有效的外语教学与评估手段
【Abstract】Dictation is an effective means of foreign language teaching as well as teaching evaluation. The scholars criticized the worthiness of its practicality and even were against it both at home and abroad at the beginning. As the language testing entered the psycho-socio-linguistic stage, Hymes’s theory of communicative competence and Oller’s theory of ‘Unitary Competence Hypothesis’ were put forward, dictation is applied widely in the foreign language classroom. As an effective teaching strategy, dictation has its own theory of the psycholinguistics. The language information processing system, and the application of the top-down and bottom-up approaches have exerted their significant functions in the whole process of dictation. Dictation is conducive to improve the receptive skill of ing and the productive skill of writing, which can also facilitate the students’ integrated linguistic competence. However, people have some prejudice against dictation. Hence, dictation fails to gain enough attention in the foreign language teaching. Based upon psycholinguistic theory, the paper analyses the language information processing system and the psychological process. And it also introduces six kinds of dictation and explores the significance of dictation in the foreign language teaching and teaching evaluation based on the analysis of some common errors made in dictation, and tries to meet the purpose of developing students’ integrated linguistic competence by cultivating their dictation ability through teaching.
【Key Words】dictation; FL teaching; FL teaching evaluation; skill
【摘要】听写既是一种有效的外语教学评估手段，也是有效的外语教学手段。尽管之前其实用价值受到了国内外学者的批评，甚至反对，但是听写在语言进入心理社会语言学时期后，以及海姆斯“交际能力”和欧勒“整体能力假说”等观点的提出，听写的交际性和适用性得到了广泛的应用。听写作为一种有效的教学策略有其心理语言学的理论依据。语言信息的处理过程、自上而下和自下而上两种策略的综合应用在听写的全过程中发挥了极其重要的作用。听写有助于提高语言的输入和输出水平，促进语言综合运用能力的提高。但人们对听写认识不足并有一定偏见，听写在外语教学中一直得不到应有的重视。
本文从心理语言学角度简要分析了语言信息的接受过程和学生听写认知心理过程，同时介绍听写的六种形式，并剖析听写中的一些常见错误，着重探讨听写在外语教学与评估过程中的意义，从而通过教学培养学生的听写能力，最终达到提高学生综合应用能力的目的。
【关键词】听写；外语教学；外语教学评估；技能
1 Introduction: the background of dictation
1.1 criticism of dictation
Dictation constitutes a part in some national English proficiency tests in China, such as Test of English Majors (TEM 4, TEM 8), and College English Test (CET 4, CET 6). As a traditional language-teaching device, dictation has gone its long way from criticism to approval over the decades in accordance with the development of foreign language teaching. Although many researchers approved of the use of dictation as a classroom exercise, dictation practice was firstly criticized as a simply copy practice and just a test of spelling.
“Spolsky identifies three stages in the recent history of language testing: the pre-scientific, the psychometric-structuralist, and the psycho-socio-linguistic.”[1] Critics of the “pre- scientific” approach to testing are already familiar, since language testing during this stage is thought of as testing the students' reception of language knowledge, which has a very low degree of reliability and validity. During the second stage, language is regarded as a series of structure form, symbolic system, and the learning of language is to obtain the skill to manipulate this system. Since structures and skills can be learned and trained separately, as for testing, the main test items are discrete point “objective” test formats. Discrete items should be constructed, each of which will ideally reveal the learner's ability to handle one level of the language in terms of one of the four skills: listening, speaking, reading, and writing.
Therefore, criticism of dictation in the past stemmed from the viewpoint influenced heavily by structural linguistics that favored testing the more discrete elements of language skills and wished to avoid the possibility of muddy measurement.
“Heaton commented on dictation: ‘a testing device it measures too many different language features to be effective in providing a means of assessing any one particular skill.’ This kind of test emphasizes strongly the accuracy and objectivity of scoring, which has a high reliability but on the other hand neglects the context and situation. Dictation measures a complex range of integrated skills and should not be regarded as constituting simply a test of spelling. The dictation of single words, nevertheless, can prove a fairly reliable test of spelling.” [2] Although dictation was considered as an effective means of testing device, Heaton still argued that dictation just test the students’ discrete elements of their language skills.
