Running Dictation and three 2006 improvements on it

Tandy Taylor and Richard Man, Pilgrims, HMS Raleigh, Plymouth, UK

Running dictation dates back to the 1970's or before and became more widely known through the version that Paul Davis published in Dictation, Cambridge, 1988, calling it THE MESSENGER AND THE SCRIBE.

In this version you pair the students and ask all the A students to sit in the classroom, with their pens at the ready. You take the B students outside into the corridor with you and show them a short text you have blu-tacked to the wall. Their job is to memorise the first phrase of the passage, run back to the classroom and dictate it to their partner. They come back and memorise the second phrase and so on.
Halfway through you get the runner and the writer to reverse roles and carryon the dictation process. ( The "runner" role is more dynamic than the writer role)

In the solo version of this exercise the students work on their own, reading the text out in the corridor, running back and writing it down at their table in the classroom.

There is also a classical triad version.
Group the students in threes, A, B and C.
Student A is the writer.
Student C is the reader and runs as far as the door of the classroom. There she says her bit of text to student B, who runs across the room and dictates the gobbet to C.
The triadic version is the most useful of the three versions for working with students who react well to movement exercises.

2006 variation 1 Question and Answer

Tandy Taylor

Pair the students. Student A sits in the classroom with 10 questions about the text outside on the wall. She asks her partner, Student B, the first question and B then runs and tries to bring her back an answer. Student A asks B the second question and B runs to get the answer.

You give out the text to both students so they can check the answers B has brought, with the text in front of both of them.*

2006 variation 2 From paragraph to sentence

Richard Mann

Prepare a text with , say, six short paragraphs.
Pair the students. Student B, the runner, goes out into the corridor and reads the first paragraph, mentally summarises it into one sentence and dictates this to A.
Students A and B swap runner and writer roles after each paragraph.

2006 variation 3 L1 -L2 running dictation

Richard Mann

Put a short easy text in the students' mother tongue up in the corridor.
Pair the students. The runner goes out in to the corridor, reads the first phrase in L1, translates it into L2 and runs back to dictate this to A. etc…..

[ Editorial Note: you could round off the Tandy question and answer running exercise by bringing everybody back into the classroom , pairing the A students and asking them to reconstruct the passage as best they can from memory and guessing. Do the same with the B students.
Finally make fours with two A's and 2 B's so they can compare their texts before having another look at the original.

Please check the The Creative Methodology course at Pilgrims website.