DICTATION: A VERY DYNAMIC WAY TO LEARN LANGUAGES

We all have among our memories a teacher who walks between the line of chairs and desk uttering an odd text and articulating widely, in an attempt to render a double consonant. This tragic and frightening situation always begins with a terse “take out a blank sheet of paper… it’s dictation time”. A wind of panic blows through the classroom, and students’ faces reveal dismay while a touch of glorious superiority cannot be erased from the voice of the master.
This awkward situation was recurrent, and subsequently the dictation was, and still is, an enemy of the EFL students. I think that the problem is not the activity in itself but more likely the way that it was/is used in the classroom. I will show that dictation can be used in an infinite number of ways and is a useful activity that can serve purposes as diverse as spelling, memorizing, vocabulary enhancement, reinterpretation, and inference. It is also a very good tool for pair or self assessment, and enhancing the learners’ expectancy of success, goal orientation, and socialization. The role of the teacher is a key point in this activity, and I will show how important it is to be aware, and to prepare to ‘read your line’. In this article, it is argued that the concept of dictation (and therefore the way the EFL teachers use it in the classroom) is obsolete and thus not a pertinent nor reliable technique in training learners of a second language. Nonetheless, despite the constant opposition from a large number of practicing teachers who state the limited interest of the dictation and claim that it is almost at the edge of archaic methodology and only worthwhile when testing spelling, I affirm that dictation is a valuable tool. I will present a framework for using dictation in the EFL classroom, and a draft of an innovative manual for using dictation enhanced by the Ntics that is indeed profitably integrated into a course. Student will not only be encouraged to enhance accuracy in both listening and writing, but also to work with collaborative strategies that improve active reinterpretation of a text, and work hard on memorizing and mental photographing techniques.