Mr_Ben
Member
- Joined
- Oct 14, 2010
- Member Type
- English Teacher
- Native Language
- American English
- Home Country
- United States
- Current Location
- Switzerland
I've got an Intermediate (B1) class and I think some of them will really benefit from dictation exercises. One student in particular has parents who speak English in the home sometimes but he's never written it so his spelling is all over the place. I have a couple others who just can't ever seem to conjugate verbs correctly (we can analyze the situation, determine which tense is required, and then they come up with things like "was did" or "had going"--I'll probably make a different thread for these guys one day).
I don't want to take class time because 1) it's a good sized class (13) with a range of levels and I can see some of the students getting really bogged down in this and taking a LOT of time and 2) I'd like to do it regularly so they can get better at "filling in the gaps" of what they don't hear or understand exactly. I made a class wiki on http://www.wikispaces.com/ (free wikis for higher education, extremely easy to set up and use), and I'm going to make a page where they can listen to a recording and stop and rewind as they please while they write. Class meets Tues/Thurs evenings and I want to publish the recording on Thursdays and the text on Tuesdays so they can make corrections before the next recording. I'm going to use folk tales and fairy tales.
Here come the questions:
What's going to go wrong (besides technical/internet failures on my end)? How limited should I make the vocabulary so they don't just throw their pencils down and give up when they "don't understand"? Should I give them a word list? Pictures? Should I have them answer some short answer questions before the dictation to encourage listening for gist and main ideas? How long is too long? 150 words?
I've never actually done dictation exercises before so if any of you could share some good or bad lessons you've had with them I'd be much obliged!
I don't want to take class time because 1) it's a good sized class (13) with a range of levels and I can see some of the students getting really bogged down in this and taking a LOT of time and 2) I'd like to do it regularly so they can get better at "filling in the gaps" of what they don't hear or understand exactly. I made a class wiki on http://www.wikispaces.com/ (free wikis for higher education, extremely easy to set up and use), and I'm going to make a page where they can listen to a recording and stop and rewind as they please while they write. Class meets Tues/Thurs evenings and I want to publish the recording on Thursdays and the text on Tuesdays so they can make corrections before the next recording. I'm going to use folk tales and fairy tales.
Here come the questions:
What's going to go wrong (besides technical/internet failures on my end)? How limited should I make the vocabulary so they don't just throw their pencils down and give up when they "don't understand"? Should I give them a word list? Pictures? Should I have them answer some short answer questions before the dictation to encourage listening for gist and main ideas? How long is too long? 150 words?
I've never actually done dictation exercises before so if any of you could share some good or bad lessons you've had with them I'd be much obliged!