Research Reports of Nagaoka National College of Tecnology, Vol.50, 2014

Paper

Effectiveness of Dictation in Improving English
Listening Ability of Japanese High School Students
Hirokazu YONEZAKI

Liberal Arts-English, Nagaoka National College of Technology

The aim of this paper is to examine the effectiveness of dictation in improving listening ability ofJapanese high school students. Japanese learners’ listening ability is quite poor, as is found in the data of a
recent TOEFL test. When Japanese learners of English find it more difficult to understand the spoken text
than they do with the written one of the same content, one probable hurdle they cannot overcome istranslation of the sounds into the corresponding linguistic forms. The paper focused on dictation because, todo dictation, the learner is first required to recognize the words and phrases in the sound chain before
writing them down. In the experiment, dictation was given eight times as treatment to the participants in theexperimental group. Their scores on the post-test improved significantly in comparison with the control
group. It can be concluded from the experiment that dictation is effective in improving English listening
ability of Japanese high school students.
Key Words: listening, dictation, word recognition

1. IntroductionMore focus on listening can be seen in Japanesehigh school educational scenes in recent years,
especially since the introduction of a listening test in2006 by the National Center for University Entrance
Examinations. In addition, according to the new
curriculum guidelines of the Ministry of Education,
Culture, Sports, Science, and Technology (MEXT),
which came into effect in 2013, priority in English
language education should be placed on nurturingcommunicative ability. The guidelines stipulate that
English classes, in principle, be conducted in
English in order to enhance the opportunities forstudents to be exposed to English, transformingclasses into real communication scenes. In the
background is the idea that English oral skills are
essential in order for the country to develop humanresources that can survive the 21st century where
globalization is ever more accelerated. In otherwords, in order to fully meet the demand of the
future society, teachers in high schools should keep
focusing not only on reading and writing but also on
speaking and listening.
There are two reasons why listening should be
more focused than the other three language skills.
One is that high school students will be required tounderstand spoken English, if all the English classes
are to be conducted in English only. The other is that
listening competence is the first and foremost
prerequisite in acquisition of language, be it that ofone’s mother tongue or that of a foreign one and that
one can acquire language by listening first1), 2).
Moreover the basis of language is sound and there
are languages without any written forms but nolanguage without sound1), 3) so that listening skills
must come first.
How can listening skills be effectively developed?
Multiple-choice listening exercises as well as
shadowing practices and reading aloud the texts are−21−

Hirokazu YONEZAKI

among popular methods to improve listening skills
and, as to dictation, there have been some positivearguments4), 5), 6), 7) as well as negative ones8), 9). In
this paper, we would like once again to focus on thistraditional activity of dictation, analyze it
scientifically, and examine it empirically throughresearch.

2. Listening and dictation
2. 1 Processes of foreign language listening
In listening, a learner is given a continuous andlinear sound chain in which his or her ears find noself-sufficient, meaningful, or clear-cut divisions.
As Saussure3) pointed out, the main characteristics ofthe sound chain is that it is linear and, unlike visualsignals, which can provide more than one dimension
simultaneously, auditory signals are available onlyin their linearity of time; they form a chain. When alearner listens, he or she cuts this continuous andlinear sound chain apart in a meaningful manner andinterprets the sound, which is no simple or easy
matter. Oller10) observed that “neither words nor
word-orders are supplied to the student in a clear andunambiguous form. Rather, the student is given asequence of sounds from which an intended set ofwords in sequence must be extracted” (p. 257). Thus,
when a learner listens, he or she tries to decode whata speaker has encoded, that is, what the speakermeans. In other words, to listen is to extract anintended set of words in sequence from a sequenceof seemingly meaningless linear sounds.
What competence is necessary, then, for a learner
to be successful in listening? First, let us focus on theprocesses of listening. An ordinary person usuallytakes the following three processes in listening:(1) the listener perceives sounds,(2) the listener decodes the sounds he or she has
perceived, recognizing them as certain linguistic
forms, and(3) the listener decodes the forms he or she has
recognized, this time comprehending the meaning of
the forms.
Let us call the processes “Perception,”“Recognition,” and “Comprehension,” respectively.
Figure 1 shows how this model works.

