Dictation 2.0

Here's another version of the traditional dictation, as delivered by my French teacher, Mrs Robinson (see "Magic Dictogloss"). In this short activity, students interact with the text you dictate by adding their own content. Hence the title, which is borrowed from today's collaborative internet applications, Web 2.0. This dictation activity is adapted from one I learned about at www.onestopenglish.com

Who it's for:
All levels

What it's for:
Intensive listening, grammar practice, warmer or cool-down activity

What you need:
A text from any issue of Spotlight, including content that can be replaced with students' own ideas.

What you do:
Before the lesson, pick a short text from any issue of Spotlight that will lend itself to the activity. I have taken as an example the first paragraph of "Pray for Sun" in World View on page 12 of Spotlight 11/09.

Make yourself a version that looks like this:

(1), most often associated with (2) and (3), has been taken up by the (4). (5) reports that after extreme (6) this year, (7) have been asking churchgoers to pray for (8).

In the lesson, write up the following and ask the students to write down their own ideas for the categories 1-8. The examples below in brackets are for your reference. Clearly, these categories will work only with this text. You'll have to come up with others, depending on the content of your chosen text.

1. a hobby (e.g. swimming)
2. a national group with "the" (e.g. the Spanish)
3. another nationality with "the" (e.g. the Mongolians)
4. another nationality with "the" (e.g. the Finns)
5. the (fictional?) name of a newspaper (e.g. The Horn-players' Herald)
6. a type of bad weather (e.g. hail)
7. the name of a job (plural) (e.g. plumbers)
8. something you like (noun) (e.g. spaghetti carbonara)

When they have finished, deliver the dictation replacing the original content with the numbers, as above. You can either ask the students to write in the numbers as you go along, and give them time at the end to put the dictation and their numbered list together, or you can tell them that each time you say a number, they should insert the appropriate expression from their list.

Either way, this all ends up getting very silly. The idea is that the students have fun when they read their completed texts to each other, but that the dictated grammar structures stick, too.