Page 165 - Lavender-B-8

Time to speak

Get into pairs. One of you will pick a word from the grid and the other will form

grammatically correct questions related to the word. For example, for the answer
‘midnight’, the question could be, ‘Who visited Scrooge at midnight?’.

Character Time Place General

Ebenezer Scrooge Christmas Eve Scrooge’s home humbug

Bob Cratchit 1 a.m. Bob Cratchit’s home partner

Jacob Marley 2 a.m. graveyard Christmas party

Time to write

A dialogue means conversation between two or more people. Dialogue writing is a way to
improve communication skills and express oneself better. Writers use dialogues while writing

stories and dramas. Dialogues help us to understand who the speaker is, what they are conveying,
how they are conveying. Dialogues also help us to understand the view point of the characters.

Let us understand the format of dialogue writing.
• In a play, a colon is usually used to denote each character’s dialogue. For example,

♦ 3rd spirit: I’m the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come.

• In a short story or novel, verbs like, said, asked, told, shouted, whispered, are used. And
quotation marks are used to separate the words of the speaker from the rest of the words.
For example,
♦ Scrooge said, ‘I want to be a better person.’

• The dialogue of each character begins from a new line. For example,

♦ Scrooge exclaimed, ‘Oh, they are a wonderful family. I am so alone.’
2nd spirit said, ‘He is very ill, but the family has no money for medicine!’

Imagine Scrooge goes to Cratchit’s home and spends Christmas with Cratchit and his
family. Write the dialogue for each character.
You may begin like this:

Scrooge: Hello, Cratchit!

Cratchit: Hello, Mr Scrooge! Merry Christmas to you!

Scrooge: Merry Christmas to you too!
Cratchit: Mr Scrooge! Why don’t ?

165