Almost all of my adult ESL students appreciate and even enjoy dictations. Generally, I begin by typing numbered sentences. These could be taken from a one-paragraph reading or they may be unrelated sentences that utilize a recently-learned verb tense and/or vocabulary. Students must listen and fill in the blanks with the words they hear. With a multi-level class, I use the same dictation, but lower level students' sheets have fewer blanks to fill in. Higher level students will have more blanks, or they may choose to write the complete dictation on their own.
First I read the sentence at a slightly slower than normal speed. Then I repeat the sentence much more slowly stopping frequently to allow students to write and check their work. After the dicatation, I write the sentences on the board or--when I can get my hands on a projector--project the sentences on the wall. Students then correct their own work.
After the first one, the majority of students beg for more! I feel that this helps students in several ways. First, it forces students to listen carefully. They must hear and think about each word-- which verb, tense, ending, etc. Even the lower level students who have few words to write must READ and follow along. It helps higher level students practice already-learned verb tenses, vocabulary, and sentence constructions, and often exposes lower level learners to these for the first time.
Students also seem to benefit from correcting their own work. It also gives them immediate satisfaction to see how they did, and answers questions such as "What was that word that I missed?"
Comments
I use number dictations among others. For example I dictate phone numbers very quickly and have my students write them down...it gives them a chance to ask me for repetition as well as a chance to write numbers in a "real life" way. I also dictate local addresses, which requires them to ask for the spelling of street names.
I also do some fill in the blank ones, like the following when we work on parts of the body (underlined words are omitted either on the board or when I print out the text).
The adult human has about 206 different bones. The backbone, or spine, is made up of 26 small bones called vertebrae. Seven of these vertebrae support the neck. The head has 29 bones. Each arm and each leg has three long bones. There are 26 bones in each foot and 27 in each hand,
I like Abbie Tom's dictation. In addition to giving students practice with listening to and writing down numbers, it also demonstrates an important writing convention/rule that you don't begin a sentence with a number - you must spell the number out.
Dictation is also a way to review, teach, and practice content information . For example, in a high-school diploma/equivalency instruction you can include important content information the students need to know about human anatomy. In El/Civics you can include information about the rights and responsibilities of U.S. citizenship.
I'm always on the lookout for ways to deliberately practice language and content together, and this is certainly one!
Miriam
Once or twice a week, I use dictation to reinforce the theme and grammar usage in my Level 1 class. (T is for teacher and S is for student.)
For the first five items, we use the spelling cheer format. T. Is everybody ready? S Ready!
T. Give me a y. S y
We spell out y-e-s-t-e-r-d-a-y T What does ti spell? S Yesterday!
T Again S Yesterday
T. Hip Hip S Hurray! ( Repeat because it is fun to cheer.)
For the next five items, we write sentences. The students face me, look at my mouth, and repeat the sentnce before they write it.
T. Yesterday was Monday. Students repeat the sentence and write it.
Often we finish with a drawing. T Draw a picture of what you will do tomorrow, Tuesday.
If they all do this activity at the board, they help each other, especially with capital letters and periods. We read the ten items together.
Next, each student reads the dictation to me individually (for pronunciation check) and then copies the dictation into their notebooks.
Each student must also explain to me what they drew.
They also have fun looking at all the drawings. This gives the artistic students recognition.
I believe that dictation activities are important for ESL students. The activities help students to improve automaticity in thinking and, because of the speed, encourages them to write, not draw, letters and numbers.
To include all levels, I start with repeating four digits or letters, pausing between each one. After they complete two or three at this level, I increase it to five digits, then six. If I have higher levels, I have them write them backwards.
I always tell them why we do this activity and they all seem to enjoy it. To help with stress level, I always allow students to ask for a series to be repeated if needed.