Dictation by Heart

writinggrammaraccuracymainindividuallow prep15-20 min

Students memorise a short text, write it from memory, then compare against the original — the gap between versions drives attention to form.

Procedure

Give students a short, well-formed text (3–5 sentences) containing target language.
Students read it silently for 2 minutes to memorise as much as possible.
Remove or cover the text.
Students write everything they can remember.
Return the original. Students compare and mark differences — circling missing words, correcting form errors, noting structural gaps.
Brief class discussion: what did people forget or change, and why?

Choose texts dense with target language — conditional clauses, passive structures, a cluster of collocations. The more relevant the form, the more the comparison reveals.
Vary the memorisation time by level: 90 seconds for advanced, 3 minutes for lower-intermediate.
A second round immediately after the comparison substantially closes the gap — consider two passes in the same lesson for high-impact form practice.
Distinct from Read and Look Up in that students memorise the whole text rather than reading a line at a time; the accuracy demand is higher and the gap between memory and original is more revealing.

Students memorise a short text, write it from memory, then compare against the original — the gap between versions drives attention to form.

Give students a short, well-formed text (3–5 sentences) containing target language.
Students read it silently for 2 minutes to memorise as much as possible.
Remove or cover the text.
Students write everything they can remember.
Return the original. Students compare and mark differences — circling missing words, correcting form errors, noting structural gaps.
Brief class discussion: what did people forget or change, and why?

Choose texts dense with target language — conditional clauses, passive structures, a cluster of collocations. The more relevant the form, the more the comparison reveals.
Vary the memorisation time by level: 90 seconds for advanced, 3 minutes for lower-intermediate.
A second round immediately after the comparison substantially closes the gap — consider two passes in the same lesson for high-impact form practice.
Distinct from Read and Look Up in that students memorise the whole text rather than reading a line at a time; the accuracy demand is higher and the gap between memory and original is more revealing.