Fig. 1 Processes of listening.

Of these three listening processes, the first processof perception is of no difficulty for an ordinary
learner (We don’t discuss hearing defection in thispaper). As for recognition and comprehension,
however, the learner needs to undergo the following
processes. In the second process of recognition, thelearner converts the sounds into linguistic forms;
that is, recognize the forms, and in the third processof comprehension, the learner interprets the meaningof the forms he or she has just recognized andunderstands what the speaker means.
What a learner needs in recognition is, first,
competence to recognize the spoken words. Second,
he or she must recognize them in an instant. Third,
the learner must recognize the words and phrases, inthe order from the front to the end, linearly and inreal time. Fourth, the learner needs to havecompetence to keep the forms he or she has justdecoded in his or her working memory.
What a learner needs in comprehension, on theother hand, is, first, competence to instantly come up
with the meanings of the forms he or she has justrecognized. Second, the learner must grasp mutual
relationships between those individual forms andanalyze the syntax, finding out subjects, objects, andverbs. Third, based on the information the learnerhas garnered during the above two operations, he or
she must comprehensively understand the meaningof the whole sentence with the help of his or her
limited working memory. It goes without saying that
all these three operations must be conductedinstantly, simultaneously, and linearly.
2. 2 Difficulties in listening comprehension forJapanese learners
What Japanese learners find hard is the second
process of recognition rather than the third processof comprehension. When they cannot successfully
understand the spoken sentences, Japanese learners
most likely get trapped in the second process, unable−22−Effectiveness of Dictation in Improving English Listening Ability of Japanese High School Students

to translate the sounds they have perceived into theforms.
One reason for this failure to recognize the words
spoken would be the fact that Japanese learners are
more accustomed to reading the letters visually thanto listening to the sounds auditorily, incomprehending the sentences. They find it fairly
easy to understand the sentences if they are shown
the visual images of the content. When the input isvisual, Japanese learners have little difficulty inperceiving it as linguistic forms. Ito11) did anexperiment to see if there is a difference inunderstanding between a group of participants whojust listened and another group allowed to see thescript while listening and concluded that the greatest
obstacle for Japanese listeners is the conversion
from the sound to the corresponding linguistic
forms. One of the reasons for this is the EFL
environment in Japan. The Japanese don’t learn
English as a daily necessity as people in ESL do andchances are slim that they use English in theireveryday life. This means that their exposure to
English is limited in the school environment, where
they are most commonly required to read English.
Another difficulty felt by Japanese learners would
be related to a feature unique to listening; that is,they must comprehend the sentences or utterances
linearly, from the head of the sentence running down
to the end, in real time, within a limited amount oftime, or rather instantly, since they are not allowed
to go back along the utterances. However, thisdifficulty is not unique to listening and is supposedly
shared by learners required to read a text andcomprehend it or grasp its outline in a limited
amount of time. The main problem in listening forJapanese learners should be that they cannot
successfully recognize sounds as corresponding
linguistic forms.

defining the processes undergone by a learner when
he or she does dictation as follows. First, the learnermust discriminate phonological units; then makedecisions concerning word boundaries in order todiscover sequences of words and phrases that makesense, and finally translate this analysis into agraphemic representation. Figure 2 is a model ofdictation suggested by Oller 10).
In short, to do dictation is to unravel and segment,i.e., to decode, linear and continuous soundsequences or chains strung together without any
obvious boundaries, to recode and reconstruct themrather actively into words, phrases, and sentences,and to write them down. Before anything, it takes
word recognition, that is translation of the sound into
the corresponding linguistic forms, to do dictation
because, otherwise, it would be impossible forlisteners to write down the phonetic input.
2. 4 Merits of dictation
As has been suggested, Japanese learners ofEnglish have difficulty in recognizing sounds ascorresponding linguistic forms. If they were to getover this obstacle, some of the problems they face inlistening would be cleared up. Dictation is a method
to unravel and segment linear and continuous soundchains strung together without any obvious
boundaries, to reconstruct them rather actively intowords, phrases, and sentences, and to write them
down. Therefore, dictation may be a suitable methodthat can work directly on the weak point in listeningof Japanese learners, because it may help learners to
combine and internalize their auditory forms andvisual ones by requiring them to translate sounds
into forms and then forms into written forms.