1.2 Approval of dictation
However, from the early 1970s, a new theory of language and language use began to exert a significant influence on language teaching and potentially on language testing. This was Hymes’s theory of communicative competence, which greatly expanded the scope of what was covered by an understanding of language and the ability to use language in context, particularly in terms of the social demands of performance. Hymes also saw that knowing a language was more than knowing its rules of grammar. Although the relevance of Hymes’s theory to language testing was recognized more or less immediately on its appearance, it took a decade for its actual impact on practice to be felt, in the development of communicative language tests. The theory of communicative competence represented a profound shift from a psychological perspective on language, which sees language as an internal phenomenon, to a sociological one, focusing on the external, social functions of language.
Therefore, approval of dictation testing also has its theoretical basis. As the language testing entered the third stage, which was called the psycho-socio-linguistic stage. In other word, communicative language testing has become more and more predominant. As the main purpose of language learning is to acquire communicative skills, which contain language competence, discourse competence and language use skill, the effective tests should be those that can put each specific skill together to test students’ overall ability of using language.
During the 1970s there was much excitement in the world of language testing about what was called the ‘Unitary Competence Hypothesis’. In brief, this was the suggestion that the nature of language ability was such that it was impossible to break it down into component parts. Although the hypothesis was eventually shown to be false, the notion of overall ability can, in some circumstances, be a useful concept. “One reason why various studies provided statistical support for the Unitary Competence Hypothesis was that they were concerned with the performance of groups rather than of individuals. Where people have had training in both speaking and writing, the better someone writes, the better they are likely to speak. So the way of measuring overall ability would of course not be to measure a variety of separate abilities and then to combine scores, but put each specific skill together.” [3] Dictation recommended in this paper has its advantage of being relatively easy to prepare, administer and score. It has also been the subjects of quite considerable research, and for that reason it also showed more advantages than many other tests.
“Dictation is a good old fashioned way to get students listening carefully, it needs no description.”[4] Dictation forms a testing item in the foreign language testing. Perhaps it is affirmed that dictation exercise is an effective testing and teaching device. However, in order that students can perform better on dictations in these proficiency tests, many teachers use dictation practice as an additional exercise. Dictation is largely confined to its use as a testing rather than a teaching device. The controversy whether dictation is a useful practice is existed recently. Therefore this paper is inclined to investigate that systematic dictation practice has a great deal of effect on students’ language skills, such as listening skills, grammatical and lexical knowledge, writing abilities, the abilities in taking dictations and so on.
2 Theoretical Reviews
In this part, the mechanism of dictation works in the foreign language learning including information processing system is reviewed in detail. And then the cognitive process of dictation will be described, followed by various types of dictation as a means of language teaching and a language teaching evaluation. Application of dictation in some national tests in China is also discussed.
2.1 Information processing system
This paper relies on the theories in psycholinguistics, which focus on the study of how individuals comprehend, produce, and acquire language. In this period, the psychological mechanisms, which are involved in using language, will be discussed. These mechanisms provide the basis for an integrated understanding of language use. As language processing is a joint product of linguistic principles and psychological mechanisms, some knowledge of the psychological mechanisms in language acquisition is very essential and will become the theoretical background of the paper.
“The acts of language comprehension are performed within the constraints of our information processing system that move information from one structure to the next. Such a system consists of three mental structural components, that is, sensory memory, working memory and permanent memory. Besides, there is a set of control processes that govern the flow of information. A general model of information processing system is presented as follows in Figure. ” [5]
As the first step in information processing sequence, the incoming information is represented in a literal, unanalyzed form in our sensory stores for at most of a few seconds, which will disappear rapidly, if it is not relevant to the current goals. Then the information is moving to the working memory, which is the temporary holding place for many cognitive acts with a longer period of time. It has both storage and processing functions. However, it can hold only approximately seven plus or minus two units of information. Permanent memory is a repository of our knowledge of the world. It holds all of the information we have retained from the past that is not currently active. They are used to interpret the new incoming information during the first two steps. If the incoming information is comprehended, in turn, the new incoming information may later be added to this storehouse of information. Finally, the incoming information is processed and retained.
