you just jump down to the new line.

But if you don't, like me, you have to leave the rest of that line and jump to a new line for a new speaker.

Okay.

Let's have a go at putting all this knowledge together, all this learning you've done today and write the conversation between Scrooge and the ghost.

Remember Scrooge just says, what do you want with me and the ghost says much.

We've had a go at writing both of those, but remember new speaker, new line.

Pause the lesson.

You've got your writing speech checklist, your speech sandwich, your new speaker, new line prompt.

I think you're going to be able to smash this, go for it.

Okay.

Let's see if yours matched mine.

"What do you want with me?" asked Scrooge desperately.

And then I've put my full stop.

I've left a line or left the rest of that line and I've moved to a new line, "Much!" replied the ghost ominously.

If you managed to write similar to mine, it doesn't matter if you've changed, you've chosen different synonyms for said, different adverbs.

But if you've managed to leave a line, if you needed to, that is fantastic work.

Well done.

Okay.

So we've looked at why we should include speech to add detail to our writing, to add variety to our writing.

We've looked at how we write speech using our speech sandwich to help us.

And then we've had a go at writing a conversation.

I am so proud of the learning that you have done in today's lesson.

Really really, really, great work.

Keep it up and I'll see you next time.