Dictation revisited

When the communicative movement began to take hold, particularly in the 1980s, dictation went out of fashion to a considerable degree in UK schools. Many teachers were already rejecting it as a classroom exercise since pupils often found it too hard and the results were often poor. Furthermore, as an activity it's hard to call it "communicative" in any way. Indeed, in many teaching contexts I would not personally recommend dictation, but in an MFL secondary setting, with assessment requirements in mind and very limited teaching time available, it makes sense as part of a varied diet of input-based, interactive and communicative practice, with form emphasis on listening and speaking.

Nowadays, transcription and dictation have made a return for a few reasons. First, it's increasingly clear that a secure grasp of phonics (sound-grapheme correspondences) and sound phonological memory are important for listening skill. (When we listen we need an accurate phonological representation of words an chunks in our minds to pick them out from the stream of sound.) Transcription and dictation help develop this skill. Second, we've always known that dictation was as much about spelling and grammar as about listening - that remains the case. Dictation leads to noticing correspondences between sound, spelling and morphological form.What's always been the case is that dictation gets pupils to listen and decode very carefully, providing an opportunity to recycle and retrieve previously practised language.

What about the problem of its difficulty? Well, perhaps much of the problem arose from careless implementation of dictation in the past. This can still be the case. If it comes too early in a teaching sequence (before plenty of receptive comprehensible input), or if it includes input which is not comprehensible, or if it's too detached from the previous practice of the language - all of these factors can lead pupils to transcribe poorly and achieve no satisfaction or learning gain from the task. If those issues are addressed, and in particular if dictation is pitched at the right level after a series of other exercises (e.g. based on a sentence builder frame, comprehensible text, practise at word and chunk level), then dictation can be a fruitful task. I would also add, from a very practical point of view, it's a time in a lesson where pupils work in a very calm, focused way, possibly after more obviously interactive tasks. It's a good settling activity. Not that dictation is a passive task. Far from it. It gets the brain working very hard.

But there are ways to make it more varied and enjoyable too. (In my experience, pupils actually rather liked dictation.) In Chapter 3 of our book Breaking the Sound Barrier: Teaching Language Learners How to Listen, we suggested a range of different approaches to dictation, some of which you may not have thought of. Here is the relevant section from the book:

Delayed dictation

1. Say a sentence that students are familiar with, or containing at least 95% comprehensible input, and tell them to 'hold it inside their heads'.
2. As they do this, make funny noises or utter random L2 words to distract them for a few seconds. (Or just have silence.)
3. Finally ask them to write the sentence on their mini-whiteboards and show you their answers.

Mad dictation

Select a text containing familiar sentence patterns or highly comprehensible input.

1. Tell students to listen to the text as you read it at near-natural speed and to note down key words.
2. Tell them to pair up with another student and compare the key words they noted. Tell them they are going to work with that person for the rest of the task.
3. Read the text a second time, reading some bits slowly, some fast and some at moderate pace. The purpose of these changes of speed is to deliberately get students to miss some of the words.
4. Students work again with their partner to reconstruct the text.
5. Read the text a final time, still varying the speed of delivery.
6. Give the students another chance to work with their partner.
7. They get 30 seconds to go around the tables and compare notes with other pairs.

Running dictation

1. Put the students in groups of four and name them 1, 2, 3 and 4.
2. Put up on the classroom walls, as far from where students are seated as possible, a sheet with the text for each group.
3. Students 1 and 2 take turns walking briskly to their designated sheet, memorising a sentence or more from the sheet, returning and repeating it to students 3 and 4 who transcribe what they hear. It is then the turn of students 3 and 4, etc. until the text has been written down.
4. Give students five minutes to proof-read the text.
5. Allow a minute to check anything they have doubts about by running to the designated sheet and relaying the information back to the rest of the group (students 1 and 2 first, then 3 and 4).

Tip: you may prefer to just play this game in pairs.

Scaffolded dictation

Students often find traditional teacher-led dictation difficult, but you can be scaffold the activity in various ways:

1. Supply the first letter of each word. This simple variation adds a further puzzle-solving element students may appreciate.
2. Supply all consonants, but no vowels, or vice versa. This resembles activities described above.
3. Provide a gapped version omitting chosen grammatical points such as articles, verbs or prepositions. This helps develop students’ parsing skills when listening subsequently.
4. Provide a translation; give students a translation in L1 of the text you read. This allows them to focus on form (phonics) less than meaning, lightening the load on memory.

Paired gapped dictation

1. Students work with a partner (possibly back to back). Student A has a complete text, student B a version with gaps.
2. Student A reads to student B, a phrase at a time. Student B can ask for repetitions.
3. After a given time stop the activity and get the pairs to correct the dictation.

Group dictation

1. Students work in groups of four or five. Choose a more proficient student in each group to be the reader. Give that person a copy of a short comprehensible text, possibly with plenty of particular sound-spelling correspondences you wish to practise.
2. The reader carries out the dictation as a teacher would, reading a phrase at a time twice. The other students write their transcription.
3. After a given time display the correct transcription for all students to correct. The reader in each group can support the others, then another person can become the reader.

Grading dictation

1. Dictate a number of personalised sentences of the type I get up at 6 o’clock.
2. Students transcribe the sentence, adding an adverb of frequency to evaluate the statement, e.g. never, occasionally, sometimes, often and always.
3. Display the sentences and ask students how they graded the statements.

False facts dictation

1. Dictate some sentences, each one containing a false fact. The sentences could relate to general knowledge or something recently studied in class.
2. Students transcribe and try to underline where they think the error is.
3. Display the sentences and ask students what the factual problem was in each case.