Transcript

On Friday, I went out with a bunch of friends. After we met at the local café and ate until we couldn't eat another bite, we decided to go see a movie. We looked through the newspaper, trying to find a movie we all wanted to see. We talked and talked about it. No one could agree!

Finally, Pete mentioned that we could just go to his house and play cards. At that time, it was 9:30, and far to late to go to a movie. We all agreed. I happily returned home at 1:00. I had won the poker game!

Dictation

Rather than have your learner repeat what you said or have her use an existing written text to analyze certain components of speech, you could also have your learner write the words as you speak. Give your learner a blank piece of paper with instructions to write every word that she hears. Repeat each section or phrase several times, but do so at your regular rate of speech. Once the dictation is finished, read the entire text over again so your learner can check over her paper.

Dictation can be useful. It will help you determine what the learner hears when you speak and whether or not she is using certain English sounds interchangeably. It also can give you an idea of whether or not the learner is predicting, or using context clues to help fill the gaps where she cannot understand your speech.

Example

• Tutor states, " I want a pen. I need to write a letter."
• Learner writes, "I want a pin. I need to right a leader."

In this example, we can see that the learner had some difficulty discriminating between the vowel sounds in pin and pen. She may also have trouble with homonyms (words that sound the same but are spelt differently), and may not know that sometimes "t" is pronounced "d" when said with a Canadian or American accent.