dictations
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dictations
Are dictations a good practice activity? Why?
I use dictations a lot. I do them as a listening activity, to explain the way American English uses linking, reductions, etc. My students have always told me it has helped them understand spoken American English better. Depending on the class I've taught and the time available, I've used these variations:
1. Give the students a handout with a blank for part of a sentence, but a "hint" word in the right place. Dictate the sentence 3 times at regular (fast native-speaker) speed. Have the students check their work, alone and together, to see whether it looks like English and whether they can help each other. Then read each sentence three times again, fast, very slow with all the linkings still there, and then fast again. Check the sentences together, showing where the linkings, etc. occur.
2. Dictate a story using the same style as above. After the story has been corrected, have the students make 5 questions about the story. Then have them ask and answer the questions in pairs.
3. Dictate some questions that students can ask each other, using the method above. After checking it together, have the students use the questions as a beginning for a conversation with a partner.
Well, that's three of them anyway
. Say--if you are interested, I've just started a set of web exercises in "Listening to American English". I'm going to change the introduction eventually when I finish it, but right now I'm working on the lessons inside. It's in Flash. If anyone has any comments, let me know. http://fog.ccsf.cc.ca.us/~lfried/activi ... ngexp.html
1. Give the students a handout with a blank for part of a sentence, but a "hint" word in the right place. Dictate the sentence 3 times at regular (fast native-speaker) speed. Have the students check their work, alone and together, to see whether it looks like English and whether they can help each other. Then read each sentence three times again, fast, very slow with all the linkings still there, and then fast again. Check the sentences together, showing where the linkings, etc. occur.
2. Dictate a story using the same style as above. After the story has been corrected, have the students make 5 questions about the story. Then have them ask and answer the questions in pairs.
3. Dictate some questions that students can ask each other, using the method above. After checking it together, have the students use the questions as a beginning for a conversation with a partner.
Well, that's three of them anyway
. Say--if you are interested, I've just started a set of web exercises in "Listening to American English". I'm going to change the introduction eventually when I finish it, but right now I'm working on the lessons inside. It's in Flash. If anyone has any comments, let me know. http://fog.ccsf.cc.ca.us/~lfried/activi ... ngexp.html-
Sally Olsen
- Posts: 1322
- Joined: Thu Apr 08, 2004 2:24 pm
- Location: Canada,France, Brazil, Japan, Mongolia, Greenland, Canada, Mongolia, Ethiopia next
They do it here in Greenland for Greenlandic and Danish so I am trying to find out why. Anything that teachers do has a good reason and since they have done it for about a hundred years or more, it seems that it must be really good. The bright kids ask for it and like it.
There are many kinds of dictation. There is the kind that they have a story, usually of some Greenlandic historical figure and his/her adventures or accomplishments. They leave out every 5th or 6th word or the verbs or imporant vocabulary. They read it over twice and the kids fill in what they can hear and then they can look over it with a dictionary to check spelling.
They also have a paragraph of a great writer in Greenlandic that is just dictated straight and they must write all the words themselves.
I have seen where groups have done it together and help each other with the filling in the blanks as well and on that occassion the teacher read it really quickly so that different kids would get different parts of the dictation and they could contribute their part to the group. Lots of good discussion about what might go in the parts they all missed too.
We used to have spelling tests that were called "Dictations" and were just a list of words given with a sentence that you didn't have to write down but helped you distinguish "right" from "write".
There are various ways to correct the dictation-
Passing it back to the person two rows behind you for them to correct from a master and all doing it together.
The teacher correcting - waste of time for all.
The groups correcting as described above.
Have a master sheet for everyone and each student correcting themeselves.
I have tried to figure out the positives:
It is a kind of test and you can give a mark and you can use it as judge of students among many other things for the report cards.
It involves a lot of listening.
It takes a lot of the lesson to do.
It passes on the great writing of the past and the great stories.
The kids like to compare their marks.
They have a book of really nice writing and stories at the end of the year.
If it is done regularly they get better at it.
You can give them text beforehand to memorize and that can help the poorer one and gives the better ones a chance to memorize something which is important on their oral exams.
It helps them practice for their oral exams.
All the students are doing something at the same time together and are quiet because they want to hear each and every word.
It does require understanding to know which word to use and of course, you get funny renditions of things to report to humourous teacher columns when they make mistakes.
If you do it every two weeks as they do here, the kids know what is coming up for that class and are prepared.
The negatives in my view are:
It makes the kids scared to write on their own because they have only written down words of the "great writers" which is far above their normal level of writing.
Seeing all those red marks on their errors is really discouraging.