2.2 The cognitive process of dictation
The human organism approaches any new problems with an existing set of cognitive structures, and through insight, logical thinking, and various forms of hypothesis testing, calls upon whatever prior experience he has had and whatever cognitive structures he possesses to attempt a solution.
Dictation testing, just like some of other testing items, undergoes the problem-solving process, which mainly focuses on internalizing the dictation materials the student hears, what he originally hears is merely continuous, meaningless sound signals like a series of telegram codes which need decoding by using his already existing knowledge and experience, so that they can become meaningful to the receiver. Otherwise these sounds are meaningless and will quickly slip away from the mind. If he has the ability to recognize these signals, they will be stored in the brain’s working memory system. In doing so, the premise is that the student understands most parts of the passage on a discourse level which is a higher level of language understanding. The student then makes use of his existing knowledge and experience, such as grammar, vocabulary and analysis skill to recognize the sound signals, encode them in his own language system, decode them, and put them into the working memory system in his brain. Now the meaningless sound signals will become meaningful contents. When the student tries to write the passage out, he has to encode the message again by using his existing knowledge and experience to reorganize them so that they are understandable to others. So, the student undergoes a complicated psychological and cognitive process, which involves his various language abilities and skills. The whole process of dictation checks the students’ both receptive and productive ability and is active and creative. [6]
According to the psycholinguistic model, the following process involved in dictation, which may obviously show the fact that the cognitive acts of dictation are performed within the constraints of our information processing system. When the student takes in a speech in a literal and unanalyzed state and holds an image of it in working memory. An attempt is made to organize what was heard into constituents, identifying their content and function. During this time, information from permanent memory is retrieved to recognize the incoming information patterns. Patterns recognition occurs when the incoming information matched with information retrieved from permanent memory. As the constituents are identified, they are used to construct propositions, grouping the props together to form a coherent message. Once the student has identified and reconstructed the prepositional meaning, these are held in permanent memory. And the form in which the meaning was originally received is deleted.
3 Types of Dictation
Dictation is a technique associated with traditional, accuracy-focused methodology: the teacher reads a text passage aloud right through and then with some pauses, and the students need to write down exactly what is said.
The following passages focus on the description of six other types of dictation practice that are adopted widely in the foreign language learning. They are: standard dictation, partial dictation, dito-comp and dictogloss, elicited Imitation, dictation with competing noise and graduated dictation.
3.1 Standard Dictation
Standard dictation, also called "ordinary dictation", is the well-known type of dictation. “It requires the students to write out the verbal sequences of material as spoken by the teacher or played with a recording. The text passage is usually read three times. This type of dictation is somewhat longer, but it provides a more valid measure of overall language.” [7]
For instance, in TEM 4 (Part II), students are required to dictate a 150 to 200-word passage. Altogether the passage is read four times. During the first and the fourth readings, the passage is read at normal speed, while in the second and third readings, the passage is read sentence by sentence, or phrase by phrase with intervals of 15 to 20 seconds. The students are instructed to listen and try to understand the meaning without writing anything in the first reading, to write down every word they hear from the tape in the second and third readings and to check their work in the last reading. Then the students are given 2 minutes to check through their work once more.
“The dictation passage consists of 15chunks. Students can be awarded one point if the chunk is correctly taken down but one minor mistake is allowed. If there are some major mistakes and the meaning of the chunk is not correctly conveyed, then they are not awarded the point for this chunk. The dictation part accounts for 15% of the total score of TEM 4. The objective of dictation in TEM 4 is to test students' ability in comprehension and writing, and correctness in spelling and punctuations. In TEM 4, dictation is highly related with students' overall scores ” [8]
3.2 Partial Dictation
Partial dictation, which is also called “spot dictation”, is similar to standard dictation, except that the students have been given a print copy of a passage in which certain words and phrase have been omitted. As the passage is read, the students must listen to the spoken material carefully and fill in the blanks in time. It is considered as a valid pragmatic testing measure because it requires subjects to interpret what they hear as part of natural spoken discourse, and hence subjects' global language proficiency can be tapped. “Johansson concludes that partial dictation is a valid and reliable test measure of listening comprehension and implies that because of the high correlations with other measures of foreign language proficiency in a foreign language.” [9]
Compound-dictation or spot-dictation began to be used in CET 4 in 1997. It is a combination of partial dictation and dicto-comp. The objective is to test students' listening comprehension and certain ability in written expression. A written version of a passage of about 200 words is printed on the test paper with seven content words and three long sentences deleted. The passage is read three times. For the first reading, the students listen for general ideas. For the second reading, the students are required to fill in the blanks numbered from S1 to S7 with the exact words they hear from the tape. There is a one or two second interval right after the deleted word. For the blanks numbered S8 to S10, the students are required to fill in the missing information. The interval after each deleted sentence is about 15 seconds. The students can either write in exact forms they hear from the tape or reconstruct sentences with their own words whose meanings are similar to those conveyed by the speaker. And for the third reading, the students listen again to check their writings.
