using dictation in the english classroom

Or even using dictation at home as an English learner...

Here are some websites which discuss the merits of using dictation:
Learning English - Discuss & Vote - Dictation
Methodology: using dictation in English language teaching | Onestopenglish
Using dictation | TeachingEnglish | British Council | BBC
Why dictations? Merits and variations of dictations in English language teaching | My English Pages

Here's a very nice list. Thank you Miguel:

• Dictogloss: Students work in cooperative groups to recreate a text that has been read aloud to the class.
• Running dictations:
  • Photocopy examples of the text. Pin the examples up on the walls.
  • Explain that each group or pair must choose one person to write down the dictated text.
  • Explain that the other members of the group will go and read the text on the wall, call them runners, if you like.
  • Runners remember as much as they can and dictate it to the scribe.
  • You continue like this until the group has written down the whole version of your text.
  • Monitor for excessive cheating and other naughtiness.
  • The group that finishes first is the winner.
• Teacher lead dictations
• Learner led dictations
• Shouting dictations
  • Get students to stand in two lines facing each other. The lines should be a good distance
    apart (at least 3 metres).
  • The person they face is their shouting dictation partner. One line has a text and the line facing them has a pen and paper.  You can easily adapt this to information gap type activities.
  • The noise of so many students speaking will lead to the raising of voices, hence “Shouting dictation”.
• Gapped dictations. Variations include:
  • Write a gapped version of the text on the board.
  • Ask the learners to take down only the words missing from the board.
  • In their texts they leave gaps that correspond to the words on the board.
  • Rub out the words on the board.
  • Ask the students to work in pairs and fill the gaps in their texts.
• Whistle-stop dictations are similar to Gapped Dictations.
• Half story (based on “Co-operative Open Dictation”, Davis and Rinvolucri, Dictations New Methods, New Possibilities, Cambridge University Press, 1988). With very low levels, ask them to write two or three words, rather than sentences. Though linguistically minimal, this gets them psychologically connected to the text and forces them to achieve reasonable comprehension of the dictated bits. Drawing dictation is a variation on this theme.
• “The teacher is a tape recorder” type dictations:
  • If necessary, pre-teach the verbs that label the control buttons on a tape recorder.
  • Tell the learners that they can control your (or another learners’) reading of the text by calling out “stop”, “play”, “rewind” and so on.
• Teachers can ask learners to write only particular words or types of words, such as:
  • the nouns
  • the verbs with third person “-s”
  • content words
  • function words
  • plural nouns
    • and so on…

Dictation | miguel bengoa elt

And here's another good list of activities. Thank you John:

1. Statements to Questions / Questions to Statements

Basically a grammar drill turned into a dictation: instead of simply giving the students the questions to ask their partner, you can always just dictate the questions to the students, then have them ask each other. Or, if you want to be fancy, this variation, where you dictate a sentence, and the students have to write the questions. E.g. Teacher: I have been to Spain. Students write: Have you been to Spain? Obviously, this activity works well when practicing form, as well as when setting up communicative activities.

2. Changing tenses / other aspects of language

Similar to the activity above, this time the teacher dictates a statement which the change into a different tense / aspect / other grammatical point (basically, into whatever language point you happen to be working with).

E.g. Teacher says: I work on Tuesdays.

Students write: I worked last Tuesday.

With an advanced class, I used this activity to practice negative inversions

Teacher: I’ve never eaten cheese this delicious before

Students write: Never have I eaten cheese this delicious before

3. Running Dictation (or Runner and Scribe)

An activity that I thought was totally awesome when I discovered it two weeks out of my initial teacher training course, then rediscovered when forced to teacher teenagers / younger learners. Basically, you just print out the text you want to dictate and stick it on the wall (far enough to be out of eyesight, really far if you want to be evil, the activity to drag on a bit, challenge the learners.

The runner literally runs over to the text, reads and remembers as much as he/she can, then runs back to the writer and dictates as much as he can remember.

This activity, for me, is valid even with older learners as it promotes the learners ability to ‘chunk’ language, and is a good way to introduce a text that you want to work with later in the class.

Variations: with larger classes (or when you have room / energetic students) you can move the text a good distance from the writer / scribe and have teams working relay fashion to deliver the text. If you fancy watching a group of learners running back and forth, you can find a video of a running dictation here.

4. Pair Dictations

Another nice way to introduce a text. This dictation involves the students working together to combine two-part texts into a single piece.

For example:

Student A has: This __________ ____________ the students ________________________ to combine two-part texts __________________.

Student B has: ________ dictation involves ________________ working together ________________________ into a single piece.

