The other day, I mentioned in passing to a group of teachers that I had done a dictation in the classroom. This produced cries of horror – “I can’t believe you did a dictation; that’s so 1950s!”, “Don’t you get your students to actually use language?” was the general idea. It got me thinking about this language learning activity… is it old-fashioned? Or is it still useful for language learning?
Attitudes to Dictation
All the way back in 1988, Davies and Rinvolucri talked about attitudes towards dictation and how it was considered a “reprehensible and old-fashioned” method (1988, p. 1). They go on in their book Dictation: New Methods, New Possibilities to explain how it can be used in a progressive and communicative classroom. More recently, Nation and Newton (2009) talk about how old-fashioned activities such as dictation can continue to make a positive contribution to language learning, provided they are used in a considered manner with the right focus and they are allocated a suitable amount of time in the lesson (i.e. not the whole class!). But what benefits can students get from dictation?
Benefits of dictation
Here are some of the benefits of using dictation in the EFL classroom:
- They make learners focus on the language form and provide teachers with feedback about the accuracy of their perceptions. If the text contains lots of present perfect constructions and the students aren’t writing down the have or has part, perhaps they need some work on this tense?
- It provides students with feedback about their language perception and they become more aware of the mistakes they are making. Increased awareness and noticing of the gap between their language use and target language use is a step in the learning process.
- Dictations can help students to learn unfamiliar language. They hold the language in their short-term memory and then write it down, and this memorisation and repetition process helps with learning.
- Dictation can be a springboard for oral communication. Choose an interesting text and then the students can talk about It afterwards.
- Related to this, dictation Is a truly integrative activity. The students listen, write down what they hear, read it to check it over, and then talk about what they have heard/written/read afterwards.
- In addition, in terms of practicalities, dictation can be used with small and large groups, with homogeneous and mixed level groups, it can calm and quieten learners down, and it’s easy to prepare. All good for the busy teacher J
But what is dictation and how can we use it?
What is dictation?
The traditional version that you might still associate with dictation is that the teacher reads a text of about 100 to 150 words all the way through. S/he reads it again, pausing after every three to seven words so that the students can write it down, then reads it for the third time, pausing at the end of every sentence. The students then check their version against the correct version. You can still do this (and many teachers do), but here are some variations to mix it up a bit:
Variations
- Choose a text that exemplifies the language point you want to practise. Give the students the text to read first and ask them to concentrate on this language point. Then take away the text and do the dictation. This has the advantage of focusing students’ minds on what they should be listening for and making them aware of the focus.
- Running dictation – print the text out and stick it on the wall at the far end of the room. Students work in pairs. One is the runner and they have to memorise short parts of the text and run to their partner to tell them, who then writes it down. The winning pair is the one who has it completed correctly first. You can also add a third person to the group – one person reads and runs to the second person, tells them what they have memorised and they then run to the writer.
- Peer dictation – the students work in groups and one member is the ‘reader’ and the others are ‘writers’. The writers can ask the reader to repeat and spell words. The first group to finish are the winners.
- Sentence by sentence dictation – each sentence is corrected before dictating the next sentence. This is so that students can see their errors and learn from them before continuing.
- Repeated dictation – after correcting the dictation, the students look at their mistakes and then repeat the activity, perhaps the next class. The idea is that they don’t repeat the same mistakes and learn from the activity.
- Dictagloss – this is not strictly dictation, but is related. The students listen to a text twice at normal speed. They take notes as they listen then work in pairs to try and reconstruct the text as close to the original as they can. They can then compare with other pairs and make changes and then finally compare with the original to see what language they weren’t able to reproduce. This can lead to the students noticing the gap in their language.
So… is dictation still useful and relevant in today’s language classroom? I would say, definitely yes! Just mix it up and do different versions depending on what the focus of the class is. And choose interesting texts that can be discussed afterwards. Very communicative!
What do you think? Do you use dictations? Let us know how and why in the comments below.
References
Davies, P., & Rinvolucri, M. (1988). Dictation: New methods, new possibilities. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
Nation, I.S.P., & Newton, J. (2009). Teaching ESL/EFL Listening and Speaking. London: Routledge.