Theme: types of dictations in teaching english sodiqov Tolqinjon Sobirovich

5) Dictogloss

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  Say to Pts:
  

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  Dictation 5 is called ‘Dictogloss’. The name of the dictation has two words: ‘dicto’ from ‘dictation’ and ‘gloss’ from ‘glossary’ which means ‘a word’.
  
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  There are 5 sentences in the text.
  
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  I‘ll read the text once only.
  
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  Write down only key words as I read.
  
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  In groups recreate the text I dictated.
  
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  In your group choose a person who’ll write the text on a separate sheet of paper.
  
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  In 5 min I’ll stop you.
  

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  Check the instruction.
  
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  Put Pts in 5 groups.
  

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  Read slowly the text London.
  

London
London is the capital of the United Kingdom. It is on the River Thames. London has a lot of old buildings, museums and beautiful parks. About 7 million people live in London. London has more than 25 million tourists every year!

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  Some Pts may be inattentive to details of the dictation. They may write that, for example, London is the capital of England. Although it is factually correct, but in the context of the task it is a wrong answer, as the task is to recreate the given text and in the text London is given as the capital of the United Kingdom.
  

The merits and demerits of using Dictations.

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  Dictation makes the pupils and the teacher aware of the pupils' comprehension errors-phonological, grammatical, or both;
  
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  Dictation gives pupils practice in comprehending and transcribing clear English prose;
  
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  Dictation gives pupils valuable practice in note taking. Dictation gives practice in correct forms of speech;
  
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  Dictation can help develop all four language skills in an integrative way;
  
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  Dictation helps to develop short-term memory. Pupils practice retaining meaningful phrases or whole sentences before writing them down;
  
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  Dictation can serve as an excellent review exercise;
  
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  Dictation is psychologically powerful and challenging;
  
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  Dictation fosters unconscious thinking in the new language;
  
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  If the pupils do well, dictation is motivating;
  

Difficulty
A common problem is that some pupils may find dictation more difficult than others, especially if you are teaching a multi-level class. One way of combating this is to think about how much of the dictation we expect our pupils to produce. We can give weaker pupils skeleton versions of the text to be dictated, with gaps for them to fill in as they go along, rather than a blank sheet of paper. …