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This blog is mainly created for my learning reflection on Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) in English Language Teaching (ELT). However, I welcome all readers especially teachers and teacher trainees who wish to use new technology in the classroom in order to get the most out of their students. I hope this page can inspire teachers to try out new ideas, building up their knowledge, and improving their classroom abilities. Welcome and enjoy!

Wednesday, October 19, 2011

The Power of The Marriage of Listen and Write

Dictation has been widely known in language testing, but its benefit in language teaching and learning has been questioned by some language teachers. However, currently dictation seems to be undergoing a revival as a useful teaching device. It is thought that dictation can help develop all language skills which are grammar, oral communication, pronunciation, and listening comprehension simultaneously. The idea of dictation for language teaching and learning has been adapted by a web tool called Listen and Write.




General Description

Listen and Write is a dictation exercise creation tool. It has a large number of dictation exercises already created in a number of languages. The dictation tool offers a number of options to support and develop users’ ability to listen. Listen and Write is free to use, but if users create an account, they will be able to keep track of their progress and create their own activity. To be able to use this tool, users can simply go to the site and navigate to find a useful activity. The activities work in a staged way. Users are given the chance to listen to the complete text first before proceed to the main task. They can either listen to the text sentence by sentence with gaps in or they can listen and try to write the complete text one sentence at a time. There are features like ‘hints’ (which gives the next letter in a word) and ‘auto-complete’ (which helps to finish words after a number of letters). Another feature of Listen and Write is that it provides a number of difficulty levels. Registered users can upload links to audio that they think are suitable for activities. Users can either wait for someone else to transcribe it and add activities or do it themselves.  The following screenshot shows the dictation activity at level ten and using the quick mode of game play.  


Level and Age

Listen and Write can be applied for students at all levels of English proficiency. This is due to the categorization of content into many levels raging from level 2 to 35. This tool is suitable to be used for secondary school students at the age of 13 to 17 and also applicable to adult learners. Listen and Write might not be suitable to be used for primary school students because most of the audios available in the site involve fast speed of speech. Nevertheless, it may be applicable for them if teachers can upload a suitable listening text and activities for them to use.

How To Use The Tool For Teaching English?

Listen and Write is mainly utilized for improving listening skills. Nik Peachy (2009) suggested three ways that can be used with students:
  1.  Set Listening for Homework: Teachers can search for and select audio exercises for students that are on relevant topic and at appropriate level. Teachers could also ask students to choose themselves. Once the exercise is selected, students will be asked to listen to the audio at home, and the information content is then will be discussed in the classroom.
  2. Let Students Select the Listening: Teachers can ask students to add links to audio files that they want to understand such as song mp3s, news reports, or interviews. Then, teachers will create the dictation activities and transcriptions to go with the audio.
  3. Create Own Activities: Teachers can create their own dictation activities for students based on the audio files that teachers want students to understand.
Evaluation

Advantages:
  1. The materials (a whole range of news programmes and interviews) used in Listen and Write are authentic. Brown (2001) recommended the use of authentic text to help students further develop their communicative skills. By using authentic listening materials, learners are given the chance to develop the skills needed to comprehend and to use language that is commonly found in real situation.
  2. Features such as ‘auto-complete’ and ‘hints’ provide lots of assistance to learners in completing the task. This is parallel to the idea of scaffolding learning. Scaffolding provides a pathway or route for the learners to keep students on the task until the task is completed (McKenzie, 1999).
  3. Listen and Write allows for multiple skills improvement (listening, writing, grammar, vocabulary, and pronunciation). This is great because in real life, what people react is a respond to multiple skills that occurs simultaneously. Besides, these integrated skills in one activity can help teachers to save tome for preparing one lesson for each skill.
  4. This tool provides scores at the end of the exercise. It is important for feedback to be given to learners so that they can reflect on their learning process. By reflecting on the learning experience, they will know what was good or bad (Kolb, 1984).
Disadvantages:
1.       Listen and Write consumes a lot of time, especially if the learners cannot follow the speed of the spoken text.
2.      The tool does not really develop writing skill since it does not involve creative writing skills. However, it does help to develop spelling and punctuation, which are a part of writing.
3.      Facebook application is embedded on the website. This app can be a distraction for students to keep on doing the exercise since the app has become an addiction to youth these days.

References:

Brown, D. (2001). Teaching by Principle – an Intercative Approach to Language Pedagogy. Addison
    Wesley Longman: New York.
Kolb, D. A. (1984). Experiential Learning Experience as a Source of Learning and Development. New
    Jersey: Prentice Hall.
McKenzie, J. (1999). Scaffolding for Success. Now: The Educational Technology Journey, 9 (4).  
Peachy, N., (2009). Web 2.0 Tools for Teachers. [e-book]. Available through: Nik’s Learning
    Technology Blog < http://nikpeachey.blogspot.com/ >