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Lesson 1 (from Preface and Chapter 1)

Objective

Authors use dialogue tags to note both who is speaking and to emphasis the manner in which a character is speaking. The objective of this lesson is to make student aware of the use of dialogue tags.

Lesson

1. For class discussion: Ask students to look over any specific section of the book and to take note of dialogue tags. Prompt a discussion of words such as "yelled" or "screamed" as opposed to depending entirely on "said."

2. For class work: Have students break into groups of three or four. Have each group come up with a list of twenty words or phrases that can be used as dialogue tags.

3. For homework: Have students write a short fictional story that depends almost entirely on dialogue. Point out that not all authors depend on dialogue to move the action but that it is an effective method.

4. For class discussion...

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