Chapter III Meeting of Spellings
start, most children will acquire fairly quickly the desired expertise. Indeed, older learners can be expected to master the association of spellings with sounds in a few hours. Section 3 Oral Dictation 1 This short section will be concerned with oral dictation, which depends on sound, in contrast to Visual Dictation, which is carried out silently through use of the pointer and depends on sight. 2 Anyone who has codified his own speech will recognize that the signs met so far correspond to sounds. Anyone who has succeeded in reading by Visual Dictation knows that every word has one aspect that is part of their spoken language (sounds), and another that is part of their written language (signs). If Words in Color has been used effectively up to this point, the pupils would now be able to hear sounds as they always have done while reading and, at the same time, evoke the correct images belonging to written speech. Testing this new skill is the purpose of oral dictation. At the same time, oral dictation should prove useful in training learners to code speech exactly as they may later do as a stenographer or secretary. 3 During the first exercises with oral dictation, the Word Charts may be left in front of the pupils for reference. Later, this support may be withdrawn and, later still, the Phonic Code, too, can be removed, since the real test of retention is that all this remains part of one’s imagery and can be easily re-evoked when needed. In oral dictation, the teacher utters a sentence in a clear and natural voice, so that its meaning as a whole is conveyed by the speed, pitch, and intonation clues which are part of the integrated experience of hearing speech. The learner can then use the meaning of the utterance as a whole as the key to separating into words, and putting down in writing, the flow of sound. Unless an image of a word is generated in the learner’s mind, however, he will not be able to reproduce it in writing. Oral dictation is, therefore, a test of the learner’s mastery over spelling via understanding 153