Dictation Exercises

If delivered correctly dictation is a very very valuable activity for those with a reading or writing deficit. It builds an intuitive awareness of good writing style and exercises the grapheme-phoneme correspondence in a new way. Correct delivery means ensuring that the student has all the necessary resources so they cannot fail. Our dictation exercise works like this:

1) The student chooses a topic - so they engage with the overall passage not just each word as it is spoken.

2) The student hears the whole passage all the way through. Once again the student is being encouraged to engage with the whole passage.

3) The student hears and writes each phrase one at a time.

As they are writing the student can have each phrase repeated as often as they like before moving on.

As they are writing the student can look up any word they are not sure of. This is critical so they feel that success is dependent only on things they can control right there and then.

The earlier exercises explicitly state punctuation. The higher level exercises leave punctuation to be inferred by the student from tone of voice.