This does take a little bit of preparation, but it’s worth it.

Also, if working with Czech students, be sure to stress that they aren’t allowed to look at their partner’s paper.

5. Text Grab

Technically not a dictation, but does focus on many of the same skills. Below is the text I used to demonstrate this activity in a workshop:

A text grab is an easy way to ensure that the students remain focused and active during any listening activity and have a bit of fun in the process.

The procedure is simple: find a text of suitable length and difficultly for a group of studentsand make cards from the key words from the text.

Before reading the text, put the students into pairs or small groups and allow them to put the cards in alphabetical order. This will make finding the cards easier as they are listening.

Alternatively, as a pre-listening task, you could ask the students to predict the order that the words on the cards will appear in the text.

As you read the text, the students grab the cards as they hear them; the winner is the student who grabs the most cards.

I think we can agree that this is an enjoyable activity. It can be used on its own in order to revisit a listening that the students have heard before, to review vocabulary from a listening (for example you could make cards from all of theadjectives or verbs from a listening from a coursebook), or just as an opportunity for the students to practise and develop their listening skills.

As a possible extension, if you wanted the students to produce the text themselves, you could read the text again and have the students put the cards back into thecorrect order, then the students can use the cards to tell the text to each other in their groups.

From a teacher’s perspective, a text grab is easy to prepare, productive, and your students will find it fun.

This activity is particularly good for revising vocabulary or as an activity to use in order to go back a few units in a coursebook and redo a listening.

Although I haven’t used it this way this year, I was thinking this might also be a good way to introduce phrasal verbs of routine:

I’m a ‘morning person’
The alarm goes off at 7:00. I wake up, lean over and turn off the alarm. I get upquickly and go downstairs. I put on the coffee. I go back upstairs and have a shower. I sing a song in the shower. I put on my clothes. When I come downstairs again, I have my first cup of coffee. Mmmmm! Then I have some toast and a second cup of coffee. I wash my cup and tidy up the kitchen. I take my bag and set off to work. It is 8:00 am. I lock up the house before I go. Sometimes I run to catch the bus. I get on the bus and go for three or four stops. Then I get off the bus. I go into work and say “GOOD MORNING!” to my first class. It is 8:45am.

Taken from: www.onestopenglish.com

6. Dictogloss

This is absolutely one of my favorite ways of presenting grammar. I’d be safe to say that I’ve used it at least twice with each of my classes this year.

A dictogloss goes like this: instead of trying to write down every word, the learners take notes. Instead of reading the text slowly, in manageable chunks multiple times, the teacher reads the text at normal speed, only once or maybe twice.

The learners then work together with their notes to reconstruct the text, moving on to compare their ideas with another groups, and so on until they have a final completed version.

The text produced by the students is then compared with the original which can then be used for language work, getting the students to notice certain structures, phrases, etc.

I’d highly recommend picking up a copy of Waynryb’s Grammar Dictation. To introduce a language point in an engaging and student-centered way, all you need is to grab this book, and walk into class.

Also, there’s a video here showing the presentation stage of a dictolgloss.

7. Half the story

more of a framework for writing than a dictation, but still worked quite well.

The teacher dictates pieces of a story, and, instead of writing what the teacher has said, the students continue the story themselves when the teacher pauses.

E.g. Tom and Mark wanted to go to their favorite restaurant for a meal. When they arrived, the restaurant was closed. Tom turned to Mark and said…

and the students write a few lines of the conversation, and the teacher reads the next part of the story.

8. Writing the number of total letters and the number of silent letters (taken from Davis & Rinvolucri)

In this variation, the teacher dictates a number of words. Instead of writing the words, the students write the total number of letters in the words as well as the number of silent letters.

Naturally, this activity is aimed at lower levels, but I suppose it could be used with higher levels as well (though I haven’t tried this yet).

9. Putting the story in order

This activity worked quite well in a review / introduction to cohesive devices and let towards the students producing their own writings.

In one of my later classes, I gave each student one line of a story. The students mingled, reading each other their lines (again, with Czechs you have to make sure that they know it’s forbidden to show or look the others’ pieces of paper) and working together to put the story in order.

Following this, you can have the students dictate the story to you (and you write it on the board) or have the students write the story on the board themselves.

10. A normal, old-fashioned dictation

What it says. I dictated the first paragraph of an article we were going to read in class, and after comparing and checking for spelling accuracy, etc. We used the dictated text to make predictions about the rest of the article. In short, the dictation, although conventional, was integrated in with the rest of the lesson.

10 Dictation Variations that I’ve used this year
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