Dictation is a bit controversial activity in CLT because it is not very creative but it has some advantages, too.

Pedagogical ideas on the use of dictation in class

Dictation is considered to be a demanding type of language exercise since it presupposes

• not only listening and writing skills
• but also knowledge of vocabulary (how the words are pronounced and written),
• and knowledge of grammatical structures (how and in which order they appear in a sentence) 

Research shows that dictation is a fairly reliable way to test a student’s proficiency level. I have personally found this to be true and therefore I always have a couple of sentences dictated in my comprehensive school exams. Dictation also trains the ear for the target language and is a natural stepping stone for real creative writing skills.

Dictation is a good way to get the skill of writing going with words, phrases or full sentences. But it is not a very common activity in real-life situations. It is maybe most commonly used on the phone when someone calls us and we have to write down addresses, shopping lists, directions to a place or names (spelled to us letter by letter,) for example.

Thus pair work on the phone might be more recommendable and motivating  than teacher-run dictations. In other words, it does not have to be the teacher who dictates the sentences but it can be a student too.

Nevertheless, I think the most compelling reason to keep up dictation is that it is practice for ‘note taking’ which is most useful in lessons, university lectures, meetings or conferences. Therefore I recommend ordinary dictation in the elementary and comprehensive classes only. In the senior high note-taking while watching a documentary video or listening to some recording is much more useful.

How to overcome the disadvantages of dictation?

There is no denying that there are some issues to think about when we deal with dictation. Teachers often give up dictation altogether for three reasons:

1. Firstly, dictation may be very time-consuming if the sentences are long and everything is read at least twice.
2. Secondly, checking and correcting the answers is often desperately slow.    
3. Thirdly, weaker students easily get frustrated with dictation because their inability to cope with the task becomes so visible and obvious.

Solution to problems 1 and 2: The teacher reads the (short) sentence once and after a minor pause reads the sentence again (in shorter parts) and at the same time starts to reveal the correct answer on the blackboard or screen allowing the weaker ones to copy the sentence in their notebooks. Encourage the good students not to ‘peek the answers’.

So, the good pupils write without looking at the screen and the weak ones are allowed to copy the sentences from the screen. By the end of the dictation everyone will have checked their own work and no time is wasted on strenuous checking. There is no need to check the success at this stage but it can be part of the pupils’ self-evaluation. I just walk through the class to see the writing was done. The whole activity is over in less than 5 minutes .  

Solution to problem 3: Being permitted to ‘copy’ from the screen is a big relief for weaker students. Another way is to give them a version of the dictation sentences where only some words are missing. Naturally, the dictation has to be based on vocabulary and structures that have been gone through in class. If the students are working in pairs, they can dictate their pair words or sentences from the previous chapter and check them while the other one is writing.

It is perfectly justifiable to use dictation every now and then due to pedagogical reasons but also to bring some variation to the lessons.

My favourite dictation tasks

In elementary classes

bank a park work near she drive in a lorry because to works morning doctors my mum they to hospital this drives my the new dad work often week

All the words needed in the dictation are on the screen. There are some extra words in the box. ‘My dad drives a new lorry this week.’ etc

Black hole dictation

This is an interesting version of a gap exercise. The simplest way is to take a copy of the textbook page and blacken some words or phrases and then show the blackened text to the students who have to write the missing parts in their note books. The task is easier if you give the first letter/s. The task gets more demanding if the students have to  fill in other words than the ones in the original text.

‘Phone’ dictation

The students sit back to back, so that they don’t look the other one in the eye. The students are given a shopping list or a list of tasks/chores to be done at home, school or in the town. They ‘call’ the partner and ask them to do the things for them. They have to use real telephone phrases and the partner has to write the chores down.

An even more communicative task: The speaker decides where the partner goes and what the chores are. No teacher’s guidance needed.

Go to the grocery store and buy milk, cheese and dark bread.

Go to the sport store: buy size 5 foorball, new socks for yourself and a birthday present for grandad

Go the the library and bring a book on gardening, feed the cats

An interactive A/B dictation

The dictation takes place after a chapter has been studied in class. Pupil A does not see the part of Pupil B until the whole dictation is over. Checking is done without the teacher’s help.

Read the full sentence to your partner who will write the missing words on the line. Take turns. (The original paper is folded and cut in two in the middle)

Pupil A	Pupil B
Jim does __________________ ________________ things every day.	Jim does many different things every day.
He sleeps for nine hours at night.	He _________________________ ___________________ at night.
He _________________________________ for six hours.	He goes to school by bus for six hours.
He does his homework for two hours after school.	He _____________________________ for two hours ______________ school.
He ____________________________ for about an hour.	He plays video games for about an hour.
He watches TV for an hour.	He ______________ TV _____________ hour.
He eats dinner for __________ _________________________________.	He eats dinner for one and a half hours.
He plays football until seven o’clock.	He ______________________________ ____________________.

For more advanced pupils and students one can move to longer sentences and use interactive forms of dictation where the students take care of reading the sentences for each other or other members of the group. And take care of checking as well.

It is a good idea to combine dictation with other types of activities such as listening and taking notes, for example.

Other types of writing tasks

Symbol	Meaning of the evaluation symbol
_______	underlining any kind of mistake
_ _ _ _	underlined part is ok, but not good language
>	wrong word order, move to the direction of the arrow
?	the meaning is very unclear ( ? in the margin)
+ or ++	good ( + in the margin or text), ++ excellent
/\	an arrow pointing upwards = something is missing (an article, preposition, word etc.) With some classes at least it might be a good idea for the teacher not correct all mistakes but make the students try to correct them so that the students are forced to think about the mistakes and the same mistakes will not be repeated.

With some classes at least it might be a good idea for the teacher not correct all mistakes but make the students try to correct them so that the students are forced to think about the mistakes and the same mistakes will not be repeated.