2. 3 What is dictation?
According to Davis and Rinvolucri12), dictation isto decode the sounds of a language and to recodethem in writing. Morris13) called dictation an “active
re-interpretation by the learner” (p. 126). Also,
Oller10) argues that dictation activates the learner’sinternalized grammar of expectancy and improves
the learner’s integrated skills of the languages,−23−

BLACK BOX
Phonetic
Input⇒

Grammar ⇒ Graphology ⇒(Phonology,
Syntax,Semantics,
Pragmatics)

Fig. 2 Model of dictation by Oller10).

WrittenOutputHirokazu YONEZAKI

Ito11) indicated that “dictation practice using
natural English speech as cues from the early stages
is highly recommended” (p. 22) and suggested that
dictation is an effective way to string together anauditory image a learner has with a corresponding
visual one in written forms, saying that dictation
practice will help the learners realize and internalize
flexible correspondence between visual forms ofEnglish words and their spoken counterparts.
Moreover, in translating sounds into forms,
learners also need to make up for information they
have missed and must cope with reduced sounds in
unstressed words or syllables and with such soundchanges as are caused by assimilation, liaison, andelision. Fujinaga14) suggested that mistakes learners
make in listening are mainly caused by their failure
to listen to unstressed or weakened syllables and tocope with sound changes.
In order to successfully cope with these soundchanges or missing information, learners mustcompensate for them by themselves and must
actively reconstruct the original sentences uttered by
the speaker. By requiring learners to add missing
information and reconstruct the original forms and towrite them down, dictation helps learners develop askill of prediction, which is extremely important inlistening. This is another merit of dictation, because
to listen is to add extra information from the context,
speculate on the speaker’s intention and actively
reconstruct the original sentence, based on thelimited information given as sounds. In a nutshell,
listening is an active guesswork and this is a very
important aspect of listening.
In the past, dictation was dismissed asineffective15), 16). Most of the approaches to teachinglistening emphasized listening for gist or top-down
processing and listening strategies. In addition,
many published textbooks often relied on practicing
comprehension and word recognition was generally
neglected in favor of using the context to work outmeaning. Recently, however, dictation has beenreevaluated as a useful approach to listening as it
helps lead learners to better comprehension throughcorrect word recognition, even though there has also
been skepticism about dictation8), 9). Wilson17)
insisted on the importance of dictation, saying thatnumerous small misperceptions on the level of word

recognition have a cumulative effect, blocking thepath to correct comprehension. Field18) alsoemphasized the importance of recognizing words inconnected speech. In addition, Nation and Newton19)
claimed that dictations help make learners focus on
linguistic forms. In Japan, too, quite a few books
have recently been published on dictation.
Matsuoka20) insisted that dictation would enable
learners to listen accurately, saying, “When you aresatisfied, thinking you have grasped the outline of
the story, it is highly likely that you actually have notcomprehended it accurately. Dictation will enable
you to accurately comprehend every detail of thestory” (p. 7).
2. 5 Research question
Considering these discussions, it is probable that
dictation improves learners’ word recognition but
the effectiveness of dictation on English learners ofJapanese high schools has hardly yet been
empirically studied. Therefore, the following
research question has been formulated; “Is dictation
practice effective in improving English listening
ability of Japanese high school students?”

