Day 3-Yashinsky - Speaking Story-Pgs. 94 - 106

Today's Class provided me a strong foundation to build upon Yashinsky's 'Speaking Stories' chapter. Yashinsky begins by stating that stories are told for different purposes in a wide and varied range of settings: teachers, public speakers, doctors, therapists, social activists, and professional tellers all use storytelling to meet their purpose.



He also points out that storytelling is growing in the less formal level of daily conversation, family lore and oral history of local communities. A perfect example was the exercises we did this morning with the made-up word story game and the mask as personality regimen. The stories that the word exercise triggered and the change in my listener reception of the stories in the mask exercise were invigorating. As Yashinsky says -Regardless of your mother tongue every human speaks.'

Here are the Yashinsky observations that harrowed my story mind in the Speaking Stories' chapter:

1. Page 95-96-97: Storyteller's lives are "... inseparably interwoven with the myths they inherited and kept alive." and, "...When I teach storytelling workshops, we begin by exploring the students oral heritage" My understanding now is that I must seek the oral heritage I grew up with and document the proverbs and experiences for future telling.
2. Page 98-99: "Nursery rhymes are another essential heritage in learning to speak Story." I now know that I must spend much time in 398.2 to learn to "sing on my tongue as we did in class today. Also, as Yashinsky said, "They also evoke countless hidden and untold stories." I have seen this in action with 'Three Little Pigs'.
3. Page 101: Yashinsky's narrative regarding his love for and knowledge gained from the mythological Hodja Nasrudin has shown me that centuries old stories have been "...an antidote to bullies, dogmas, authorities, pretension, social class."
4. Page 102-103 Old stories from sources, such as the Grimm's brothers interconnect with tradition and connects the listen with the story because they feel that it is their story. As Yashinsky says: "...the stories we retell are background narrative.
5. Page 105: For a neophyte teller the last paragraph of the Speaking Stories chapter shed the greatest light: "As you develop your storytelling repertoire, it is important to realize that you are building on a foundation that you started creating in childhood. Each story you learn will hold a new quality, depth, and fluency to a second language you begin to master when you played peek-a-boo."