Dictation with an older student?

[milovany]

I have a friend who homeschooled her now-adult son, and who has adopted an older foster daughter who's been in her home for a couple years; her daughter is almost 17. This is the question my friend asked -- do you think you could offer her some advice? I (and she) would really appreciate it!

 

From Sylvie:

I'm wanting to start doing dictation with my daughter. I think that this would be a good exercise for her lazy (mostly public schooled) brain, and it may help her in her chosen field - law. I have plenty of ideas for materials to use: the constitution to begin with and so many other great documents that she'll need to have a working knowledge of. But I just don't know how to do this for a highschooler. Most of what I see online is for early elem students starting with copywork and moving up to dictation. Does anyone do dictation with older students? What does that look like?

[Peela]

I have a friend who homeschooled her now-adult son, and who has adopted an older foster daughter who's been in her home for a couple years; her daughter is almost 17. This is the question my friend asked -- do you think you could offer her some advice? I (and she) would really appreciate it!

 

From Sylvie:

I'm wanting to start doing dictation with my daughter. I think that this would be a good exercise for her lazy (mostly public schooled) brain, and it may help her in her chosen field - law. I have plenty of ideas for materials to use: the constitution to begin with and so many other great documents that she'll need to have a working knowledge of. But I just don't know how to do this for a highschooler. Most of what I see online is for early elem students starting with copywork and moving up to dictation. Does anyone do dictation with older students? What does that look like?

 

I still do it with my ds14. It's not much different from when he was younger. First he does do it as copywork and handwriting practice. He still does handwriting practice and it is proving worthwhile.

Then a few days later we do the dictation. I read it in phrases- as much as his brain can handle and remember at a time. Sometimes a whole sentence, sometimes in parts if it's long. For a long time, I would also help him with punctuation and speak it directly- he would still get it wrong. I have just started having him work out the punctuation himself, and if your friend's student is ok with grammar she could start with that.

The most important thing is to start where she is at- don't expect too much. But then, once you find her level, make it harder, use longer passages, say longer passages at a time to train her memory and ability to hold the visualisation of the words in her mind. I have used Shakespeare with my dd.

I think you know when dictation is still useful or not, when your student just finds it all too easy. My dd was like that, so I stopped doing it with her. However, I think ds14 still gets a lot out of it- his memory is not good, and his dyslexic brain doesn't visualise well...so I think it is still beneficial.

I was brought up on dictation at school even through early highschool, so it seems natural to me and maybe I do it differently from others, but its not rocket science and there are various ways to do it, apparently. I do it the way I was taught at school.

[Faithr]

I do dictation with my 15 yo at his request. He thinks it sharpens his spelling skills and his handwriting speed. We picked one book, Introduction to the Devout Life by Francis De Sales and I dictate a paragraph a week to him. The paragraphs can be quite long! A full page. He doesn't do copywork. If he struggles with how to spell a word (and the writing is rather archaic) he puzzles it out by syllable with me helping. It's no big deal.

 

I think your friend should just do it the way it seems natural and satisfying to her daughter.

[C_l_e_0..Q_c]

I did dictation in school till I graduated high school (grade 11 for us). I studied in French, so those were French dictations.

 

Dictations were taken from classical novels, for the most part, were 3 or 4 handwritten pages long (double spaces). Punctuation was not given, we had to figure it out.

 

One grammatical mistake was worth 20 points. One spelling mistake 10 points, and one punctuation mistake was worth 5 points. Yes, out of a 100. Those dictations were easy to fail! But we all became good writers!

[lllll]

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