3. Experiment
3. 1 Method(1) Participants
The participants in the experimental group were
26 second-year female students of a private highschool in Nara Prefecture and those in the control
group were 43 first-year female students of the sameschool. Those in the experimental group had alreadystudied English more than four years at the time ofthe experiment, which was conducted in autumn,
2011 and their grades in English were generally
good. On the other hand, the participants in thecontrol group had studied English more than three
years at the time of the experiment and all of thembelong to a course which had some curricula unique
to its own, not shared by the other courses, such as
English conversation, English discussion, and many
classes taught by English native speakers. Students
in this course are highly motivated and the course
curriculum has already covered four and half years’−24−Effectiveness of Dictation in Improving English Listening Ability of Japanese High School Students

worth of study in English under the scheme offinishing all junior high school curricula in the firsttwo years.
(2) Procdure
The treatment given to the participants in theexperimental group was dictation of an English text
about 1000 words long, which was divided into eightparts. The students in the experimental group had
seven English classes a week, four for EnglishⅡ,and three for English Writing (mainly grammar).
The tests and the treatment were given in one of thethree English Writing classes. The students in thecontrol group also had seven English classes a week,
four for EnglishⅠ, two for EnglishⅡ, and one for
Oral Communication Ⅰ . The pre-test and thepost-test were conducted in one of the two English
Ⅱ classes. The whole experiment was conductedfrom September to November in 2011. First, thepre-test was given in both groups at the beginning of
September and after that those only in theexperimental group were assigned treatment, that is,
dictation practices given eight times for about twomonths; no treatment at all for the control group
except for regular English lessons. Finally, thepost-test for both groups was conducted in
November.
Sentences the participants were required to write
down in the dictations became gradually longer andtheir overall load heavier, as the treatment proceededfrom the first dictation practice to the eighth. The
time spent on dictation each time was 30 minutes.
The details were as follows. In the first phase of thetreatment, the participants were given afill-in-the-blanks-style dictation, with one word foreach blank, the first letter of the word provided as ahint. In the second phase, dictation style was exactly
the same as in the first except that there were nohints about the word’s first letter. From the third
phase to the fifth, the number of words for eachblank increased, from two to three, to four to fiveand in the sixth phase an unspecified number ofwords were required for each blank. In the last twophases, the participants were asked to write wholesentences. In the seventh, a full sentence from one
period to another was blanked out while in the eighthand final phase, the whole text must be written

down.
As to the speed of the CD for listening, a rather
slow speed of around 140 words per minute on
average was applied every time. No change wasmade about the speed as the treatment proceeded.
The number of times the participants listened to thetext each time was not specified. Nor was the timespent on dictation. The participants listened to thesame text as many times as possible in the 30-minute
frame. Also, there were no pauses applied for thetime to write down. Oller, Irvine, and Atai21) used thefollowing procedure for dictation. In the instructions
on the tape Oller et al. 21) included, “The first time
you hear each paragraph, just listen. The second time
there will be pauses for you to write down what you
hear. The third time you may check what you’ve
written” (p. 248). Besides, in this experiment, theparticipants were given big hints on punctuation
during the second time around; where the commas
and periods were was indicated21). However, thedictations would become unnecessarily easier if theparticipants were provided with information on
punctuation, so that no such methods were taken in
the present experiment. In order to secure the time
for dictation, instead, the CD was pushed back andforth many times instead of placing any pauses in
between. The CD was played through the text for acouple of times to finish the dictations.
Japanese translation of the text was distributed to
let the participants check the meanings after the
English script was given and correction of the
dictation was done. If the subjects could check themeanings of the script before the dictation activities,
the translation would become big hints just as
sub-titles would in the movies. This would help
them recognize and focus only on the forms of whatis spoken about, even though this might be justanother way of doing the whole thing. Finocchiaro
and Bonomo22) gave the summary of the text to thestudents in dictation practices beforehand and also
explained to them about difficult words, sentence
structures and the places of punctuation marks inadvance. They even read in chunks of the meaning,placing pauses, which might have been of great help
to the students in recognition of forms as well ascomprehension. This whole procedure, however,
was not the case with the experiment conducted in−25−

