DICTATION TEST

The Dictation Test

Similar to cloze test

Both dictation and cloze test are able to predict overall language ability.

Dictation has the ability of assessing listening. (Hughes, 1972)

Teacher begins by selecting an appropriate passage:

·  Short and not longer than one paragraph.

·  Appropriate to the students language ability and cultural background.

The structure of the dictation

a)      Read out at least three times

b)      First time, normal rate of reading.

c)       Students listen for general idea of the passage.

d)   Second reading, little slower and expect students to write down what  is read.

e)      Teacher pauses to break the passage into meaningful chunks referred to as bursts.

f)       Third reading, students are expected to check their work, editing it for errors.

What makes a dictation difficult?

a)      The length of the phrase or burst

–                       Longer burst, more difficult.

–                       Students will have to retain more in short term memory while taking down burst.

b)      The length of the pauses between bursts

–                        Longer pause, easier for students.

–                       How long to pause? As long as the burst itself.

c)       The content of the dictation passage

   –        Familiar content makes the dictation easier.

   –        Jargon and highly technical words are difficult for some people.

d)      The syntactic and structural properties of the sentences in the passage

Complex structures make dictation more difficult.

(1)    Ali caught the woman who stole the money

(2)    The woman that Ali caught stole the money

Both convey same meaning. Second sentence is more complicated because its structure is unfamiliar. The woman which is the subject of the verb stoledoes not appear immediately before the verb. The student is therefore required to make a “long distance” connection between the subject and the verb.

e)    Clarity of voice, expression and pace or tempo.

–        Clarity of voice is important in dictations.

–        Include facial expressions.

–        The more animated the person dictating, the more cues are provided to the students.

Scoring a dictation
Two general methods. 

•  Traditional method
• Pragmatic method

Both differ in treatment of spelling error.

Let’s consider the sentences “The boy is a pessimist. He never sees the silver lining in a dark cloud” which are read out to the students as part of a dictation passage. How would you grade the following responses?

A.      The boy is a pessimis. He never sees the silver lining in a dark cloud.

B.      The boy is a pacifist. He never sees the silver lining in a dark cloud.

Sentence A contains a spelling mistake – pessimis – while sentence B does not. However, in sentence B, the word pacifist is another meaningful word in the English language that simply is not appropriate in this context.

According to pragmatic method, the student will not be penalized for sentence A, but will have points deducted for producing sentence B.

The reasoning:

–        Sentence A is merely a spelling error which at least retains phonetics similarity to the original.

–   Sentence B introduces a new word which makes the entire sentence inaccurate and in this case, unacceptable as well.

Argument:

–        Sentence B, there is a clear mistake which should be treated as such is a test.

–        Sentence A, the absence of the letter “t”may well be due to the student’s haste to note down what he has heard and is therefore not as serious an error in a test.

Variants of the diction

A.      Graded or graduated dictation

• Dictation passage becomes progressively more difficult. Gradually increasing the number of words in a burst.
• Dictation may begin with a burst consisting of two words and the number of words slowly increases until there can be up to thirteen or fourteen words in a burst.
• Normally the processing load becomes too high when a burst exceeds seven words. However, better and more proficient students will be able to handle seven words and perhaps even more by chunking words that collocate naturally.

B.      Partial dictation

•  Similar to listening cloze activity. Students are provided the passage with some words or phrases deleted.
• They are expected to listen to a passage and fill in words or phrases.
•  It is commonplace to have partial dictations in which single words or even short phrases are deleted.

C.      Dictocomp

•  The students are expected to use the information they hear to construct a coherent piece of composition instead of taking down the passage exactly as it was dictated.
• The teacher will determine the key elements of the original passage which the students is expected to include in the composition.
• Dictocomp can be said to be a test listening comprehension in a very specific way in that the student has to decide what pieces of information are important and should be included. This is reminiscent of summaries.
• Dictocomp also tests writing ability as well because the students are expected to write a cohesive piece based on the passage that was dictated to them.