Dictée

I am so pleased with dictée. It forms such a nice quiet contrast with the story or whatever form of CI we did that week. I can really see the light bulbs going off in their minds, as connections are made to the sounds of what they heard the day before, and to what they just read.

Below are some things I wanted to add to the general information about dictée on the resources/workshop handouts page of this site. I list these new ideas here. Below them, please find the entire pasted text on dictée from the site for ease of reference:

1. It is frustrating for the kids to not be given the proper punctuation instructions. I sometimes forget to say, for example, “point” for a period. This confuses them. So I am going to try to do that better. Adolescents need clarity.

2. It is totally necessary for the teacher, as well as the students, to not speak at all during the dictée process. I cannot stress this enough. Sometimes I forget and allow myself a few words of English. It messes up their neurology big time and slows things down, which are both good reasons to not speak even a word of English during dictée.

3. In order to avoid English, it is necessary to take a few seconds before the dictée to ask the class, in the target language of course, what the general details of the story were. The details don’t have to be at all accurate, just the general idea. In fact they shouldn’t be perfectly accurate. Make sure that the class understands that we don’t want perfect accuracy so that we can embed new vocabulary and details into the dicttée that weren’t in the story. It is an opportunity to learn new things, and stretches their brains even more, at the same time it keeps it attentive to these shifts in information.

Now here is (rather lengthy) material from my website on this topic:

The classic French dictée format is a powerful tool indeed. When we ask the kids to write (output) from a few days or more of listening and reading (input), the subject matter for the writing is not random, which is a huge factor in the kids’ confidence, as they are able to connect things to known auditory information in their brains. Another benefit is that the child is allowed to spend time in class in a different part of their brains, in the analytical left brain.

The key point in dictée, a rule I consider as important  in my classroom as the rules I have for stories about speaking English, etc. (see rules poster on this site), is that there be no speaking by the students during dictée. This must be enforced 100% of the time, or dictée is completely ineffective. Students speaking during dictation, even asking for clarification, is much more egregious, even, than speaking during stories – it just defeats the neurological purpose. Neither must you, the instructor, speak English during dictée, at all costs.

As long as English is not involved, dictée creates a wonderful flow of language, something hard to describe but something that is definitely beautiful, and spectacular learnings occur in the minds of the students about how language is structured. Dictée really bridges the gap between sound and writing, melding the two, moving across the hemispheres, so to speak. 

As I said, the dictée text I choose is the previous story, after it has been read and discussed. I just recall the story as best as I can, saying parts of each sentence three times, no more and no less, with enough pause to allow the students to write comfortably. I try to always remember to include all punctuation instructions in the target language.

In their composition books, on line one (of three), the students write what they hear. Again, I am sure to read slowly and allow enough time for them to write. I tell the kids that what they write on that top line will not be graded, but they are to make their best effort. They obviously don’t see the correct version until they have tried to write the sentence correctly themselves.

So, I just recreate the story on the LCD projector, or the overhead, or even the whiteboard. The dictated version of the story doesn’t have to be perfectly accurate. In fact, intentional errors, new information, as you recreate the story force deeper thinking by the students, and allow you to introduce quite a bit of new vocabulary, which can then spin into even more interesting discussion.

I show them the correct version of the text at the proper time, phrase by phrase, or chunk by chunk, and not sentence by sentence, which is too complex. The students then bring down any corrections of the text that are needed onto line 2. I grade both lines, whatever is correct from line 1 and any corrections made on line 2. In this way, the students are graded on how well they can copy from the overhead! How nice for them, and how confident they feel!

Line three is just a line space to make everything clearer and easier to read.

The benefits of doing this are obvious. The kids participate to a very high degree, because they know that working hard at this task of processing sound into writing will bring them an easy grade, which increases their overall motivation in the class. 

Another superior way to develop the writing skill is to do free writes. A free write is simply a period of from five to ten minutes during which the students write as many words as they can in L2. The rules for free writes (can also be found on the posters page of this site) are:

1. 1. No English words in the story except for names.
   2. Keep the sentences and story line simple.
   3. Get your story idea ahead of time.
   4. Use lists if you have them.
   5. Use words that you already know.
   6. If you don’t know a word, don’t use it or reword the idea.
   7. Use as many adjectives as possible.
   8. Spell as accurately as you can and then move on.
   9. Add another character when you get stuck.
   10. Use posters from the room as help.
   11. Illogical stories are o.k. Write without stopping for 10 minutes.
   12. When time is up, count the number of words you wrote and put in the bar graph section at end of your composition book, with dates.

At the beginning of the year, the students are told to write at least 50 words over ten minutes. If they do that, they get an A. You can devise whatever scale you want. Some teachers give a B for 40-49 words, etc. The students count their words, then write their letter grade on the top, then all you have to do is enter the grade. Often, I don’t count words. I just look at it and grade it. Don’t tell anyone.

Other teachers ask the students to record the word total for each student in bar chart form. I have them do this – I keep the bar graphs in a certain part of their composition books. This keeps track of the amount of words they write as the year goes on, and they can see their improvement over the year. It’s pretty cool.

Every month or two, the students do as many free writes as possible, usually on Fridays. A reasonable goal in terms of number of words is to go from fifty words in around October to one hundred words by February. Carmen is the expert on this.