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Point three 
Another pupil-centred dictation is to use the jumbled story technique 
where each person in the group gets a sentence from the text in random order. 
They then have to dictate their sentence to the rest of the group and the group 
then has to decide on the correct order for the sentences. 
Point four 
Dictation can also be used to promote the skill of inferring from context. 
Take a short text and remove eight to ten words from it. These could be random 

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or you could focus on a particular class of word, verbs for example. Read the 
dictation to the class in the usual way, but when you reach a gapped word, say 
‘gap’. The pupils then have to use the context to think of a suitable word that 
will fill each gap. 
In terms of writing skills, try dictating a text without punctuation and then 
asking the pupils to work in groups to punctuate the text appropriately. This is 
not as easy as it sounds! 
Point five 
Finally, there is the variation on dictation called ‘dictogloss’. In this 
activity you ask the pupils not to write anything as you read the dictation 
(normally a single sentence but varying in length and complexity according to 
the level of the group). Read the sentence twice, even three times. Then ask 
them to write. In this activity it is important not that they replicate the original 
sentence word for word but that they produce a piece of English that closely 
reflects the sense of the original and that is in line with the structure or 
structures used in the original. One way to follow up is to ask them to pool their 
ideas in groups until they come up with a composite answer they are all happy 
with. Some teachers find this technique useful as a means of contrasting tenses 
– past simple vs past continuous for Dictation has been used in language 
learning for several hundred years, and methodologists have often made 
pedagogical claims for its value. Davis and Rinvolucri write that "Decoding the 
sounds of English and recoding them in writing is a major learning task" and 
Frodesen writes that dictation can be "an effective way to address grammatical 
errors in writing that may be the result of erroneous aural perception of 
English.... Dictation can help pupils to diagnose and correct these kinds of 
errors as well as others." Montalvan writes that "as pupils develop their aural 
comprehension of meaning and also of the relationship among segments of 
language, they are learning grammar.
Despite claims such as these from respected methodologists, dictation is 
not widely used in ESL programs. Likewise, it has long been ignored in most 
teacher-training programs. The purpose of this paper is to re-introduce dictation 
as a valuable language learning device and to suggest ways for using it in an 
effective and interesting manner. As a testing method, dictation has been 
confirmed to be reliable and valid by many researchers. Based on the summary 
of empirical studies, Oller, for example, considers dictation to be a type of 
integrative test, a test which requires a learner to use several language skills at 
the same time). Heaton says, "the integrated skills involved in tests of dictation 
include auditory discrimination, the auditory memory span, spelling, the 
recognition of sound segments, a familiarity with the grammatical and lexical 

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patterning of the language, and overall textual comprehension", and claims, 
"dictation tests can prove good predictors of global language ability". 
Dictation is, in a sense, an established means of testing. As a teaching 
method, however, dictation lacks sound empirical grounds. Harris, for example, 
insists that dictation can be a useful pedagogical device but offers little 
empirical support. Davis and Rinvolucri also mention that dictation is an 
effective measure of teaching, and provide us with various methods of dictation. 
However, empirical support for their claim of effectiveness is slight. One 
example of empirical data was provided by Yoshida. He found statistically 
significant positive correlations between dictation and the results of listening 
tests, and, based on these findings, claims that dictation can be a good teaching 
device. His findings do indicate that dictation is a good predictor of learners' 
listening ability. However, a good predictor does not necessarily turn out to be a 
good teaching device. The literature as a whole, therefore, shows that dictation 
has been utilized by foreign language teachers for teaching with precarious 
empirical support.