Transcribe each other
Round the room in pairs. Each person says four sentences about their own life — two defining, two non-defining — and the other writes them down with commas.
Then compare. Where the punctuation does not match the meaning, the voice did not mark it.
Eight sentences. Match each to what it tells you about the world.
The page is not the argument
On the page
The effect is that the people who pay most are the ones who arrived most recently, which in these four streets means the people who earn least.
Out loud
So who actually pays? The people who arrived most recently. Not everybody — the ones who moved in after 2019. And in these four streets, and this is the part I would want checked, those are the people earning least.
Three questions comparing the two.
1. The spoken version says Not everybody explicitly. Why?
2. The spoken version opens with a question. What does that do?
3. and this is the part I would want checked — what is it replacing?
How speech does punctuation
Three conversions
| On the page | Out loud | Why |
|---|---|---|
| the people who pay most | the people who pay most — not everybody, the ones who… | Speech narrows in words, or not at all |
| , which nobody mentions, | and nobody mentions this, by the way — | The aside becomes an interruption |
| My mother, who is a nurse, … | Two breaks and a pitch drop on the clause | The only purely phonological option |
| A dense noun phrase | Unpacked into two or three short sentences | A listener cannot re-read a long subject |
Six moves. Put them into the order you will speak in — the written shape with one change.
The unit task, in three parts
Task card · Part one · Hand in · 4 minutes
Your clean opinion piece goes into your portfolio today.
A final check against five things, then hand it over.
- Six paragraphs, about 250 words, count at the bottom.
- Every clause that narrows has no commas; every clause that adds has two.
- No that inside commas, and no what after a noun.
- Paragraph four states the opposing case in terms its holders would sign.
- At least two numbers, and at least one noun phrase carrying three facts.
Task card · Part two · The discussion · 8 minutes per pair
A new partner who holds the position you are arguing against, or has been told to. Your page stays face down.
Four minutes arguing, four minutes on the other side.
- Open by stating their position and asking whether it is fair. Fix it if not.
- Narrow every objection — in words, or with the pitch drop, or both.
- At least one , which commenting on a whole statement, marked audibly.
- Concede one thing, give one number, and close on what would change your mind.
- Then swap sides and argue theirs.
Listener’s job — the third person in each group. Three columns:
1. Every relative clause, marked defining or non-defining from the voice alone.
2. Every place you could not tell which thing was meant.
3. The version of the opposing position, and whether the person who holds it accepted it.
Task card · Part three · The comparison · 5 minutes
You now have a marked written piece and a listener’s page from a spoken argument.
One sentence about the gap.
- Count the comma disagreements in the writing. Count column two on the listener’s page.
- They are almost never the same number. Which is higher?
- Look at column one: did your voice mark the difference at all, or did everything come out flat?
- Write one sentence: On paper I ___ ; out loud my clauses ___ , which leaves a listener ___ .
Closing the unit
Eight errors, one from each lesson. Fix each and name the lesson.
1. The teacher which taught me was strict.
2. Fernanda, that taught me for a year, left in 2011.
3. The man lives next door is a nurse.
4. a two-hours meeting
5. The people, who complain loudest, drive least. — only the complainers
6. It cost four million, what nobody mentions.
7. The colleague who her desk is next to mine is leaving.
8. the report that took a year on housing
One final paragraph. Zero to three words per gap; write - for a dropped pronoun.
The library opened in 1961, closes on Saturday afternoons from September. The people this affects are the ones work weekdays, is most of the people the building was put there for. The consultation the council ran lasted four weeks and closed in August, is either careless or convenient. And the librarian job it is to explain this was not asked either.
What this unit was about
Four questions covering the whole unit.
1. My sister who lives in Porto is a doctor. How many sisters?
2. What is the first test?
3. Where does a modifier longer than about three words go?
4. Which direction do comma errors run?
The unit in one line. In a relative clause the comma is not punctuation, it is a claim about how many of the thing there are — and because commas get placed where a pause would fall, the claim you make by accident is almost always there is only one.
Take the clause out first. Punctuate second. And out loud, narrow it in words or with your voice, because nothing else will.
Next unit. You have described things precisely. Next you decide between them — and meet the thirty verbs that each demand -ing or to for no reason anybody can give.
Keep the sentence you wrote in part three. The gap between what your punctuation marks and what your voice marks will come up again in every spoken assessment from here on.