Dictation? - answering the question

To kick off the Over to You section, we have a query from someone out there, which we sent to a few gents for their opinions on the matter; the gents in question are: Simon Andrewes, President of GRETA; Sergio Pérez Marrero, President of TEA; David Hill, British Council, Istanbul; James Farmer, Australia; and Mario Rinvolucri, Pilgrims, UK.

Ladies, I’ll be after your opinions next time!

“Hello I am a student of English teacher and I am doing a project. This project is about dictations. The question is: Are dictations a good practice activity? I would be very pleased if you could give me your opinion about it. Thanks a lot." Silvia Seco.

Simon Andrewes, Granada:

Dictations are not only a good practice activity for intensive listening and writing accuracy, they can also be used as a warmer, for revision, to provide a change of pace and/or focus during the lesson, and even to present new language. They can also be used as a test of listening comprehension and written accuracy.

By their very nature they are more appropriate for individual learning activities, and they have been criticised by purists as not being communicative. They usually achieve a high level of individual concentration. They can be effective practice activities if used to consolidate, review, or revise language, to raise awareness, or to focus on a field of vocabulary, or on a structure. In other words, after a fluency session, when students have struggled to express what they want to say, they can draw attention to the language needed to say it well. (See the example I give below.)

Purists argue: how often do you do a dictation in real life? Well, writing down shopping and other kinds of lists, instructions or rules, maxims or witty sayings may all be real life-like dictation activities. But we should not let such considerations dictate (!) our classroom dictations. Many classroom activities are designed to prepare learners for communication, and are not at all “real communication” in the purists’ sense.

If a class has been involved in a boisterous communicative activity and the kids are all on a high, dictation calms them down. A dictation tends to be teacher centred, but maybe that’s what you want at this phase of your lesson.

However, dictations don’t have to be either teacher centred or calming individual activities. Activities can be set up in which the students have to dictate something in turn while their peers write it down.  Anyone who has done a running dictation race knows what fun they can be. Here, the text to be dictated is placed at the other end of the classroom and one student has to go and memorise a chunk and hurry back and dictate it to a team-mate.  The text may even be placed in another room, or, on special occasions, in another part of town (like pinned on a tree in the square in front of the school).

It’s best to keep dictations short and to the point. You may decide to announce to the class that you are going to do a dictation from a known text and ask them which part of the text they want you to dictate from. Give them time to study the section they have chosen. Then dictate part of it.  In this way, the students are more likely to remember and learn from any mistakes they make.

Dictations make good tests for diagnosis and/or feedback. When marking, I usually differentiate between comprehension mistakes and spelling or writing mistakes. You can’t always draw a clear line between the two, but it’s a useful technique nonetheless. It’s not unusual to find that one student has understood the passage quite well but has made a number of spelling or even grammar-related mistakes, while another’s mistakes are due to the fact that words or sounds have not been recognised correctly.

My most recently use of dictation was coupled with another recently taboo, “non-communicative” activity: translation. In the lesson, students learnt or revised vocabulary, mostly adjectives and set phrases (lexical chunks), related to the description of character. As a basis for the lesson, the typical character of those born under the Gemini star sign was used. A lot of the input was provided by the students and it was then practised in a personalised context. Then I dictated a description of the typical Gemini from an English source (off the “It’s Magazine” internet site). The dictation, coming after a more personalised and fluency based series of activities, helped the students to notice and internalise new language, and consolidate known and partly known items. We then compared  the English version with a similar one taken from a Spanish internet source, which the students finally translated. It was interesting to see how students made use of the new language from the dictation to achieve a less literal, more idiomatic translation  of the Spanish.

The important thing is for you as a teacher to experiment with dictation techniques until you find those that work and you feel comfortable with, with your class. Don’t be influenced by categorical points of view, be they in favour of dictation or against. The same applies, of course, to all aspects of teaching. There are no general good or bad activities, right or wrong ways of doing things. Everything is particular. Ask yourself: Is this good or bad, right or wrong, for me and my class, here and now? If you don’t believe in a classroom activity, it’s unlikely that your students will be convinced by it.

David Hill, Turkey:

Even the word "dictation" used to fill me with horror: Memories of a high-school French class, sitting in rows transcribing the uninspiring. As often as not, we were writing down texts which, even when the job was done, we could make neither head nor tail of. It was boring, repetitive, static, uncreative and uncommunicative. Consequently, in my first years as an English teacher, I avoided it like the plague.

But now I do "do" dictations in class: Why? Or, more importantly: What?

There can be so much more to dictation than "teacher reads, students write". To anyone who wishes to learn about the vast range of possibilities, I can only refer them to the book by Davis & Rinvolucri which is called "Dictation".

In the meantime, I'll just give a quick account of 2 dictation-related activities which many of you may be familiar with and which I frequently use in class, with both adults and young learners. ( For both of them, I should emphasise, clear instruction, (( or, even better, demonstration )), is absolutely vital.)

