Page 42 . . . How to Kill Three Birds with One Dictation by Eva Homolova Dictation is usually described as a teaching method by which the learners are exposed to some spoken input, and after holding it in their memory for a short time they write what they have heard. I personally agree with these reasons. However, the traditional dictation, which is quite frequently used in our schools, even with very young learners at the beginning of their exposure to English, can be a nightmare for students. The reason why this is so lies in the teachers themselves.
Many teachers consider dictation primarily to be a useful tool to keep students quiet and busy.
At the same time it offers an easy but restricted and unreliable way to assess students. In other words, a traditional dictation caters to the traditional teachers' needs. This attitude is enhanced in our country due to the frequency of use of dictation in the mother tongue, Slovak, for which a very strict marking scale for a prescriptive grammar system produces low scores. When a similar marking scale and attitude is transferred to English dictation, it is not surprising that learners react negatively. As stated earlier, Davis and Rinvolucri have suggested ways to resurrect dictation as a teaching tool.