3.3 Dicto-comp and Dictogloss
Another type of dictation is what has sometimes been called “dictation composition”. It offers an interesting variation on word-for-word dictation. The exercise is a mixed skill one. Students are conducted to listen to a text passage one or more times while it is read by the teacher or played on tape at a conversational rate. Then they are asked to reconstruct the passage from memory what they have heard.
“Dicto-comp is also known as dictogloss, but in fact is quite distinct from dictation in both procedure and objectives. In dictogloss, a passage is read at normal speed to the students who take some notes with the familiar words or note some key words as they listen. Sometimes, the passage is read two times for the students. And, in small groups, the students discuss and compare their words with their partner. After that, students should gather their key words to reconstruct their written versions of the original text. Through both the task of reconstruction and the following analysis, students refine their understanding of the language they have used.” [10]
3.4 Elicited Imitation
According to Oller, elicited imitation is an auditory task that is similar to dictation in terms of the passage read to the students but different from respect to the response mode. In this case, the students hear the passage, the same as in dictation, but the students are asked to repeat it what they have heard instead of writing down the passage. Then the verbatim tasks and more retelling tasks have been used. The teachers need to try to elicit some pieces of information. Although some may consider the task superficial or mechanical, it is also a good way to explore the working memory, which requires a deep level of processing and requires the students to repeat what he or she has heard. The task is classified as a kind of dictation-type activity because the students have to produce what he or she has heard, of course not in written form as in standard dictation, but in oral form. This technique is quite effective with children and preliterate adults. It can be used quite effectively in the foreign language teaching as well as testing, which is also developed as a device for the oral teachers to improve their students’ listening skills and spoken skills in the class.
3.5 Dictation with Competing Noise
This kind of dictation is also called "white noise dictation". It involves leaving gaps usually replaced with a noise or a whistle, so on and so forth in the text. As a classroom exercise it follows basically four steps: firstly, the teacher reads the passage once at a normal speed for the students to understand the meaning; secondly, for the second slow reading, some words or phrases are replaced by noise, the students are asked to copy the passage as a dictation, filling in each gap with a word or phrase they think it appropriately; thirdly, the passage is presented for the third time at normal speed, still leaving the gaps with the noise; and fourthly, the students discuss and compare their writing with other classmates.
From above statements, it is obvious that this procedure forces students to think hard about the meaning of what they hear since the missing words cannot be accurately supplied unless the passage is understood.
3.6 Graduated Dictation
Graduated dictation is first developed as a practical improvement on traditional dictation tests. In graduated dictation, the number of words in each chunk is progressively increased from initial two, four and six words up to total of 21 words. As a test item, graduated dictation is reliable, valid and scalable and it provides items that are both easy enough for the beginning students and challenging enough for the most advanced.
As we all know, different types of dictation have their own functions and advantages. They can meet the needs of the teacher who uses dictation as a teaching device or testing device, as well as the needs of the students who use it as a learning technique. They have their own theories when they are applied in the foreign language learning.
4 Common dictation errors and its countermeasures
According to the level of linguistic structure, the errors can be classified into three types: phonology, lexis and grammar.