The teacher spends hours marking mistakes with red pencil and the kids don't look at the corrections.
They don't illustrate the stories.
The good kids are always good and the poor kids never get better. The poor kids just stay away that day of class.
There are kids who cheat and look at the papers of their neighbours. I don't think it is a good idea to let them cheat but what do you do when they are cheek by jowl in a small classroom? The other kids notice and often point it out and those kids get a bad reputation about something else.
I like a group to be doing something constructive when they have to do something together and no one mentioned the dicatations when I asked them to write about their favourite class this year.
I am bored to tears standing at the front of the class and reading it.
There are many kinds of dictation. There is the kind that they have a story, usually of some Greenlandic historical figure and his/her adventures or accomplishments. They leave out every 5th or 6th word or the verbs or imporant vocabulary. They read it over twice and the kids fill in what they can hear and then they can look over it with a dictionary to check spelling.
They also have a paragraph of a great writer in Greenlandic that is just dictated straight and they must write all the words themselves.
I have seen where groups have done it together and help each other with the filling in the blanks as well and on that occassion the teacher read it really quickly so that different kids would get different parts of the dictation and they could contribute their part to the group. Lots of good discussion about what might go in the parts they all missed too.
We used to have spelling tests that were called "Dictations" and were just a list of words given with a sentence that you didn't have to write down but helped you distinguish "right" from "write".
There are various ways to correct the dictation-
Passing it back to the person two rows behind you for them to correct from a master and all doing it together.
The teacher correcting - waste of time for all.
The groups correcting as described above.
Have a master sheet for everyone and each student correcting themeselves.
I have tried to figure out the positives:
It is a kind of test and you can give a mark and you can use it as judge of students among many other things for the report cards.
It involves a lot of listening.
It takes a lot of the lesson to do.
It passes on the great writing of the past and the great stories.
The kids like to compare their marks.
They have a book of really nice writing and stories at the end of the year.
If it is done regularly they get better at it.
You can give them text beforehand to memorize and that can help the poorer one and gives the better ones a chance to memorize something which is important on their oral exams.
It helps them practice for their oral exams.
All the students are doing something at the same time together and are quiet because they want to hear each and every word.
It does require understanding to know which word to use and of course, you get funny renditions of things to report to humourous teacher columns when they make mistakes.
If you do it every two weeks as they do here, the kids know what is coming up for that class and are prepared.
The negatives in my view are:
It makes the kids scared to write on their own because they have only written down words of the "great writers" which is far above their normal level of writing.
Seeing all those red marks on their errors is really discouraging.
The teacher spends hours marking mistakes with red pencil and the kids don't look at the corrections.
They don't illustrate the stories.
The good kids are always good and the poor kids never get better. The poor kids just stay away that day of class.
There are kids who cheat and look at the papers of their neighbours. I don't think it is a good idea to let them cheat but what do you do when they are cheek by jowl in a small classroom? The other kids notice and often point it out and those kids get a bad reputation about something else.
I like a group to be doing something constructive when they have to do something together and no one mentioned the dicatations when I asked them to write about their favourite class this year.
I am bored to tears standing at the front of the class and reading it.
If you're not afraid to try something unusual, Mario Rinvolucri has some very inventive dictation exercises here:
http://www.hltmag.co.uk/mar01/teach.htm
These are from Rinvolucri's Humanising Your Coursebook, an amazing book of ESL activities. Highly recommended!
http://www.hltmag.co.uk/mar01/teach.htm
These are from Rinvolucri's Humanising Your Coursebook, an amazing book of ESL activities. Highly recommended!
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Sally Olsen
- Posts: 1322
- Joined: Thu Apr 08, 2004 2:24 pm
- Location: Canada,France, Brazil, Japan, Mongolia, Greenland, Canada, Mongolia, Ethiopia next
Wow! Very interesting variations and insights into different cultures and their expectations. Is there a rational to dictations in the book or is he just varying them for different purposes as stated?
I guess I am wondering if we do dictations just because they have always been done or if, like most traditions, there was a good reason to start doing them?
Does it really help to have the activity isolated like this or is it better to have more natural situations where listening is necessary and vital such as listening to a taped letter from an pen pal? or listening to the news? etc.
I guess I am wondering if we do dictations just because they have always been done or if, like most traditions, there was a good reason to start doing them?
Does it really help to have the activity isolated like this or is it better to have more natural situations where listening is necessary and vital such as listening to a taped letter from an pen pal? or listening to the news? etc.
