| 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". Ask one of pairs to read out the title and the poem: 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.