The Teaching of Reading

GALILA, RAJAN
CALO, REY

Running Dictation: Activity to Engage Students in

Set-up: Prepare a short text (3-5 sentences) that incorporates the target grammar. You can also
use an excerpt from the textbook that contains the grammar point. Print a copy in a 16-point font
for easy reading. Place the text at the front of the room. It remains there throughout the activity.
(For larger classes, you may need 3-5 copies placed around the room.)

Groups: Students can work in pairs or threes. One person is the designated writer. The other
partner is the runner. They can only read and speak. (If you have groups of three, the two non-
writers take turns being the runner.)

Action: When time starts, one runner from each group “runs” to the front and memorizes as
much text as possible. He or she then returns to the writer and reports what was read. The writer
writes. This continues until the text is complete.

Rules: The students should try to reproduce the text exactly – including correct spelling and
punctuation. With advanced groups, fine points like italics, parentheses, or other features must be
accurate. The first group to finish with a correct text is the winner.

Review: After everyone finishes, pass out copies of the text. Student can check their work, note
the target grammar structure, and do a follow-up activity.

How To Use Running Dictations in EFL Classes

A running dictation is a fun reading, speaking, listening and writing task that I first learnt about
from the classic book Dictation: New Methods, New Possibilities by Paul Davies and Mario
Rinvolucri. Students are put in pairs. One of the pair stays seated and the other goes backwards
and forwards to a worksheet that is out of sight on a wall until they have given the sitting student
all they need to complete the task on their worksheet. As well as being good practice for young
learners who can read and write, it is perhaps the most physical game that most groups of adult
students will be happy doing. The activity is most commonly done as an actual dictation of a
whole (short) text, but there are many other variations at the end of this article.
The theory behind running dictations and making sure it works

The theory behind a running dictation is that students keeping the text in their memories as they
walk or run back and forth should help them learn something about the language in it. The
exchanges with the person sitting down can also be quite complex and useful genuine
communication. To ensure that these two advantages are fully exploited, you’ll need to make
sure that both students have a chance to do the running role, that the text has plenty of language
worth remembering, and that they have access to useful language to use during the interactions
with their partner (especially checking and clarifying phrases). Language worth learning through
this approach includes grammatical forms (e.g. Unreal Past or past tenses), vocabulary (e.g.
collocations), and pronunciation (e.g. minimal pairs).

You may also want to do further revision of the language in the text and/ or the interactional
language once they have both sat down. This can be done by getting students to put words into a
gapped version of the same text (from memory and their language knowledge) and/ or asking
them to explain why particular forms are used.

There are also some potential problems with running dictations that you will want to avoid. One
is the resistance of some students to the game-like and running around aspects of this activity.
The best responses to this (potential) reaction are to call it an activity rather than a game, not to
use the word “running”, to keep it short, and/ or to explain the language learning justification
between it.

In terms of making it work as a game, you’ll need to make sure that:

 The runners won’t block each other while running or trying to see the text
 The text cannot be seen by the person writing but that the distance to “run” is fairly short
 The runner can’t see what their seated partner is writing
 Overhearing other groups is not too much of a problem
 The teacher can monitor both ends of the process (runners both reading from the text and
speaking to their partners)
 Teams have more or less the same distance to “run” as each other
 There is a plan for how to end the game that keeps everyone busy but doesn’t happen when
most teams are nowhere near finishing
 The rules are set up to produce maximum communication
 The task is carefully timed and at the right level for the students

With young learners and other enthusiastic classes, you’ll also need to make sure that there is
nothing to bump into.

