Running dictation!

A spinoff of the normal dictation exercise is to have the text printed out and posted outside the classroom on a wall. Teams consist of one writer and one or two runners. The runners must run outside and try to remember as much of the text as possible, and go back to their stationary writers, and try to dictate from memory as much of the text as possible. Teams repeat this sequence until the writer writes down the whole text verbatim.

A very simple and easy-to-prepare activity, yet a very enriching experience, providing practice in speaking, listening, communicative skills, problem-solving and team-working.

What I like to do is to add a component at the end of the dictations where students have to utilize the texts they've reconstructed to try to solve a problem. In this class for teenagers, the lesson was about animal parts as well as different usages of animals by humans. I had prepared a few different texts describing an animal, along with its characteristics, and its job. After reconstructing all of the texts, each team had to match the animal to the correct picture from a collage projected on the screen. The first team to have all of the correct matches wins!