Dictagloss

1. Any pre-teaching and contextualising of the text-topic that you feel will be helpful.
2. Explain clearly that you will read at normal speed, and that students should not try to write down everything you say, word for word. Elicit which things they might note down in a lecture: Dates, names, places...nouns, verbs, adjectives. Not: prepositions, articles, auxiliaries...not the difficult bits, in fact.
3. Read the text and have the students take notes.
4. If necessary, read it again.
5. Students should by now have sufficient notes between them to reconstruct the text together. ( Point out that you do not expect their text to be exactly like the original; the same sense and tone will be enough.) In groups or pairs, have the students rewrite the text: This will involve negotiation, peer-teaching, and peer-correction about grammar, lexis, and spelling. Based on their notes, the students are, in effect, re-grammaticising the text. If the text has been well-chosen ( or written ) according to the students' interests, needs, and level ( understanding of recently input structures can be enriched well in this way ), the whole experience should be a valuable one in terms of listening, writing, drafting and revising, deepening understanding of structure, and co-operating with peers. ( Though Dictagloss can also work with one-to-one students, obviously without the co-operative element.)

Running Dictation

1. Again, any pre-teaching and contextualising of the text-topic that you feel will be helpful.
2. Divide the class into groups or pairs, each of which should have a text, ( the same text for all, or texts of equal length; the activity can be a good basis for a jigsaw reading or a sequencing activity ), stuck onto the wall at some distance from the group, ( far enough that it cannot be read from the desk ).
3. The activity takes the form of a relay-race, in which one team-member runs to the text, reads and remembers as much as possible, and returns to the group.
4. The runner then dictates as much as she / he can remember to another team-member ( the writer ), who copies it down. Other team members can act as checkers / correctors of grammar and spelling.
5. When the writing is done, the group-members change roles, and another runner continues.
6. The winners are usually the team who are finished first, although the teacher can draw attention to any errors in the finished text, and have the group correct it ( without running? ) while the others continue. The winner would be the first team with a correct text.

In this activity, students practise reading, writing, listening and speaking, as well as paying close attention to grammar, vocabulary, spelling, and punctuation. What more could we want in an activity. It's visual, aural, and kinaesthetic too! Two words of warning though: 1) It can be LOUD, and isn't recommended if another class are trying to do an exam next-door. 2) I once saw a teacher on a summer school do this activity down the length of a football pitch, with the texts on the goalposts at the far end. Yes, it was fun for everyone. Yes, it was hilarious to see a student forget the sentence and have to go back after running 180 metres. No, I don't think that this was the most educationally-sound way of doing it!

I hope these brief answers help. Dictation doesn't have to be teacher-centred, nor does it have to be the most boring thing on the planet.

James Farmer, Australia:

When it comes to dictation (and I think this may well be stealing straight from 'Dictation' by Rinvolucri & Davis, it's not what you dictate, it's *who* dictates, *how* they dictate and *why* they dictate. Dictation can be the worst and the best of activities (as can most!) and not just as a practice activity. Good dictation activities generate good comprehensible input & good comprehensible output, activities such as dictogloss, some cloze approaches, peer-dictation & the always-popular running dictations (as in 'The Never-ending Story' (in Dictation)).

Anyway, read 'Dictation' it's a great book and informs, as do all MR & PD books, you as a teacher and person as well as acting as a great resource for imaginative activities.

Mario Rinvolucri, UK:
DICTATION (Paul Davis and Mario Rinvolucri, Cambridge University Press) is well in print.... has been selling like hot cakes from CUP for nearly 15 years......I think it is a  very valid technique.. I would give it 2 hours on an inset TT (=teacher training)  45 hour course.

Atlantic Forum, Tenerife:

British children have been doing dictations for nnnnn years as it is a way of gelling spelling (and punctuation), which I guess nowadays would be considered as a way of combining auditory, kinaesthetic and visual elements. In the mind of the non-native
student, it can help to form the elusive link between the 'sound-shape' of English and the physical, written shape of English. Have you noticed how, for example, Spanish students will write down 'in the street' when you say 'industry' or 'festival' for 'first of all'? For this reason, I prefer the dictagloss 'variation' as this requires the students to focus on meaning, grammar et al as well as spelling etc. - it also helps them begin to
compensate for weak forms when listening to English, a skill which traditional dictations overlook.
Besides, any technique is valid, if used intelligently and not over-used; there are so many different individual learners that there's always someone who'll benefit! (And someone who won't..............).
In the area of discipline, dictation may give you a few minutes of relative peace, as students are required to listen 'more than usual', though some may just copy their neighbour afterwards; still, these students are unlikely to respond fantastically to any activities, however methodologically sound they may be.
Mario and Paul Davis' book is excellent - I have used it myself again and again, and my personal favourite is the TPR style activity The Coke Machine.
Check it out, and have a look at the rationale.

THAT’S ALL FOLKS!!!

And now, are you sitting comfortably…..?

forum@atlanticls.com

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