4.1 Phonemic errors
This type of errors normally results from the weakness of discriminating between individual sounds. Although some errors can be classified into the scope of grammar, they are actually made by the sound. This kind of errors can be subdivided into four types: (1) omission, e.g. neibouring for neighbouring; inexable for inexorable; passionly for passionately; coolty for cruelty; (2) substitution, e.g. gray for green; greet for great; in wonder action for in one direction; they thought for therefore. (3) addition, e.g. explaination for explanation; spacement for specimen; pegent for pigeon; experimenter for experiment; and (4) reordering, e.g. forieng for foreign; tradegy for tragedy; Tokoy for Tokyo; desides for besides.
4.2 Lexical errors
The students focus less on the relevance between the pronunciation and the spelling. When the word is pronounced correctly, the students cannot recall it quickly, and even forget it thoroughly. In other word, some lexical errors normally result from phoneme errors. (1) Omission of content words also occurs when the stress is weaker, e.g. closely for relately; festival for first of all; each a vase for each of us; at every wave for at everywhere; under knees for underneath, etc. (2) Lexical substitutions, some students would like write some words after what they heard, e.g. rack for wreck; stumbled, stepped for slumped; a mail man in the post office for a male man in the post office; on beauty in business for on duty and business, etc. They are semantically appropriate but phonologically incorrect, because their knowledge enables them to write something suitable with the context. However, in this way, it can demonstrate that comprehension of the total context is involved dictation.
4.3 Grammatical errors
The grammar, which the students have learned, may be only superficial. Since the knowledge of grammar was not internalized and turn into their own knowledge which they can dominate it with freedom. For this reason, the students cannot avoid these errors apparent in the dictation exercises; what is more, they cannot find out them after checking out. This type of errors includes errors of reordering (e.g. the dedicated equally sportsman for the equally dedicated sportsman; there usually are for they are usually, etc.), restructuring (e.g. I am supposed to for I don't suppose to; had been to climb for had been climbed, etc.), morphology (e.g. he send for he sends; it’s for its; at their watchs for at their watches, join listening for enjoy listening, etc.) and function words (e.g. as potential bait for as a potential bait; a old man for an old man, etc.)
From the error analysis, they suggest that dictations have involved the students in an active reinterpretation of material presented to them aurally and dictation as a testing technique has revealed much about the language proficiency of the learners in a most economical way. The process of dictation reflects everything that happens when the language is applied in to communication, which involved many kinds of language skills. Therefore, students must use their knowledge on all levels of the language system in order to produce a correct response and it is impossible to provide a correct response without comprehension. Some errors of misunderstanding in lexical and structural items were already "known" but are made because the students fail to process the information in a fast and accurate way. Thus, students who made these errors need some ways to train in essential listening skills, and teachers can use dictation exercise as an ideal means to develop their students’ working memory and gradually lengthen the intervals to add to amount of information to be processed in the chunks. To further illustrate this point, the countermeasures to improve dictation are as follow:
4.4 Bottom-up and Top-down approaches
Linguistic information is handled by the two alternative approaches— bottom-up and top-down approaches, which work within the structure of the information processing system. These are two main approaches that students may adopt in dealing with dictation.
“‘Bottom-up’ processing is defined as that which proceeds from the lowest level to the highest level of processing in such a way that all of the lower levels of processing operate without influence from the higher level. [11] “ According to this view, phonemic units are decoded and linked together to form words, words are linked together to form phrases, and phrases are linked together to form complete meaningful texts. In other words, it proceeds from the most detailed features of discourse towards the most general. The process is one in which meaning itself is derived as a last step in the process. It assumes that the student takes in and stores messages sequentially, one sound, word, phrase and utterance at a time.” [12]
“‘Top-down’ processing model, in contrast, is defined as an approach which proceeds from the highest level to the lowest level of processing.” [13] It starts with the general ideas of a discourse and fills in details later. “This view suggests that the student actively reconstructs the original meaning of the speaker using incoming sounds as clues. In this reconstruction process, the speaker uses prior knowledge of the context and situation within which the listening task takes place to makes sense of what he hears. Context of situation includes such things as knowledge of the topic at hand, the speaker or speakers and their relationship to the situation as well as to each other, and prior events.” [14] For instance, a sentence context may influence the identification of words within that sentence.
