Week4 task 1: an activity in which students experience both writing and grammar.

Week4 task 1: an activity in which students experience both writing and grammar.
I love doing the dictogloss with my students (reading a text for the students then ask them to reconstruct it as close as possible to the original one read by the teacher).
For example: the lesson's topic is music to review different grammar tenses.
I play some music and ask students some lead in questions. I put a couple of questions on the board and ask ss to listen to me and answer the questions.
I read the paragraph again and ask ss to take notes.
Then students rewrite the paragraph . Then they compare it with the original one.
Of course they find it a bit difficult to remember it exactly so they need to justify their choices of tenses. After that the teacher reviews the tenses and ss are finally asked to write about drama or acting.

Comments

  1. Maria BossaMay 4, 2016 at 1:26 PM

    wow... I have never read about this before! Thanks :)

    ReplyDelete
  2. Karen Frazier TsaiMay 6, 2016 at 2:04 PM

    I agree with Maria. I've never heard about the dictogloss activity. Thanks for sharing, Maha!

    ReplyDelete
  3. Juan UribeMay 7, 2016 at 5:36 AM

    Maha,

    Dictogloss is a classic activity that promotes intense work in both writing and grammar as students have to remember not only the words, but also have to reconstruct the original meaning. I like the twist you gave at the end having them dramatize it.

    Some suggestions I can give you are watching a video instead os having you read the text, as long as students can follow it very well. Running dictation is a quite similar in which students read a text across the room and have to dictate it to their writing partner.

    Mario Rinvolucri wrote a great book on dictation with many great affective ideas: http://www.cambridge.org/us/cambridgeenglish/catalog/teacher-training-development-and-research/dictation/dictation-new-methods-new-possibilities-paperback

    Your students probably like writing in your classes!

    Juan

    ReplyDelete

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