Hirokazu YONEZAKI

2011, because the present author considered suchhints would not help improve the learners’
recognition of the forms. No summaries, no
explanations, and no translations of the text were
provided beforehand.
Finally, as to the corrections of the dictations theparticipants had had, they were made to do thecorrections individually every time, before the script
was given. These corrections of the dictations bythemselves before the script was given, relying on
their own knowledge about English itself and thecontext they had understood, must have greatly
helped them realize the important roles theirknowledge about syntax and vocabulary played in
the process of listening. Davis & Rinvolucri12)
acknowledged the importance of correction by
students, saying, “correcting a dictation is astraightforward task which students are quite
capable of doing for themselves, extending theiractivity from the dictation into the correction phaseand providing them with opportunities to ‘overlearn’ the language” (p. 4). After the distribution of
the script, the participants were asked to check theircorrections and the meaning of the text, before
listening to the same text twice or thrice with special
attention to the parts they had missed or mademistakes on, so that they could identify the auditory
images with the written ones.
(3) Material
The material of the dictations was a full story of a
fantastic fiction Little Brother by Bruce Holland
Rogers, which appeared in the 2011 April issue ofEnglish Journal published by ALC Press. The
material was selected as dictation texts mainly
because its storyline was quite intriguing. As
Finocchiaro and Bonomo22) observed about
dictation, interesting and familiar materials motivate
learners when they write down. Morris13) also argues
that “the subject matter should be potentiallyinteresting to the learner” (p. 126).
The whole story of Little Brother, which had
1,087 words altogether, was divided into 8 parts. As
far as text length is concerned, too long texts or too
short ones should not be recommended13). The texts
must be “sufficiently long to demonstrate thelearner’s ability to reprocess the text” (p. 126) andalso should be long enough to “elicit a number of
errors that would form the basis of teaching points”(p. 126). Overlong texts are not suitable for
dictation, either, because they “are less economicalin terms of teaching points, as there are too manythings for the learner to concentrate on” (p.126). The
texts Morris13) used in her experiment varied from100 to 190 words in length and in the experiment,
the 1,087-word text was divided into 8 parts so thateach part had 136 words on average.
(4) Tests
The listening test used in the Make-up Test by the
National Center for University Entrance
Examinations in 2010 (30 minutes, 50 points) was
assigned to both the control and experimental groups
for both the pre-test and the post-test. The test wasmade up of 25 multiple-choice questions. It
consisted of four parts. In the first part, the students
were required to choose the right answers, referring
to pictures, figures, and numbers, while listening toshort dialogues. The second part consisted ofquestions in which the students must select the right
response to the last utterance after listening to shortdialogues. In the third part, longer dialogues were
given and a table or a figure must be completed, or
the right answer must be selected. In the final part,monologues were given, followed by several
questions pertaining to the content of themonologues and the right answer must be chosenfrom the available options.
Since the same test was used for both the pre-test
and the post-test, no correct answers were shown
after the tests. In addition, all the question booklets
as well as the answer sheets were collected. There
was about three-month hiatus between the pre-test
and the post-test so that there might be least practiceeffects possible from taking the same test twice.
Moreover, the participants were not allowed to takenotes either in the question booklet or on the answer
sheet during the test.
3. 2 Results(1) Descriptive statistics
Table 1 provides the descriptive statistics
concerning the results of the listening tests
conducted as the pre-test and the post-test for the−26−

