Listen Wise. Monica Brady-Myerov
typed up stories from reporters calling in from the field. But one day, Mother Teresa, the Roman Catholic nun, now a saint, who worked with the poor came to Nairobi to meet with city officials to ask them to give her mission free municipal water. Reuters sent me to cover her visit to the Missionary of Charity Order in a heavily populated poor area of the city. Armed with my notebook only, because Reuters didn't have an audio service (or a podcast), I set out. Even though I didn't record Mother Teresa, I will never forget her calm, quiet, soothing voice amid the chaos of the noisy neighborhood. She was a petite woman, dressed as always in her white with blue-striped nun's habit. Physically she didn't command attention. But her sure, strong voice did.
After graduating, I returned to Nairobi, Kenya, this time as an audio journalist.
My time as a freelancer in Kenya was a launch pad into audio storytelling as I covered East Africa for Voice of America and other shortwave stations. It was during a tumultuous time in Kenya's history under a fairly new democratic government. Kenya was a British colony until it became fully independent in 1963. In 1982, the government amended the constitution, making Kenya officially a one-party state. By the time I arrived and started reporting in 1989, the government was cracking down on budding political opposition to the autocratic President Daniel arap Moi. The president had announced there would be multiparty elections but he and his government would not tolerate any criticism.
But dissent to Moi's repressive regime was rising in the poorer sections of Nairobi, especially in Kibera, the same neighborhood as Mother Teresa's mission. I knew it was my duty to hear it. I drove there with my recorder. I could hear shouting and banging nearby but didn't see anything. I was told police and rioters were clashing with opposition rioters using sticks and rocks just over the hill. I started interviewing people about their views on a multiparty democracy that didn't let the opposition make their voices heard. Suddenly a surge of people came over the hill, and surrounded my car. With my tape recorder running, I jumped back inside the car and locked the doors. The crowd was angry and violent.
I listened to the crowd get angrier around my car. And then I heard the first thud. Someone hit the car with a rock. It was time to leave. Carefully, but quickly, I drove through the crowd navigating around the people as the car was hit, pelted, and then slammed with rocks and sticks. The car was battered but I was unharmed and I had captured it all on my recorder.
What I learned is that audio requires you to be close to the action. When you are listening to audio, you are in the scene like the reporter, and that makes audio storytelling powerful. And its power can be used in your classroom.
Audio also allowed me to get very up close with gorillas. With my base in Nairobi, I covered all of East Africa reporting on events in Tanzania, Somalia, and Sudan. One of my goals was to see gorillas up close in the wild and tell their story with sound. Fueled by stories and images of Jane Goodall and her study of chimpanzees in the wild, I set off to document the sound of gorillas in what was then called Zaire, now the Democratic Republic of Congo.
I recorded our two-day trek as our guide used audio and physical clues to find the gorillas. He would see tree branches trampled in a certain way and shush our group so he could hear something inaudible to the rest of us. Silence on the hike was required. It was imperative that, when we discovered the family of silverback gorillas, we did not surprise them. The gorillas have a home area of about 12 square miles. They could have been anywhere as they roamed about looking for food.
With one gesture of his hand, our guide told us to stop and not move. Less than 20 feet away was a family of gorillas. I raised my mic to them, but we were too far away to capture anything more than general bird and forest sounds. So I crept closer. What struck me is how quiet the gorillas were. Aside from the occasional snort that sounded more like a pig or a horse, they silently munched on branches. I thought I would be capturing the sound of the gorillas in the natural habitat. When that sound was not distinctive, I learned an important lesson about audio journalism.
WRITING FOR LISTENING
Writing in an audio story is as critical as the sound. In the gorilla story, I used words to describe the scene, explain the silence, and enhance what audio I had. Simple, direct sentences work best in audio storytelling. Good writing for audio is active and succinct. Later, I would learn how critical this is for students to learn, too, as they develop their own writing skills. Audio journalism can teach them valuable lessons about active voice, descriptive writing, and perspective.
Now a word about video. At this point you might be thinking, what about a video clip of the gorillas or someone crying or shouting in anger? The next time you see an emotional scene on TV, mute the audio. What happens? You lose connection with the scene unfolding. Hearing stimulates emotions. Additionally, seeing a video can turn you into a bit of a lazy listener. For example, if you're shown a picture of a crying mother, you see her grief as only hers, rather than forming a mental picture of what she might look like using a composite of things familiar in your life. I explore in more detail how audio engages the mind later in the book.
When writing for audio, you can't rely on pictures to tell the story, you must use your words in the most descriptive way possible. Writing for broadcast involves using shorter, more active sentences. Newspaper or magazine writing often employs long complex sentences, but that does not work for audio. Writing for broadcast needs to take into account that you need to breathe while reading, creating natural pauses. People are usually doing another activity while listening, so I was often told to write at a fourth-grade level. At the time, I didn't know there existed reading measures such as the Lexile Framework for Reading, but I understood I needed to make my sentences short, declarative, and straightforward. Most people listen to a story, or a conversation, only once, often not giving it their full attention, and can't rewind to hear it again. It must be easy to understand the first time.
Class Activity: Writing Style—Audio versus Print
Middle/High School Students: To demonstrate the difference between writing for print and writing for audio, select a story that has been covered by the national press. If using an article on the internet, try to find one reprinted from the hard copy newspaper, not the abbreviated web version of the story. Now find the same topic covered on NPR. Select a student to read the first few paragraphs of the newspaper story out loud, then play the first minute of the NPR story, including the host introduction. Ask students to comment on the different writing style, vocabulary, and sentence structure. Discuss the facts covered in the section, but focus more on writing style than content.
Thrilled by the excitement of capturing audio and telling stories overseas, I left Kenya and moved to Rio de Janeiro, Brazil to continue working as a freelance radio journalist. Listening and recording people's stories in Portuguese was just as powerful as it was in English.
AUDIO AND LEARNING A LANGUAGE
In Brazil, I was plunged into Portuguese, which I studied in college, but really couldn't speak. Learning a new language gave me a new appreciation for listening. Listening is the first step to learning a new language. It is crucial to understanding. In a later chapter I share best practices for English learners and the impact listening skills can have on their acquisition of academic language.
What I first learned about really listening to someone else speaking a foreign language is that emotion is universally heard. I didn't need to understand every word or phrase to listen for anger, amazement, or love in someone's speech. It was conveyed in the tone of their voice, the pauses in the phrasing, and the speed of their speech. When I covered anticorruption rallies, the shouting protestors sounded frustrated, angry, and sometimes resigned. I understood emotions from watching Brazilian soap operas or “novelas.”
I didn't know it at the time, but I was learning an important lesson in how listening plays a role in language acquisition while watching Brazilian soap operas. The underlying requirement for anyone to learn to speak a language is to listen to that language. By day, speaking to friends or attending a press conference, the language was hard to follow, the subjects jumped around, and I couldn't always keep track of