4.5 Roles of chunking in dictation
From the figure in 2.1, we have seen how sensory memory, working memory and permanent memory are applied and influence each other in dictation in the foreign language learning. However, working memory is only able to hold about seven units of information. This could simply be seven words, but since there are many sentences that are longer than this, and we need some way to deal immediately with more than seven words. Consequently, the only one way we can do this is to chunk the words into grammatical constituents such as noun or verb phrases, thereby reducing the storage burden to perhaps two or three constituents. Chunking is a process of making up the single word into the meaningful constituents, which requires the students’ knowledge of syntax, phonetics and semantics. When students do the dictation exercise, the function of chunking develops widely, plays a significant role in ing comprehension and helps improve the skill of listening. Then the working memory may be able to hold more than seven words. The interval between listening and writing hold only several seconds, so the more constituents the students can chunk during the limited time, the more information they can receive. The role of chunking in dictation seems to be the same as the skill we master in the reading. “In the chunking process, some of the information is reorganized into larger units and other information may be shown by the general idea captured and the reproductions of the students in dictation. The task of reproduction requires students to pay attention both to the form and the meaning of the incoming information using their limited working memory.” [15] Therefore, to some extent, what students perform in the dictation may lie on their ability of chunking. Students are often instructed to capture the general idea of the dictation material after read the passage for the first time, which is usually used to try to avoid the limited working memory. However, since the working memory is limited in capacity, what has been captured may not be carried intact into the reproducing stage. The reason is that what has been captured may not facilitate the reproductions, since the tension between form retention and meaning retention still exists extrasensory perception for students with low language proficiency levels. The students who pay more attention on form in the reproduction stage may fail to utilize the general ideas they have captured. For this reason, the students, who want to perform well in dictation, need to do more dictation exercises in the process of language learning.
4.6 Retell in dictation
Some students may do well in the short sentences in their dictation, but be not good at the long sentences. Even the student may say, “I can hear clear the material and understand it, but I cannot write it out correctly.” As the working memory is limited in its seize and it is not enough for us to hold so much information at a time. Since the material is continuously input, but some information, which has been decoded and still store in the memory, cannot be output in time. The new incoming information needs to store and occupy a place in the working memory, so the decoded information is forced to remove out, and disappear rapidly. However, retell may be considered as a solution to this problem, that is to say, read what he hears as soon as possible. Retell can deal with the relation between listening and writing. When the student retells the material, every word would lengthen its time in the working memory and is received thoroughly once again. Although it seems to be lack of comprehension with the material, in fact, the student comprehends it unconsciously when he read it carefully. It may be very difficult for the student to master this skill, but it can meet the requirement of dictation adequately. Moreover, it enables the student to pay attention both to the form and meaning of the incoming information using their limited working memory.
5 Advantages of Dictation in teaching and teaching evaluation
5.1 Dictation has been regarded as a useful classroom activity
“Davis.Paul&Mario.Rinvolucri develop more variant types of dictation exercises, and list ten good reasons to use dictation: (1) the students are active during the exercise; (2) the students are active after the exercise; (3) dictation leads to oral communicative activities; (4) dictation fosters unconscious thinking; (5) dictation copes with mixed-ability groups; (6) dictation deals with large groups; (7) dictation will often calm groups; (8) dictation is safe for the non-native teacher; (9) for English, it is a technically useful exercise; (10) dictation gives access to interesting text.” [16]
For this reason, many types of dictation have been developed to serve the pedagogical purposes. Dictation is applied as a means of teaching device in the foreign language classroom.
5.2 Dictation can be used to acquire the knowledge
According to Krashen, there are two ways for the students to develop their knowledge of foreign language: ‘acquisition’ and ‘learning’. “Krashen asserts that one acquires language in only one way------by exposure to comprehensible input. If the input contains forms and structures just beyond the learner’s current level of competence in the language, then both comprehension and acquisition will occur. The Input Hypothesis is simply stated: humans acquire language in only one way ------by understanding messages or by receiving ‘comprehensible input’. That is to say, language acquisition depends upon trying to comprehend what other people are saying. Provided that the learner hears meaningful speech and endeavors to understand it, acquisition will occur.” [17] In a word, to be useful to the learner, the input must be neither too difficult to understand nor too easy. Listening material is one kind of the input material. Therefore, dictation, one kind of listening material, which is just beyond the learner’s current level, can be applied to improve students’ language competence. It is a good way for the students to acquire the knowledge of language.
