39 ESL Vocabulary Activities: For Teenagers and Adults - Jackie Bolen, Jennifer Booker Smith 2015

Running dictation
Games and activities for all levels

Skills: Reading/Speaking/Writing/Listening

Time: 10-20 minutes

Materials: Printed sentences, Blu-tack

This is always a popular activity that students really enjoy but the one requirement is that students must be able to read reasonably well. It can work really well as a warm-up game to begin your class, using vocabulary that you taught in the previous one. Incorporate 5-10 key words into a dialogue of some kind, or use one from the textbook.

Running dictation requires a bit of prep before students arrive. Ideally, you will have two areas: one for the sentences to be posted, and another for the “secretaries” to sit and write. Runners can only dictate, they cannot write for the secretary. Spelling words out is fine. You need to emphasize to the runners that they can only whisper to their partners and not speak in a normal voice. If you let students speak in their normal voices, they will start shouting from across the room. I have a one-strike policy—any voice above a whisper and the game is over for that team.

Students should be divided into two main groups: runners/dictators and secretaries. The runners should find the sentence strips/story and memorize as much as they can. Then, they will run back to their secretaries and dictate what they remember. They will repeat running and dictating until they have correctly dictated the entire passage.

For lower-level students, I use individual sentences unrelated to each other, one sentence per strip and I use vocabulary and grammar from the current lesson. I make the activity more challenging by using sentence strips that must be dictated and then arranged correctly into a dialogue or story. Another way to make the activity more challenging is to post the passage intact but use a letter or a list so the runner must dictate the proper layout.

I have even done this activity with multiple classes (ages) at the same time by using different colored paper for the strips. Each team was told which color paper to look for. I posted the strips in three classrooms, and the secretaries were located in the fourth classroom. I have even hidden some of the strips under desks to make it more like a treasure hunt.

Procedure:

1. Before students arrive, prepare the classroom, by moving the desks into a “secretary area” and leaving an open area for students to run back and forth. In the open area, post the sentence strips or story on the wall.

2. When students arrive, divide them into pairs.

3. Have one student from each pair sit with a pencil and paper. Have the other run back and forth between the sentence strips and his/her partner, until he/she has dictated the entire passage. Emphasize that students must only whisper and not talk or yell.

4. You may need to remind students periodically that the runner can spell aloud but cannot write anything.

5. If the sentence strips form a story, have the partners work together to correctly order the sentences.

6. Finally, have a volunteer read the entire passage while the other groups check their work.