a. Jig-saw dictation
Pupils listened to a short text read by the teacher. They wrote down chunks of the text in the form of phrases or
short sentences. This helped pupils develop their skills in understanding and listening to the gist of the text.
b. Partial dictation
Pupils worked in pairs. A text was divided in half. One read his/ her half of the text for his/ her partner to dictate.
Two of them worked out the whole text. This provided pupils with an opportunity to complete a reading,
speaking and writing task.
c. Running dictation
Pupils worked in groups of five to six. One member was responsible for writing the text while other members
took turns to read out the text sentence by sentence. This provided pupils with an opportunity to work
co-operatively.
d. Grammar dictation
Pupils worked in groups of four to five. They listened to a short text read by the teacher at normal speed and
jotted down some important words. Then they pooled their resources, discussed and worked together to compose
the text as nearest to the original text as possible. This enabled pupils to work out a speaking and writing task
collaboratively.
e. Composition dictation
Pupils worked in groups of three to four. They listened to a text read by the teacher at normal speed and jotted
down familiar words as they listened. Then they made use of their limited number of isolated words or fragments
of sentences to reconstruct their version. Their texts did not need to be exactly the same as the original text.
Pupils were allowed to discuss, compare, seek help from peers and edit their texts before the final submission.
Examples of pupils’ work and their activities were shown at Appendix 1 and 2.