Interactive Dictations is a low-intermediate to intermediate level text that is intended to improve the listening, speaking, and writing skills of ESL students. Each dictation is preceded by an introduction and vocabulary/pronunciation work and is followed by discussion topics. Pair and small-group work is encouraged. Following the discussions, there are an optional writing topic and a variety of other activities, including idiom/vocabulary work, role plays, and many cooperative learning activities.
Reading skills are also reinforced, along with attention to vocabulary and grammar. This text provides a wide variety of dictations that include provocative news items, problems to solve, and decisions to make.
- There are four different types of dictation:
- Partial (Cloze): Students listen and fill in the blanks in the activity.
- Pair: Students work in pairs with different gaps in their passages.
- Dictogloss: Students hear a sentence once and have to write the gist of that sentence.
- Prediction: Students predict what should be in the sentence blank and then check to see if their prediction was correct.
An (optional) audio program is available for download. Visit ProLinguaLearning.com for details.
About the Author:
Catherine Sadow, co-author (along with Judy DeFilippo) of Interactive Dictations, taught at Northeastern University for 24 years has co--authored of 7 ESL books. Students from beginning to advanced levels often told her that listening was the most difficult problem for them in trying to speak English. With that challenge in mind, from 1987 (Talk Radio) to 2013 (Basic Dictations) Catherine created effective and interesting listening activities which resulted in books for all levels.
Catherine began her ESL career at Brookline, MA Adult Education while completing an MA in TESL at Boston University. Although officially retired, she continues to teach ESL classes as a volunteer in Brookline to adults studying English.
