Teaching Correct Writing While Learning a Language: Types of Dictations

Dictation (Latin dicto “to dictate” from dicere “to speak”) is a type of teaching correct writing to consolidate skills and test students’ knowledge when learning a language. In this case, the teacher slowly reads (speaks), and the student writes down his words by ear. Used in teaching spelling and punctuation marks. Excerpts from works of fiction are most often used as data for reading.

Distinguish between teaching and control dictations. Educational dictation can be warning, commentary, or explanatory. During the warning dictation, spelling and punctuation marks are explained before writing the text, during a commented dictation – during the recording, with explanatory – after.

Types of dictations by work goals:

• training dictation: the goal is to teach,
• preventive dictation: the goal is to help students find weaknesses before the test
• control dictation: the goal is to test knowledge and skills for assessment.

Types of dictations by material:

• vocabulary,
• dictation from sentences
• text.

Types of dictations by form of work:

• cheating (self-dictating),
• visual dictation,
• dictation with presentation of words,
• dictation with spelling reading,
• explanatory dictation,
• creative dictation,
• dictation after independent study of several texts (chance job),
• dictation after explaining all spelling and punctuation with a teacher
• dictation with an additional task,
• classical dictation.

In the United States, there are national championships among schoolchildren in English spelling – “Spelling Bee”. Children are invited to indicate all the letters that make up a certain word. The tournament is held until all participants, except one, make at least one mistake in the next word.