‘Dictation’

Abstract

In the past Dictation was used mainly as a ‘testing’ device, to test spelling and punctuation. It tended to be used in isolation, with no relationship to other language activities. The passages used tended to be rather long and ‘unseen’, i.e. the students had not studied/used the passages before and they contained new/unfamiliar/difficult structural and lexical items. Dictation lessons used to be labelled as such in the timetable and each lesson took up to thirty minutes.