To keep the texts out of sight in a room with limited space, you’ll need to hide the texts in some
way. For instance, you could have a piece of paper on top that needs to be raised each time they
look at it (during which time their backs will be blocking the text from the seated people), have
the texts on the classroom wall just outside the classroom, or have the texts facing away from the
seated people (e.g. sellotaped to the whiteboard side of the teacher’s desk). The seated people
should be given something to lean their paper on so that they can angle it away from the person
who is dictating to them, e.g. their textbook or a clipboard.
To save the problem of overhearing, you can ask different groups to start at different points in
the text (later going on to do the first parts too), or put at least two different texts on the wall so
that groups next to each other aren’t working on the same thing (making sure that both the texts
are the same level and have the same amount of useful language).

Ways of making sure that most or all teams are at a satisfying point when you bring the running
dictation to a close include telling teams who think they have finished how many things they
need to correct, letting them analyse the language used after they think they have finished, or
giving them discussion questions related to the process they just went through (e.g. asking them
to talk about ways of learning collocations).

The main thing you will have to think about rule-wise is how much help they will be allowed to
give each other. Translation should obviously be discouraged, but whether you allow them to
spell out difficult words or not depends on how useful that part of the communication would be
to your students. Something similar is true of allowing them to read things back or not – “Can I
read that back?” is an incredibly useful phrase that could do with practice, but in some classes it
might take away the need for the dictating student to speak clearly.

Variations on a running dictation

The simplest and most common variation on a running dictation is not using a continuous text.
Instead, you can use standalone sentences, idioms, collocations, single words, or even single
sounds. Most of those variations work better if the person who is listening has a worksheet which
isn’t blank, something that also helps with timing and grading. The seated students’ worksheet
could be a gapped version of what the running student sees, things that that they should match to
what their partner dictates to them, or something with differences to what they will hear which
they should spot. For example, the sheet on the wall could have body idioms with the body parts
taken out and the person sitting down could write them down with the body words on their
worksheet put in where they think they should be.

A more radical variation is for them to not dictate everything, but rather choose and dictate the
most important things. For example, give them just two minutes to dictate their chosen parts of a
text and then sit down together to try and reconstruct the whole thing (a variation on another
famous TEFL dictating activity called a “Dictogloss” or “Grammar dictation”). This could lead
onto discussion of the kinds of words students should listen out for when listening for gist
(content words rather than grammar words).

An even more unusual variation is to not have students paired up. Instead, students memorise
something from the text on the wall and then try to find the person sitting down who needs that
information, making it something like a mingling task but with half the class sitting down.

Running Dictation - Short Lesson

1.) Take your students to an open area or school hall. Place a paragraph of suitable English on
the wall at one end. Sit the students with pens and paper at the other.
2.) To demonstrate the game, the teacher runs to the paragraph, puts a line through as much as
he/she can remember and runs back to the students. The teacher then tells the students what she
remembers. The students write down what they hear the teacher say. Then the teacher runs back
for more. When the teacher has finished, he/she shows the paragraph to the students who can
correct what they wrote.
3.) Now the teacher gets the students to repeat this process. The teacher chooses a student to run
to a new paragraph, cross out what he/she can remember and the run back to tell the other
students, who write down what they hear. Then the teacher selects another student and so on,
until the paragraph is finished. The teacher shows the paragraph to the students who can correct
what they wrote.
4.) Now the teacher divides the class into groups. Each group has a copy of a new paragraph in
different parts of the hall. One student from each group is designated as the Runner. Another
student from each group is designated as the Scribe. The Runner runs to the paragraph, crosses
out what he/she can remember and then returns to tell the group. The group then tells the Scribe
what to write. (Note: the Runner cannot write it; he/she can only say or spell what she/he hears.)
5.) The first group finished puts up their hands. Everybody stops. The teacher quickly checks the
answer. If everything is correct, that group wins. Otherwise the activity continues....

*** Start with a small, simple paragraph and work up as the students become more enthusiastic.
*** The activity has many benefits: reading, writing, listening and speaking. It also encourages
students to work and discuss in a group.
*** Even the noise and confusion is beneficial as students must try to listen and speak English in
a less than perfect environment (which is how much "real" conversation takes place).
*** And the students have fun!