Tue 31 Jul 2007
Here’s how to do a Rotation Dictation. It’s a lot of fun.
1. Put students in teams of three or four. One person will be a Writer. The others will be Runners.
2. Explain about the audio they will hear. A Rotation Dictation is a short piece of audio—in this case 45 words. When it reaches the end, it begins again. The audio features a woman named Venera from Tajikistan, and she talks about herself. The audio will repeat several times, for a total of about 2 minutes.
Play the audio quietly in a corner of the room, or even a bit outside of the room. A single Runner from each team will approach the audio player and listen.
They shouldn’t listen too long. Their job is to take a piece of this audio—several words or a whole sentence—and bring it back to their team. The Runner then tells the Writer what she heard.
Meanwhile the next Runner can go to the audio player and listen. Only one Runner per team can leave home base to listen.
The team will try to rebuild and reproduce the enitre audio text, writing it down.
At the end of two minutes, or more if necessary, teams will compare to see who has written the text most accurately.
Beforehand, or during (by writing them on the board) you could introduce students to these terms they might not get aurally: “shooting,” “skirmishes,” “civil strife,” “break out.”
Text: My name is Venera. I used to be a high school English teacher.  But then the civil strife broke out, so we had to stay at home for a couple of years ’cause there was much shooting, skirmishes. It was very dangerous to go outside.Â
