dictations

[maria1]

Are dictations a good practice activity?Why?

[Lorikeet]

For my students and my style of teaching, the answer is yes. I have done lots of different styles of dictation activities. Currently I'm doing the story dictation activity once a week in my high beginning/low intermediate class. First I spell some of the words--ones they may not know or that are hard to spell. I link the letters as I spell (see yay chay tee for "chat" for example--I don't know how else to explain it). After writing each word on the blackboard and having them repeat it, I read a 6 to 8 sentence story, hopefully with a punch line (well I try). I read it at normal conversational speed. Then I read each sentence three times at normal speed and they write. I give them a few minutes to look at their papers and compare with their neighbors' and then I read each sentence again at normal speed, crazy slow speed (leaving in the linking and reductions but at a much slower speed) and normal speed. Then we check together and I show them the linking and reductions which give them trouble. ("but he" sounding somewhat like "buddy" in American English, for example) After that, I give them a paper with the dictation written out on top, and they have to write some questions to go with the dictation. Sometimes I correct them in class, sometimes I give it as homework, and sometimes I use them to compile a list of grammar errors that they can fix the next day.

At lower levels I've done a lot of number dictations, sometimes in context and sometimes not, using phone numbers, addresses, money, etc. I

've done sentence dictations where I concentrate on some of the reasons our students have trouble understanding American English (see http://fog.ccsf.cc.ca.us/~lfried/activi ... ngexp.html for what I mean here)

I have also used dictations in which I've dictated questions, and after the questions were corrected, had the students ask them of each other.

So, yeah, I think it's an important way to help students learn to understand English, and can be used to introduce other activities as well.

Lorikeet

[surrealia]

These two excellent articles make a convincing argument for using dictation in the classroom:

http://www.onestopenglish.com/professio ... tation.htm

http://iteslj.org/Techniques/Alkire-Dictation.html

And here are some dictation activities for the classroom:

http://www.onestopenglish.com/professio ... nglish.htm

http://www.hltmag.co.uk/mar01/teach.htm

http://www.hltmag.co.uk/mar03/mart6.htm

http://www.hltmag.co.uk/jul01/less5.htm