Humanising Language Teaching
Year 3; Issue 4; July 2001
Definitions Dictation
Mario Rinvolucri
secondary and adult
Level: elementary and above ( the example is upper intermediate)
Time: 20-30 minutes
Aims: focus on meta-language and linguistic context and synonyms and collocation
In class:
- Explain to the students that you are going to give them a dictation, but that instead
of saying the words they write you will gives them definitions and clues.
Ask them to work in pairs with only one person writing.
| 2. You say | The students say: |
| The definite article | The |
| The word begins with "f" and means the same as "last" | final |
| When you walk you take many of these. In singular. | Step. |
That was the title of the poem; now for line one:
A two letter words that expresses doubt and ends in "f"
Third person plural pronoun. The word ends in "y"
Past tense of a verb with a meaning very like "do"
Going head first into water- ends with "ing"
The first word in the phrase
.
and lodging. Here it means a plank.
Start a new line of the poem:
Half a dozen
Anglo-American unit of measurement, about 2.5 centrimetres long.
The comparative form of the opposite of "long"
Start new line:
This is the verb that describes the main action of philosophers
An anagram of WHO
The word for "many" that you use with uncountable nouns
The first words in the phrase "
or later"
Start new line:
Second person pronoun
Think what trees are made of. Then think of a modal verb with the
same sound. Contract it and link it to the word before with an apostrophe.
Hamlet was worried about this infinitive
Two letter word, the second letter is "n"
definite article
this word is wet and rhymes with "shorter".
THE FINAL STEP
If they made diving boards
---------- six inches shorter-
think how much sooner
----------you'd be in the water.
Peter Hein, GROOKS II , Blackwell and Mott,
Variation: Once you have used this technique three or four times, ask five students, as homework, to prepare this type of dictation Each of them dictates their definitions etc to a fifth of the class; the five "dictators" work simultaneously.
Acknowledgement: We learnt this technique from Mitzi Powles, whose idea is quoted by Paul Rogerson in an article in Europa Vicina, N.6 March 2000, the AISLI magazine.
