Une fois passés la douane et le contrôle des passeports, je suis en route pour ma destination finale. Sorti de l’ascenseur, je me rends compte que j’ai oublié ma valise à roulettes. Je me retourne pour la récupérer mais les portes de l’ascenseur se sont déjà refermées et l’ascenseur est reparti avec ma valise à roulettes dedans. Je me retrouve sans valise et sans moyen d’élévation, abandonné par une valise emportée par l’ascenseur. Où peut-elle bien être? Où peuvent-ils bien être tous les deux?

I’m through Customs and Passports and on my way to my final destination. I walk out of the lift and realize I’ve left my suitcase behind. I turn round to get it but the lift doors have already closed and the lift has gone. I freeze as the emptiness sets in. The lift has gone, my bag in it. I’m bagless and liftless. Where has it gone I wonder? Where have they both gone?

I learnt to read at school. At first, that meant reading out loud while somebody listened. It was a public experience. This oralizing from words on a page felt strange but exciting, as if something was passing through me from the page to the sounds I uttered. It was like being part of something new. Although the ultimate goal would be to read silently, Mr Harding, a primary school teacher, reminded us that we could still sometimes break that rule.

A street level encounter with primary orality All sound is inherently powerful. If a hunter kills a lion he can see it, touch it, feel it and smell it. But if he hears a lion, he must act fast, because the sound of the lion signals its presence and its power. Speech is a form […]

Be nice to your turkey this Christmas Benjamin Zepahaniah (1958-2023), British Carribean dub poet, actor, recipient of no fewer than 16 honorary doctorates, professor of poetry and creative writing, left us yesterday. Already gone. But his work lives on. He encouraged people to read and he made people listen. He has always provoked surprise and […]

John Trudell John Trudell was an early member of and spokesman for the Native American rights movement and helped to promote a spoken word style that honors Native American oral traditions. POETRY FOUNDATION In a previous post, I mentioned Rébecca Kleinberger‘s work on the different voices we all have. She says that the voice with which we […]

Learning how to begin a story When we start a story, we send out a signal to indicate our presence, get people’s attention, and invite them to connect to something different which is about to start. Once upon a time – or its equivalent – is a widely accepted signal for starting a story. But a […]

Weaving, absorbing and telling a story This post considers issues raised when teachers become aware of their own voice and the way it sounds. It takes the example of when a teacher needs to tell a story to the class. Obviously, many of the observations will apply to any situation where you find yourself in […]

Close encounter with classroom storytelling We all know stories. But how can they come into classroom learning? When I first fell into teaching English as a Foreign Language (EFL) in 1981, John Morgan and Mario Rinvolucri were already developing their ideas on the use of storytelling for the language classroom. A chance encounter with Mario […]

Two tales of orality from Harlow market Markets are places of what Walter Ong called primary orality. Primary orality refers to thought and expression untouched by the culture of writing of print Walter Ong They are places where language takes root, grows and generally has a field-day because the situations in which we meet language […]