I think dictations are a great practice activity. I am, of course talking about the modern approaches to dictation (Rinvolucri`+ others), which can be highly entertaining and motivating for students. For an idea of the more traditional approaches and how students feel about them all you have to do is mention they're going to do a dictation and hear the cries of absolute despair. I think the thing to be avoided at all costs is for the teacher to read the dictation as in the more traditional scenario.
My all time favourite has to be the shouted dictation (Davis & Rinvolucri, I think), which can convert a normally passive class into a frenzied mob. Of course, the initial intention is that the students don't shout but the problem is that to be heard by their partner they have to raise their voices. The teacher, if feeling mischievous, can also add to the chaos by playing some loud music so that the students have to raise their voices even further. It practises reading, speaking, listening and pronunciation. The students are fully engaged in the activity and have fun doing it. Add a prize for the winners and you send them home feeling remarkably cheerful.
My all time favourite has to be the shouted dictation (Davis & Rinvolucri, I think), which can convert a normally passive class into a frenzied mob. Of course, the initial intention is that the students don't shout but the problem is that to be heard by their partner they have to raise their voices. The teacher, if feeling mischievous, can also add to the chaos by playing some loud music so that the students have to raise their voices even further. It practises reading, speaking, listening and pronunciation. The students are fully engaged in the activity and have fun doing it. Add a prize for the winners and you send them home feeling remarkably cheerful.
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Henry Teach
- Posts: 14
- Joined: Sat May 01, 2004 9:52 am
- Contact:
THere's a way to do it with songs:
Needs: For this activity you need the lyrics and the tape of a song. The lyrics should be of a suitable level for the class you want to use the activity with. (Note that many lyrics can be found on the Net at places such as the Lyrics Search Engine http://lyrics.astraweb.com/.) You should also choose a song which your class will probably not know.
Preparation: First copy out the lyrics, blanking out those words you want the students to find. It can help to blank out the last word in a line as these often rhyme with a previous final word.
Method: First get the students into groups. Give them photocopies of the blanked out lyrics and ask them to complete the song using words which they think sound good and make sense. Do not play them the song yet. Note that they do not have to come up with the exact word you have blanked out, but a word which they feel fits in well with the song.
Get feedback from the class.
Next, give the students a second copy of the blanked out lyrics. Play the song and allow the students to complete this second sheet. Then, with the class, go through each blanked word and decide the best choice to fill it, i.e. the original word from the song or perhaps a suggested word from one of the students. These can be completed on an OHP copy of the lyrics.
Finally, play the song again and invite discussion on the choice of a word or phrase in a particular place. This can also develop into a discussion on the meaning which the songwriter was trying to convey using one word over another.
Optional - on the computer: This activity is very easy to set up on the computer with a cloze testing program (such as WordFill - http://free-esl.com/all/call/software/d ... p?fIndex=8). Here, the lyrics to whole repertoires can be provided and MP3s of the songs set up with each PC to allow the students to work through them at their own pace.[/url]
Needs: For this activity you need the lyrics and the tape of a song. The lyrics should be of a suitable level for the class you want to use the activity with. (Note that many lyrics can be found on the Net at places such as the Lyrics Search Engine http://lyrics.astraweb.com/.) You should also choose a song which your class will probably not know.
Preparation: First copy out the lyrics, blanking out those words you want the students to find. It can help to blank out the last word in a line as these often rhyme with a previous final word.
Method: First get the students into groups. Give them photocopies of the blanked out lyrics and ask them to complete the song using words which they think sound good and make sense. Do not play them the song yet. Note that they do not have to come up with the exact word you have blanked out, but a word which they feel fits in well with the song.
Get feedback from the class.
Next, give the students a second copy of the blanked out lyrics. Play the song and allow the students to complete this second sheet. Then, with the class, go through each blanked word and decide the best choice to fill it, i.e. the original word from the song or perhaps a suggested word from one of the students. These can be completed on an OHP copy of the lyrics.
Finally, play the song again and invite discussion on the choice of a word or phrase in a particular place. This can also develop into a discussion on the meaning which the songwriter was trying to convey using one word over another.
Optional - on the computer: This activity is very easy to set up on the computer with a cloze testing program (such as WordFill - http://free-esl.com/all/call/software/d ... p?fIndex=8). Here, the lyrics to whole repertoires can be provided and MP3s of the songs set up with each PC to allow the students to work through them at their own pace.[/url]
Also, if you're short on time or the class is low level, I've had some luck giving my kids choices for the missing words, usually trying to use sounds the kids have problems hearing the difference between (for Japanese kids l/r, v/b etc.) I play the song a couple times and then we go over the answers.