In this section, we will consider classroom activities and a variety of textbook exercises that make use of the above principles. We will also look at ways to modify textbook activities that don’t already include the ideas.
Dictation with a difference For many teachers, listening for specific information means dictation. Dictation as it is usually done presents some problems because it is almost completely bottom-up—students need to catch every word. In our native language we don’t process every word. So dictation is often asking students to do something in a foreign language that is unnatural and very difficult even in the first language. A related problem is that, since dictation is a “word level” exercise, the learners don’t need to think about overall meaning.
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The following exercise attempts to deal with those problems. Read the following and, in your mind, imagine the story.