How Regular Dictations

Affect Student Writing

By Fabin Prado

Introduction

Classroom Context

Pioneer Preparatory School opened its doors in 2009 in Maryvale

It is a predominantly Latino, low-SES neighborhood
Roughly 615 students (650 max) (K-6)

Image url:
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/a/aa/Phoenix_Urban_Villages_Maryvale_highlighted.svg/250px-Phoenix_Urban_Villages_Maryvale_high
lighted.svg.png

94% Free or
Reduced Lunch

1:1 computers

23 third
graders
All are bilingual
12 male, 11 female
22 Spanish speakers, 1 Vietnamese speaker

Purpose and Research

Question

The Need to
Develop Writers

Students struggle to put

their ideas to paper
Writing helps students
enter academic
discussions and builds
critical thinking

Past Interventions
Sentence frames
Hamburger paragraphs

Dictations as a Model for

Writing
Incorporation of various elements of
writing such as spelling, grammar,
conventions, and writing strategies
for informational texts

Question: To what
extent do regular
dictations affect
student writing?

Literature Review

Dictations in Academia
Recent research on dictations in the U.S. is
very scarce.

2 Articles that Capture the Gist

Brueckner and Cutright (1927)

Brueckner, L., & Cutright, P. (1927). Dictation in Teaching Punctuation: A Study to Determine its
Effectiveness. The Elementary English Review, (9), 265-284.

Study Takeaways

Small-group dictations in which students were tested on grammar

Control group did not have improvement in writing skills as the dictation groups
did
Researcher said they could target dictations to aid in grammar lessons

Jafarpur and Yamini (1993)

Jafarpur, A., & Yamini, M. (1993). Does Practice with Dictation Improve Language Skills?.
Study Takeaways

Inconclusive evidence if dictations actually helped students learn

Measured only content already learned by the students

Methods

Triangulation
Dictation Scores

Observations

Writing
Scores

Qualitative: teacher
observations
Quantitative: student
dictation scores and student
writing scores

Intervention Rundown

On Fridays, after a week of content, students copied word-for-word an

informational paragraph of the content and paragraph structured
integrated.
On Mondays, students were given writing prompts about what they had
learned.
Both were graded using rubrics of four points and plotted overtime.
Intervention was whole-class but teacher observations were used to
analyze the data for six specific students

Week of
Content

Dictation

Writing

Returned
student
work

Results

Discussion

Takeaways
Very minimal gains in six interventions
In analyzing data of individual students, dictations affirmed
student strengths instead of improving writing quality
Dictations can be useful if they are used for formative
assessments, not teaching strategy
Moving forward, students led dictations may yield better
results (student speaks, teacher transcribes thoughts)

Appendix

Class Artifacts

Note: Did not use 3rd or 5th rows

Sources
Brueckner, L., & Cutright, P. (1927). Dictation in Teaching Punctuation: A Study to Determine its Effectiveness. The Elementary English
Review, (9), 265-284.
Court, K. (2014). Tutor feedback on draft essays: developing students academic writing and
subject knowledge. Journal Of Further & Higher Education, 38(3), 327-345.
Cotterall, S., & Cohen, R. (2003). Scaffolding for second language writers: producing an
academic essay. ELT Journal: English Language Teaching Journal, 57(2), 158.
Gritter, K., Beers, S., & Knaus, R. W. (2013). Teacher Scaffolding of Academic Language in an
Advanced Placement U.S. History Class. Journal Of Adolescent & Adult Literacy, 56(5),
409-418.

Sources Cont.
Jafarpur, A., & Yamini, M. (1993). Does practice with dictation improve language skills?.
Kang, H., Thompson, J., & Windschitl, M. (2014). Creating Opportunities for Students to Show What They Know: The Role of
Scaffolding in Assessment Tasks. Science Education, 98(4), 674-704.
Lembke, E., Deno, S. L., & Hall, K. (2003). Identifying an indicator of growth in early writing proficiency for elementary school students.
Assessment for Effective Intervention, 28(3)
Peverly, S. T., Vekaria, P. C., Reddington, L. A., Sumowski, J. F., Johnson, K. R., & Ramsay, C. M. (2013). The Relationship of
Handwriting Speed, Working Memory, Language Comprehension and Outlines to Lecture Note-taking and Test-taking among
College Students. Applied Cognitive Psychology, 27(1), 115-126.

Sources Cont.
Wetzels, S. J., Kester, L., van Merrinboer, J. G., & Broers, N. J. (2011). The influence of prior knowledge on the retrieval-directed
function of note taking in prior knowledge activation. British Journal Of Educational Psychology, 81(2), 274-291
Wyngaard, S., & Gehrke, R. (1996). Responding to Audience: Using Rubrics to Teach and Assess Writing. The English Journal, 85(6),
67-70.