Putting speech marks in their place

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Speech marks, also known as quotation marks and inverted commas, are used to show the exact words that were spoken, quotes within a quote and titles of books, poems and films.

Cartoon girl saying Call me speech marks or quotation marks but don't forget to use me!

Explore

Explore the CLI resource The Necklace1 to see direct speech used in narratives. Look at this annotated example from The Necklace to see how to use direct and indirect speech. Compare a section of Mr Walker (.pdf 89kB) written in direct and indirect speech and consider which version has the most impact on the reader.

Your tasks

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Complete the interactive task to check your understanding of using speech marks.

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Do a collaborative task to share your understanding of speech marks with your classmates.

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Don’t overuse direct speech.

Syllabus links | Feedback |Teaching notes (.doc 117kB)

Links

  1. http://lrrpublic.cli.det.nsw.edu.au/lrrSecure/Cli/Download.aspx?resID=5389&v=1&preview=true&target=PUBLIC