Speaking and Writing-That's not how we do it!

I've spent hours and hours over the past couple of months transcribing audio recorded interviews with teachers.  It is tedious work and sometimes my mind wanders...though not for long as it's really not an activity that lends itself to multi-tasking.

I noticed that people do not speak in complete sentences, but rather in phrases.  Often, incomplete thoughts change mid-sentence.  We interject a whole lot of "uh"s, "um"s, and "you know"s.  Include lots of run-on sentences and forget about rules for punctuation completely.  Sometimes it is difficult to tell where one thought ends and the next begins.

When I was teaching children writing skills, I used to tell them to write down the words like they were telling me a story.  Boy, was that about the worst advice I have ever given.  How we speak and our expectations for formal writing, even storytelling, are worlds apart.  It's no wonder the task of writing is so difficult for students.  It's no wonder that we get short, simple, choppy sentences out of them!

I wonder what kind of a learning activity it would be to have students transcribe a short conversation?  I am guessing a multitude of mini lessons would follow!