Get your pens out
When I was at school dictation meant learning a passage or list of vocabulary at home in preparation for a test the next day. The teacher read out the text or list piece by piece, pausing for us to write what we heard. Our scripts were taken in and marked. A point from a total of 20 was taken off for every mistake in spelling, punctuation or missed out word. If you had over twenty mistakes you got a minus score – which meant a student who wrote nothing could score higher than one with a lot of mistakes!
Traditional Dictation
What was the point of this? To develop writing and listening skills? Well, as you’d had the chance to learn it by heart, you could have reproduced it in class without the teacher actually saying anything. If it was to cement particular structures or vocabulary in our brains, isolated random paragraphs from the textbook or individual words may have been remembered for the test, but were unlikely to be retained for productive personalized use.
This sort of dictation is often dismissed as mechanical and mindless. I do see the point in spelling and punctuation tests; you do just have to learn a lot of words with their spellings individually, and it is good to learn word fields such as words and phrases associated with health, crime or sport for example. Dividing texts into short phrases which are read slowly to be written down is hardly a realistic activity though.
If you are going to give a prepared dictation, at least try to ensure the text is interesting. Younger learners in particular may appreciate “seen” dictations as the security of knowing exactly what you are going to be tested on is reassuring and they don’t question doing it. “Unseen” dictation, where you don’t know what the text or words are going to be is a more demanding task and I would argue of greater use.
A traditional method of giving dictation follows these steps:
1. Read the whole text once through at normal speed. Students just listen.
2. Read the text phrase by phrase slightly slower and clearer than normal saying each phrase twice and adding punctuation “full stop”, “comma” etc and allowing enough time for students to write it down.
3. Read the whole text through again at normal speed.
4. Give students time to check their work.
The texts can be swapped between students who mark them from the correct model you reveal on the board.
Text Reconstruction Dictation
An alternative method is firstly to tell students they will hear a text but will not be able to write the whole thing. After the first listening, they are to note down just as many key words as they can. They are not to worry about writing a complete text.
Procedure:
1. Read the whole text once through at normal speed. Students just listen.
2. Read the whole text again at normal speed with students noting the key words.
3. Have students in pairs compare their notes and attempt to reconstruct as much of the text as they can.
4. Repeat step 3. Pairs of students should be building up the text further.
5. Have one pair come up to the board and write what they have got. Suggestions for any gaps can be given by the rest of the class. Any grammatical or lexical errors can be discussed and corrected.
6. Compare the version on the board with the original that you read out.
The advantages of this alternative method are several:
1. The text is not unnaturally cut up or spoken at an unnaturally slow speed, so the intonation and stress patterns along with elisions and shortened forms in speech are preserved.
2. Students are listening for the overall meaning of the text at sentence level and above.
3. Students practice rapid note –taking skills.
4. Students collaborate to reconstruct the text.
5. Because they cannot and are not expected to write down every word as they listen, students are forced to access their knowledge of the language and think about the probable language that will fill the gaps in their notes. They cannot remember exactly what was said so they have to come to a consensus with their partner about for example, which structure or preposition to use. They are involved in creating the text.
6. They are focusing on meaning as well as accuracy.
Dictation can be used to reinforce or introduce particular structures or topics or to provide general language practice. You could dictate the first paragraph of a composition or story and have students continue it. The text can be anything you like: a poem, song, mini-story, anecdote or newspaper article.
Extra Ideas
Short gap-filler dictations can practice such items as minimal pairs – hat, hut, bat, but, cat, cut; numbers – 13, 30, 40, 14; or spellings of lexical group members – peas, potatoes, leeks, aubergines.
In partial dictations you dictate a sentence and students write an appropriate response.
Teacher: “You might have told me!” Student response: “But I didn’t know. / I lost your phone number. / Well, I will the next time.”
Students can also “play the teacher” and select texts that they dictate to you and the class.
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