Overview of different types of dictation?

[ElizaG]

Is there a thread somewhere with links to the instructions (or brief versions of the instructions themselves) for all the different types of dictation that have been discussed on these boards?

 

Thank you!  :001_smile:

 

ETA:  If there isn't, I'll start one here.  Just wanted to check and make sure I'm not re-inventing the wheel!

[Kuovonne]

Here are some types of dictation:

 

Studied Dictation:

The student looks at the passage before writing it. The student identifies any trick spelling words or punctuation and studies them. Then the teacher gives the dicatation for the student to write. One passage might last a week. Studied dictation is almost always at least a sentence long. Two programs that used studied dictation are Spelling Wisdom by Simply Charlotte Mason and The Arrow by Bravewriter.

 

Cold Dictation:

The student does not see the passage first. The teacher has hopefully pretaught all the words, punctuation rules, capitalization, etc. but not via that passage. The student can do a new passage every day. Passages can be very short (phrases). Two programs that use cold dictation are All About Spelling and Spelling Plus by Susan C. Anthony.

 

Cloze Dictation / French Dictation:

The student may or may not get to see the passage in advance. The main feature is that the student's paper already has part of the passage filled in, and the student has to write in only the missing words. The idea is that the student can work with a much more difficult passage without having to know all of the mechanics of the passage. The only program that I've seen that does this is The Wand by Bravewriter.

 

Auto-Dictation / Self-Dictation:

Instead of having a teacher dictate the passage, the student makes a recording of the passage and takes dictation from his or her own recording. This method frees up the teacher's time as the teacher is only needed to check the final result. I believe that Susan Wise Bauer recommends this method for student who have trouble remembering their own words when writing their own narrations.

 

Copywork:

Copywork is not dictation because the student gets to see the passage the whole time. However, copywork is often used as part of the studying in studied dicttion.

[ElizaG]

Thank you!

[TheAttachedMama]

I would add Transcription to that list. 

 

That is sort of the bridge between copywork and dictation.    In transcription, you are given a sentence to copy.  (Just like in copywork)   Except instead of copying it letter by letter, the student reads and entire word (and eventually a phrase), holds it in their mind while they write it, look back up at the next chunk, and does the same thing.   Students will usually naturally start to do this once they have been doing copywork enough to help speed things up. 

 

Also, the way certain textbooks tell you to do dictation is different.

 

For example, Susan Wise Bauer has you read some pretty lengthy passages to the student.   And the student has to attempt to put in the proper punctuation based on the inflection of your voice and where you pause.   They also have to "hold" those entire passages in their short term memory.  (In fact, that is one of the benefits of dictation---improving your working memory.)  

 

Classical Accademic Press tells you to actually "say" the punctuation out loud.  

 

And Simply Charlotte Mason has you only read short phrases of the longer text at a time.  (And this after the student has studied it...since it is prepared or studied dictation.)   In this way, they often have the student dictating much, much longer passages  (Entire pages or paragraphs)  since they don't have to hold it in their heads.