Dictogloss in the L2 Classroom

My name is Nicholas McFarland. I am studying linguistics at the University of Iowa and one of my primary interests is SLA. Specifically, I am interested in creating more efficient classrooms through the identification and resolution of problems historically inherent of formal education.

One such problem is the following: it is hard for a large group of students to simultaneously synthesize speaking, listening, writing, and reading. Therefore, these four language skills are often practiced in isolation or in pairs. Fortunately, there is a language-learning activity that targets and bolsters all four of those language-learning skills, thus filling the above gap in the classroom dynamic: that activity is called the "dictogloss."

The dictogloss is a great collaborative activity that will allow your students to practice listening, speaking, writing, and reading, all to achieve a single goal. The premise is simple: the instructor will read aloud a sample of the target language at a normal pace two or three times, allowing students to take notes on what they hear. Afterwards, students are paired up to discuss what they heard and wrote, and they are tasked to produce a written copy of the sample that the instructor had read aloud: the more accurate, the better. After a few minutes, the pairs may merge to create small groups of four students, and so on and so forth until the whole class has had the chance to collaborate in various sizes of groups. Finally, the instructor ought to reveal the original written sample so that students may compare it with their reproductions, and a final reading aloud of the sample may finalize the activity.

Overall, the dictogloss serves well to synthesize the four core language skills all in one task-oriented activity. It is also advantageous in its adaptability to different modes and types of instructions. The dictogloss can easily be made into a competitive activity with some tweaking, and it is not too reliant on any physical material, allowing ease of use either in person or conducted virtually via Zoom.

I hope that this project will help instructors to recognize why the dictogloss is useful in the second language classroom and to use the dictogloss themselves if they so choose. Thank you for reading, and please consider viewing my video on page three containing a sample reading of a dictogloss, accompanied by an example of the work students may create during the activity.

Cited works:

Rigby, L & Ríos, V. Issues in Language Pedagogy: Teacher Development & Classroom Teaching.

https://coerll.utexas.edu/methods/pdf/wr/writing-activity-spanish.pdf