Hello colleagues, Dictogloss is a great activity that combines listening and collaborative writing. Here's a link to a site that explains the steps. Dictogloss can easily be done in a remote classroom. For the listening step, the teacher can read a text or play an audio recording from an online source. Learners listen and jot down (using pen and paper or typing) as many words as they can while listening. Learners typically want to hear the text several times.
The goal for Dictogloss is to capture key vocabulary and main ideas. The goal is NOT to capture every word.
The advanced English learners in my class then collaborate in pairs on a Google Doc to reconstruct the text. The conversations focus on the meaning of the text and the grammar needed to construct sentences.
Here's a helpful video by Russell Stanard in which he shares some useful tips for having students both collaborate and comment on each other's work in Google Docs.
Let us know if you've tried Dictogloss and what you think about the possibility of adapting this activity for learners at different levels. Also, we'd love to hear how you are using Google Docs for collaborative writing!
Take care, Susan Finn Miller
Moderator, English Language Acquisition CoP