Effectiveness of Dictation in Improving English Listening Ability of Japanese High School Students

control group and the experimental group. It gives
the means and the standard deviations of both tests
and the gains each participant achieved between the
two tests. The population of the control group was
43 and that of the experimental group 26, but outliersof highs and lows (M±2SD) for both groups were
excluded from the analysis so that the number ofsamples became 41 for the control group and 24 forthe experimental group.
Out of 50 points, standard deviations in the
pre-test were from 4.5 to 6.8, which means there
were rather great variations in the points eachparticipant in the two groups scored. Especially, inthe control group, which had roughly two distinct
types of students mixed together, with some having
much greater grades in English than in other subjects
and others who like English but whose goals are to
get into art colleges so that their English grades are
not so great, there were considerable variations inthe scores. Also, despite the treatment, several
students in the experimental group did worse in the
post-test than in the pre-test. In the main, judging
from the descriptive statistics, there seemed to be nopractice effect from using the same test for both the
pre-test and the post-test. Since there were only
multiple-choice questions in the test, however, there
must have been considerable number of rightanswers by guesswork. Figure 3 shows how muchthe average score of each group had improved
between the pre-test and the post-test.
Table 1 Results of the Pre-Test and the Post-Test for EachGroup
Pre-Test

Post-Test

M

(SD)

M

(SD)

M

(SD)

19.17

(6.78)

19.95(6.96)

0.78(7.36)

Experimental 24
32.58(4.55) 36.50
50 points each for the pre-test and the post-test(5.32)

3.92(4.84)

Groupn

Control

41

Gains

Table 2 Frequency distribution in gains from the pre-test to thepost-test for the control group
Gains
Frequency

n =41-14 -12 -10 -8

-6

-4

-2

0

2

4

6

8

10 12 14

1

4

2

4

3

2

6

4

3

4

1

3

2

0

2

Table 3 Frequency distribution in gains from the pre-test to thepost-test for the experimental group
Gains
Frequency

n =24-14 -12 -10 -8

-6

-4

-2

0

2

4

6

8

10 12 14

0

0

0

3

2

3

5

4

4

0

0

0

1

1

1

Fig. 3 Scores of the pre-test and the post-test and gains of eachgroup.

(2) Comparison of gains
Considering that there had been a remarkabledifference in listening levels between the control andexperimental groups before the experiment, gains
each participant had made from the pre-test to thepost-test were calculated and frequency distribution
for each group, control and experimental, was made.
Tables 2 and 3 show frequency distribution in gains
each participant had made, for the control group andfor the experimental group respectively.
As is shown in these two tables, in the control
group (n=41), the number of students who lost in
their scores was 17 (42%), the number of those
whose scores remained unchanged was 3 (7%), andthat of the students who gained was 21 (51%). In theexperimental group (n=24), on the other hand, thenumber of students who lost was 4 (17%), thenumber of those who remained unchanged 2 (8%),
and those who gained 18 (75%). Even thoughvariations in gains were rather wide, in general thetreatments had led to the improvement of listening
ability of each student in the experimental group.
In order to verify whether the difference in thetreatment had had any impact on each student’s
improvement in listening ability, gains werecompared between the two groups. Based on the dataof gains for both groups, an independent t-test was
conducted. Table 4 shows the result of the t-test.

−27−

Hirokazu YONEZAKI

Table 4 Inter-group comparison of gains: control vs.
experimental
Control Group
Gains

Experimental Group

M

(SD)

M

(SD)

t

p

r

0.78

(7.36)

3.92(4.84)

2.07

0.043

0.25

Table 4 shows that the difference in gains
between the two groups was statistically significant(p＜0.05) even though the effect size was small (r＞ .10). From this result, it is plausible that thetreatment of dictation practices given only to theexperimental group had had a statistically significant
effect on the group.
3. 3 Discussions
The research question was whether dictation
practice is effective in improving English listening
ability of Japanese high school students and,according to the data obtained from the experiment,
it is probable that dictation might be helpful inimproving their English listening skills.
The experimental group improved their scoresconsiderably in the post-test while in the control
group the gains in scores in the post-test were verysmall. However, considering the gap in the scores ofthe pre-test between the two groups, the differenceof the gains each group had made between the two
tests is important in measuring the effectiveness ofthe treatment. The result of the t-test concerning thegains shows that the dictation given to theexperimental group had made a statisticallysignificant difference in improving their listening
skills. As to the fact that it had only a small effectsize, however, there are some probable reasons.
The total amount of dictation as well as thenumber of times the practices were given was not
sufficient. The dictation was given only once aweek, 30 minutes each time, due mainly to therestrictions of the school curriculum. The time spanfor the experiment was not enough, either. Threemonths was not long enough and the dictations were
given only eight times, as there were mid-term tests
and school excursions between the pre-test and thepost-test.
Nevertheless, thanks to these dictation practices,
students said in a questionnaire conducted after theexperiment that they had realized many things about