5.3 Dictation was regarded as a means of measuring students’ listening comprehension
Integrative tests are concerned with a global view of proficiency------an underlying language competence or ‘grammar of expectancy’, which is argued every learner possesses regardless of the purpose for which the language is being learnt. Dictation, a major of integrative test, was previously regarded solely as a means of measuring students’ skills of listening comprehension. Thus, the complex elements involved in tests of dictation were largely overlooked until fairly recently. The integrated skills involved in the tests of dictation include auditory discrimination, the auditory memory span, spelling, the recognition of sound segments, a familiarity with the grammatical and lexical patterning of the language, and overall textual comprehension.
Thus, dictation tests can prove good predictors of global language ability even though some recent research has found that dictation tends to measure lower-order language skill such as straightforward comprehension rather than the higher-order skills such as inference. The dictation of longer pieces of discourse is recommended as being preferable to the dictation of shorter word groups as in the traditional dictations of the past. Used in this way, dictation involves a dynamic process of analysis by synthesis, drawing on a learner’s ‘grammar of expectancy’ and resulting in the constructive processing of the message heard. Moreover, dictation draws on the learner’s ability to use all the systems of language in conjunction with knowledge of the word, context, etc.
If there no close relationship between the sounds of a language and the symbols representing them, it may be possible to understand what is being spoken without being able to write it down. However, in English, where there is a fairly close relationship between the sounds and the spelling system, it is sometimes possible to recognize the individual sound elements without fully understanding the meaning of what is spoken. Indeed, some applied linguists and teachers argue that dictation encourages the students to focus his or her attention too much the individual sounds rather than the meaning of the text as a whole on the concentration on single sound segments in itself is sufficient to impair the auditory memory span, thus making it difficult for the students to retain everything they hear. [18]
5.4 Dictation testing has high degree of reliability and validity
Reliability and validity are two fundamental principles used to examine whether a language testing is successful or not. “The ideal test should, of course, be both reliable and valid. Reliability is a necessary characteristic of any good test: for it to be valid at all, a test must first be reliable as a measuring instrument. To be reliable, a test must be consistent in its measure-menu, hence the favoring of objective tests, which allow for a wide field to be covered.” [19] The concerns of reliability and validity can be seen as leading to two complementary objectives in designing and developing tests: (1) to minimize the effects of measurement error, and (2) to maximize the effects of the language abilities we want to measure. Comparatively speaking, dictation is on objective test, which is more reliable than subjective tests and thus meets the above two requirements. Someone has done experiment on dictation and found that their reliability and validity degree both reach 0.7-0.8 (the highest is 1.00).
5.5 Dictation has positive backwash effect and practical effect
Test serves as a tool for teaching. Testing is closely related with teaching. Tests may be constructed primarily as device to reinforce learning and to motivate the student, or primarily as a means of assessing the student's performance, but on the other hand, Heaton claimed that “testing has been one of the greatest single beneficial forces in changing the direction of language teaching in many areas, and in encouraging the more responsive teachers to examine not only their own teaching methods but also the language they are teaching".[20] According to Oller, research showed that dictation test results were powerful predictors of language ability as measured by other kinds of language tests. [21]
The use of dictation item in tests, thus students have the opportunity not only to discriminate between words, sentences and discourses to improve pronunciation and phonology discrimination, but also by long-term training help enhance writing and literal expression ability, and to strengthen memory and increase learning efficiency. In regard to the answering form, dictation demands students to write down the whole passage or some words or sentences without any choices, which impedes students' possibility of guessing and the ideas of getting marks by mere luck. They will study harder to improve their real language proficiency.
Dictation is practicable to construct, administer, economical to set and mark. In addition, this kind of test item can be widely used in classroom test which can motivate students by providing them with short-term goals toward which to work, by clarifying for them what learning outcomes are expected, and by providing them with feedback concerning their learning process. The teacher may also know how well students grasp certain contents, such as grammatical or lexical form or the comprehension of a certain paragraph. Dictation can be used for freshmen as a placement test at the beginning of the text to predict the students’ listening comprehension and other language abilities through which teachers will consider the speed of explanation in class, the extent to which they should use more difficult words, whether Chinese explanation is needed.
