Our first time with dictogloss

This post is an account of a lesson I did in my split classes a couple of weeks ago but, due to the Global Education Conference and a holiday here in Turkey last week, I’m only getting round to writing it up now. It was the first time I did a dictogloss activity with the kids and I thought it would be of interest to describe how I approach this lesson with young learners.

Dicto-what?!?

For those of you wondering what dictogloss is exactly (I myself only heard about it and tired it for the first time about a year ago), here’s a brief summary. Basically, you present the students with a text (usually by reading it to them) and they reconstruct it. However, unlike a classic dictation exercise, the students do not write while you talk. They only take notes and, after hearing the text a few times, they collaborate in small groups and try to write it out. There are two main reasons I love doing this activity:

1. It forces the students to engage with the language on a much deeper level than pure dictation. They need to focus on how the sentences and the text are structured, which is perfect for focus on form and promoting noticing of language features.
2. It’s a great activity for getting students to work together. If attempted alone, it’s very difficult but when done in pairs or small groups, the students really support each other a lot.

Phase 1 - Pre-task

Anyway, onto my lesson. They had recently covered family in their main lessons so I decided to read them a short passage about my own family. As they had never done dictogloss before, I needed to offer them plenty of support so I utilised the pre-task phase to recap family words and get them thinking. I did this by displaying a word cloud made from my text, which you can see below:

I first asked them what family words and names they could see and then asked them to speculate in pairs about who these people might be. We then compared predictions, discussed which ones were more likely and put them on the board. The first task when listening to the text was to check which predictions were right. I supported the first reading with photos of my family so they could make a visual connection with the people I mentioned and I encouraged them to ask any questions they had (they were especially interested in my son and the cat!)

Here’s the text as I read it:

“I’ve got two sisters, Louise and Claire but I haven’t got any brothers. Louise lives in England but Claire lives in Pairs! I’m married. My wife’s name is Çiğdem and we’ve got a son. His name is Jason Demir and he’s four and a half years old. We’ve got a pet cat too. He’s called Sean.”

Phase 2 - Take note(s)

For the next phase, they needed to listen and take notes. As this was the first time they had tried dictogloss, I gave them a table to structure their note-taking (they were also unfamiliar with the concept of notes so it was useful for framing it), like this one:

Information	Yes/no? How many?	Extra information?
Sisters?
Brothers?
Married?
Children?
Pets?

 

They listened again and filled in the first column and then listened a couple more times to find extra information (names, ages, where they live etc.). Once they were happy they had enough notes, they compared their notes in pairs, filling any missing gaps and clarifying any clashing information. One thing that threw a few of them, for example, was when I said “We’ve got a pet cat too” with some of them thinking I meant I had two cats. The great thing was, most of the pairings were able to resolve this misunderstanding by themselves when they checked their notes together!

 

Phase 3 - Reconstructing & comparing

 

I then asked them to use their notes to re-write my text. That got a few puzzled looks at first but, with some prompting, they got the idea. I provided support by displaying the word cloud again as well as the photos, which I directed them to when they were struggling with spelling or the exact information needed. This phase of the lesson was completed fairly quickly so the pairs were then asked to read through their text again and check it. Next, I matched pairs together to make groups of four and had them compare their texts, looking for any differences (for both content and language).

 

The final phase entailed the class comparing their texts with the original as a final noticing activity. The act of comparing, first in small groups and then as a class, allowed them to see where they had made errors and I believe this is much more effective than me simply telling them. Many students, for example, corrected their peers when they had written ‘Louise live in England’, pointing out they should add -s to the verb. Through this collaborative comparison process, they were even able to reconstruct things they haven’t formally been taught yet like He’s called…

 

A good challenge

Of course, the lesson was not without its problems. Some students were disappointed when I revealed the original text and they saw they hadn’t got it 100% the same. I had to explain that there were several ways to say the same thing and the point was to make a good paragraph with the information I gave them, not something word-for-word the same.

On the whole, it went well (although one girl did, quite rightly, scold me for failing to include I love my family at the end of the text!) and I will be doing it again with slightly longer texts in the near future. In one class, we finished the lesson with a new word as I asked them what they thought of the lesson and whether they had found it easy or difficult. They wanted to say it wasn’t easy but wasn’t so difficult that they didn’t enjoy it. Challenging was the word they were looking for.