Hi everyone!
Although I am not normally one to promote dictation as the best way to develop listening and writing skills, I must admit that sometimes a short dictation can be a useful, if not enjoyable, learning tool. It is an especially good method if you need a break from your regular writing/listening practice routine and if you want to try a different way of practising your English skills. Just promise me that you do not focus on only dictations – it is important that you develop your listening and note-taking skills as well as your listening comprehension skills – dictations only practise writing down the exact words that you hear, there is no guarantee that you understand every word or that you are able to reproduce or summarise the information you have heard in spoken or written form.

So, if you want to try something different and are ready to change your study routine, throw in one or two dictation exercises now and again – you may be surprised by your ability, and it is a great way of building your concentration skills! Now that you’ve decided that you want to practise, how can you do so? You can get a friend to read a short passage out loud so that you can write down what you hear and then you can compare your writing with the passage, you can use an online audio file which has a transcript so that you can check to see whether you have written the same, or you can use online dictation practice exercises to test your skills.

I have searched the internet and found a collection of online dictation exercises for practising English as a second language. Here they are:

1) Listen and Write: This is a simple yet effective site, filled with real-life youtube videos which you can use to develop your dictation skills. Each exercise indicates the level of difficulty and the length of the audio. You can also choose whether you would like to write every single word that you hear or whether to just fill in the blanks. Here is an example of a dictation on the topic ‘Outdoor Exercise Worth Some Air Pollution Risk‘.

2) Rong Chang: This is a long long list of short dictation exercises at varying levels. Unfortunately there is no information about the level of the dictation or on what the topic is, so you will just need to work your way though the list. Sadly, these are not full texts, they are just short sentences and the pronunciation is extremely slow, so it may be better to use a more natural audio example for your dictation practice. Here is an example of a dictation from Rong Chang.

3) Learn English: This website is a collection of different English practice exercises and one page includes a list of dictation exercises divided into elementary and intermediate levels. Again these are quite simple, but worth a visit if you wish to practise your dictation skills and to not make too many mistakes. Here is an example of a dictation on the topic ‘English Folklore‘.

4) Teacher Joe: This is another collection of short dictations of varying lengths for different language levels. You can choose dictations which progressively get harder, from five words to fifteen words. Here is an example of a dictation from Teacher Joe.

5) English Club: This website is a favourite with many English language teachers, and the dictation section is not bad either. Short, medium and long dictations are given at differing language levels, so choose which works best for you, or work your way through all of them. Here is an example of a longer more advanced dictation on the topic of the ‘Presidential Address‘.

So, there you go! If you want to try a dictation or two, now you have more than enough dictation websites which you can visit. Let me know how you go!
:) Nicole

© Nicole Sammer, Sydney English Teacher, 2015.

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