Dictogloss and its variations

DICTOGLOSS AND ITS VARIATIONS:

Dictogloss is a pedagogical strategy which was developed initially by Ruth Wajnryb in 1990, for use with high school students but, it can be adapted to any other age groups. It is considered effective with English learners since the activities focus on fluency and academic purposes, supporting listening abilities and recalling or gathering information to reconstruct or versions of the original text in a written form and sometimes orally afterwards. At first they just listen, but on subsequent readings they take down as much of the text as possible; then, either in pairs or small groups they share and combine their notations in order to build both meaning and literacy.

According to Wajnryb, the Dictogloss is the teacher's voice reading an entry of a text and during it the students record the words or parts of the section that is read; finally, a collaborative reconstruction of the notes and a new text is released characterized by being an approximation to the original text. It should be noted that the author makes the distinction between a traditional dictation and Dictogloss since the difference is that the second requires the versatility of the student to reconstruct what has been dictated and not a verbatim copy like the first one does.

Dictogloss is considered a branch of the task-based approach, as it allows students construct hypotheses, argue them, and modify them over time short. In addition, its objective is for the student to use the knowledge that has on the foreign language to paraphrase, analyze the outline of the paraphrase and, finally, correct and learn new terms in favor of a clearer understanding of what is exposed in the target language.

Dictogloss also aims to increase the correct words to communicate what is desired during the learning process and in the same way recognize coherence and cohesion in communication.

This activity provides an authentic reason for communication and practice in re-creating, rewriting and re-reading an English text. It also has two variations described below:

CLOZE DICTATION:

To refer to the term "cloze dictation", the author Crawley (1980) presents a "readability" approach to this variant of Dictogloss, its name is derived from "Closure", related to the tendency of human beings to complete a pattern that looks familiar but not quite finished.

This technique was not only limited to readability, appearing to have a long number of uses, both practical and theoretical. Such author also adheres to different elements that are part of the development of the "Cloze" process, among which the set of understanding, intelligence, existing knowledge and learning.

Cloze Dictation arises as a teaching technique that is used to know what the maximum point of understanding that students achieve about a text, in which certain words are missing from the written version that students receive. Therefore students must listen to the oral material and fill in the spaces in the written version.

PICTOGLOSS:

Pictogloss or Picture Dictation seeks that the student make use of the knowledge they have of a foreign language during the exercise. Pictogloss consists of describing in detail a drawing with vocabulary that has been worked in a pre-listening stage, then the students draw according to what they listen, comparing the drawings that each one has made and then drawing once again to get a more accurate and detailed picture according to the description.