Language & Audience

14 December 2009

This lesson looks at the importance of ensuring your language is relevant to your audience.  Playwrite Maurice Bessman talks about how he worked with young people to ensure the language used in his play, 'Terriers' reflected the real language on the streets.

The group will discuss the importance of making language relevant and will then have the opportunity to write their own scene, using street language, based on a scenario given in the lesson plan.

The following resources are attached to support your discussion:-

• Lesson Plan - Language & Audience
• Audio - Maurice Bessman talks about the writing of 'Terriers'
• Questions for discussion (for use with the above audio)

There is also an extract from the play 'Terriers', below, that you can use to introduce the scriptwriting exercise.  If you are unable to view this in the classroom a copy of the script is attached.  You could use this for a role play instead!