listening. Many of the Japanese learners feel or evenpretend that they can listen and understand the
speaker pretty well even when they have missed out
on the details or cannot recognize all the linguistic
forms in the utterance. It is often the case that highschool students rarely realize the importance ofmaking up for missing information as well as ofdealing with sound changes when they listen, but
dictation practices did give them good opportunity to
become aware of the importance of these aspects.
In listening, it goes without saying that graspingan outline of the text or utterance is important, but
this is not all that is necessary in making acomprehensive and fundamental improvement inlistening comprehension. Dictation is an effective
method in improving a learner’s listening ability inthe sense that it develops several competences
necessary in listening such as predictive competence
and a rather complicated competence of filling up
missing information with cues a learner has scooped
up from the context and other hints, and of
combining them with what he or she has
successfully caught, in comprehending the whole
text or utterance.

4. Conclusion
This paper has focused on some of the properties
unique to listening and studied whether dictation iseffective in improving listening ability of Japaneselearners of English. According to the results of theexperiment, it is plausible that dictation helps
improve their listening ability. However, there are a
few improvements to be made as to the experiment.
In the experiment, there was a considerable gap inlistening comprehension levels between the control
group and the experimental group (that of theexperimental group was higher). Ideally, the control
group and the experimental group should have beenchosen so that the gap between the two groups wasnigh zero or the level of the former was higher thanthat of the latter. Besides, the experiment should
stretch over a sufficiently long period with many
more practices in between.
In addition, in order to strictly measure theeffectiveness of dictation itself on listening ability,−28−

Effectiveness of Dictation in Improving English Listening Ability of Japanese High School Students

listening practices similar to those conducted in theexperimental group but without dictation shouldhave been conducted in the control group. In thisexperiment, no such equivalent listening practices
were conducted in the control group so that it is notcertain whether the improvement in theexperimental group was due to the dictation itself orto the listening practice including dictation.
As to the way to conduct dictation practices, there
are several options in terms of when to give thescript, whether to give them a summary beforehandor not, whether to put pauses or not, how many times
learners should listen, and how much they should
write, to name a few. Especially, when they write
only partially, or fill in blanks, learners may dependon written parts of the text for comprehension, notexclusively on their listening9). This is very likely to
be true of Japanese learners, who are primarily
accustomed to reading for comprehension. If that
happens, their dictations completed may or may not
result purely from their listening to the text. How to
conduct dictation practices must be more thoroughly
examined.
Another aspect that must be reconsidered is how
to pick independent variables. There are several
possible ways for this. First, even though theparticipants had dictation practices once a week inthis experiment, it would be intriguing to study how
treatment would become more, or possibly less,effective in proportion to increased practices as well
as frequency or the time learners spend on dictation
per lesson. If further increased effectiveness is to be
confirmed, it will become a more authentic proof of
dictation having positive effects on learners’
listening ability. Second, to divide participants into
three groups, upper, middle, and lower groups basedon scores of the pre-test and see how effective
dictation practices are according to their listening
levels would also be interesting. Third, the level ofthe text used can also be an independent variable.
Effectiveness may change depending on whether the
text is easy, moderate, or difficult.
In every case mentioned above, more substantial,
long-term empirical research is necessary. This
research being a small step, further researchconcerning listening, listening and dictation, or
listening and other related training methods should

be conducted so that a more effective method of
improving listening ability can be developed.
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(Received September 9, 2014)−30−