The effect of providing online dictation exercises on students’ dictation marks
Lam Shun-leung, Paul Lam, Christèle Joly and Nathalie Iseli
Chinese University of Hong Kong
Hong Kong SAR, China
Dictation, a widely applied learning device in language education, is considered as bringing many benefits to students. For example, Alkire (2002) argues that ‘dictation shows students the kinds of spelling error they are prone to make’ and ‘can be prepared for any level’. In addition, dictation can enhance students’ understanding of vocabulary and then match comprehension with linguistic knowledge, as some students have good oral comprehension but cannot master the written code. This involves combining different skills together -- understanding and writing -- both of which require a good command of vocabulary, grammar and listening.
Technology in general enhances the learning experience of students. One example of blended learning is ‘combining instructional modalities (or delivery media)’ (Graham 2006, 4). The introduction of online dictation activities would seem likely to provide students with a useful blended learning opportunity as they can work on their listening and spelling capabilities at times and spaces unrestricted by the classroom-based curriculum. As noted by Duell, Naganuma and Suigita (2005), online dictation does not need the presence of a teacher and the material is available round the clock. In their study, they also reported that, in the feedback collected, students found the use of an online dictation tool to be interesting.
In this study, we investigated the value of online dictation as a blended learning tool for a group of students studying French at the beginner level at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, in an effort to find out whether the exercises promoted a sense of autonomy in learning. The teachers on the French language courses developed a set of over 30 online self-learning exercises which involved students in: listening to short audio clips in French; dictating their versions of the script in given spaces; and then viewing model answer pre-installed in the system. The design was simple but it was considered probable that there would be very significant learning benefits as the students were practising only once a week at most in class.
Multiple sources of information were collected to evaluate the online dictation exercises. First, the study compared and contrasted students’ performance on class dictations in 2006–07 (baseline data with no online dictation as self-learning resources) with that in 2008-09 (which included online dictation). The data for 2007-08 were not considered because online dictation was introduced gradually in that year. We also administered surveys and met the students in focus group meetings.
The following issues were considered:
The findings on the whole were positive. The students took advantage of the additional resources and also appreciated the usefulness of these new online learning opportunities. However, while the online resources were viewed by them as engaging and were highly valued, the preliminary findings show little concrete evidence that this experience led to measurable performance enhancement in classroom dictation tasks. The results tend to echo the challenges revealed in many other studies which have tried to identify evidence of learning benefits in e-learning strategies. In a naturalistic education setting, many factors seem to affect the performance of students on a course.