1. Listening Comprehension Topic: Identifying Aspects of Voice a writer’s use of words and ideas that make a narrator seem believable Voice

2. Listening Comprehension Topic: Identifying Aspects of Voice Hmmmmm…I think I’ll make my narrator a five- year-old boy… A narrator’s voice may be very different from the way the writer would write when she is “being herself.”

3. Listening Comprehension Topic: Identifying Aspects of Voice “I am callin’ to see if y’all wont to buy a magazine subscription.” Where might a caller who talks likes this be from?

4. Listening Comprehension Topic: Identifying Aspects of Voice “Um cauling ta see if youse guys wanna boy a magazine subscription.”

5. Listening Comprehension Topic: Identifying Aspects of Voice “Like, um calling to see if you would, like, ya know, if you like wanna buy a magazine subscription.”

6. Listening Comprehension Topic: Identifying Aspects of Voice Writers give their narrators realistic voices by: having them use accents and dialects, ways of speaking that are common to certain groups of people picking vocabulary words that sound realistic Ouch! I’ve hurt myself! Waaaa! I got a booboo!

7. Listening Comprehension Topic: Identifying Aspects of Voice Writers give their narrators realistic voices by arranging words in sentences in ways that are realistic for the narrators. Do you want me to go to the store? versus Do you want I should go to the store?

8. Listening Comprehension Topic: Identifying Aspects of Voice They also do it by using grammar that matches their narrators’ background. Please don’t put any onions on my hot dog. versus Don’t put no onions on my hot dog.

9. Listening Comprehension Topic: Identifying Aspects of Voice Writers give their narrators realistic voices by making sure that what they say and do fits their knowledge or understanding due to age or education.

10. Listening Comprehension Topic: Identifying Aspects of Voice A Few Tips to Add to Your Understanding of VOICE Imagine you are the writer! Your teacher asks you to write a story but to pretend that the person telling the story is a five year old. You would have to write in the voice of a five year old. Now think of yourself as the reader. When reading fiction, “listen” to the narrators’ voices. The words they use, the way they use them, and how they see events around them should match their age, where they live, and their levels of education.

11. Listening Comprehension Topic: Identifying Aspects of Voice

12. Listening Comprehension Topic: Identifying Aspects of Voice As you listen to Pink and Say, make a “mind movie,” and ask yourself if the narrator’s voice is realistic, given who he is, where he lives, and how much education he probably has.

13. Listening Comprehension Topic: Identifying Aspects of Voice Accents and Dialects The narrator doesn’t pronounce the Gs in “ing” endings (bein’, collapsin’, rockin’). Vocabulary Fever-dreamin’ “I do remember being carried for a powerful long way.” Vittles Spectacles Afeared

14. Listening Comprehension Topic: Identifying Aspects of Voice Using Grammar that Matches the Narrator “I was hurt real bad” “fever must have took me good” “…I ain’t no Yankee.” “It were the first time in months my vittles didn’t have any mealy worms in it.” Knowledge or Understanding Due to Age or Education “Being just a lad, I was wishin’ I was home.” “Master Aylee showed him how paper talks.”

15. Listening Comprehension Topic: Identifying Aspects of Voice Be alert to the author’s use of voice in the book we are reading. Does the narrator’s voice sound realistic?