6 Conclusion
In conclusion, dictation is considered as a means of teaching and teaching evaluation, which goes a long way from criticism to approval. As the development of foreign language test, dictation is used widely to test students’ overall ability of using language in the psycho-socio-linguistic stage. There are many types of dictation exercise, which can be adopted on the basis of the students’ proficiency level. Dictation is a complicated, active and creative process. The acts of language comprehension are performed within the constraints of our information processing system. Dictation can reflect more faithfully how people process language in real life. Although variety of errors are made by the student, if they can be trained as a listening skill in the process of language learning, they would gain a better performance in dictation.
Despite some disapprovals of dictation, it is a kind of integrative testing which can check students' various skills, thus meeting the requirements of the present-day communicative language teaching. If it is constructed well according to language testing theories, it will provide a positive backwash effect on language teaching, thus improving language teaching and learning.
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[4] David Cross. A practical Handbook of Language Teaching[M]. UK: Prentice Hall International Limited, 1992. P249
[5] David W. Carroll. Psychology of Language[M]. Beijing: Foreign Language Teaching and Research Press, 2000. P41
[6] 毕晓莉. 听写的意义[J]. 玉溪师范学院学报，2004, (6). P49
[7] 朱嫣然. 听写在外语教学中的作用[J]. 浙江师大学报，2002, (2).P116
[8] Syllabus of TEM 4, 2004.
[9] Rebecca M. Valette. Modern Language Testing[M]. USA: Hard court Brace Jovanovich, Inc, 1977. P243
[10] 同[5]P249
[11] 同[5]P53
[12] 舒白梅. Modern Foreign language Teaching Methodology[M]. China: Shanghai Foreign Language Education Press, 2005. P142
[13] 同[5]P54
[14] 同[12]P142
[15] 李俊兰. 从听写入手提高学生的英语综合应用能力[J]. 天津工程师范学院学报, 2005, P65
[16] Davis.Paul & Mario Rinvolucri. Dictation[M]. Cambridge: Cambridge university Press,1988.
[17] Vivian Cook. Linguistic and Second Language Acquisiton[M]. Shanghai: Foreign Language Teaching and Research Press, 2000.P51
[18] 同[2]P17
[19] 同[2]P159
[20] 同[2]P151
[21] Oller. J. Language Tests at school[M]. London: Longman,1979.
] Arthur Hughes. Testing for Language Teachers[M]. Beijing: Foreign Language Teaching and Research Press, 2000. P62
[4] David Cross. A practical Handbook of Language Teaching[M]. UK: Prentice Hall International Limited, 1992. P249
[5] David W. Carroll. Psychology of Language[M]. Beijing: Foreign Language Teaching and Research Press, 2000. P41
[6] 毕晓莉. 听写的意义[J]. 玉溪师范学院学报，2004, (6). P49
[7] 朱嫣然. 听写在外语教学中的作用[J]. 浙江师大学报，2002, (2).P116
[8] Syllabus of TEM 4, 2004.
[9] Rebecca M. Valette. Modern Language Testing[M]. USA: Hard court Brace Jovanovich, Inc, 1977. P243
[10] 同[5]P249
[11] 同[5]P53
[12] 舒白梅. Modern Foreign language Teaching Methodology[M]. China: Shanghai Foreign Language Education Press, 2005. P142
[13] 同[5]P54
[14] 同[12]P142
[15] 李俊兰. 从听写入手提高学生的英语综合应用能力[J]. 天津工程师范学院学报, 2005, P65
[16] Davis.Paul & Mario Rinvolucri. Dictation[M]. Cambridge: Cambridge university Press,1988.
[17] Vivian Cook. Linguistic and Second Language Acquisiton[M]. Shanghai: Foreign Language Teaching and Research Press, 2000.P51
[18] 同[2]P17
[19] 同[2]P159
[20] 同[2]P151
[21] Oller. J. Language Tests at school[M]. London: Longman,1979.
guage Teachers[M]. Beijing: Foreign Language Teaching and Research Press, 2000. P62
[4] David Cross. A practical Handbook of Language Teaching[M]. UK: Prentice Hall International Limited, 1992. P249
[5] David W. Carroll. Psychology of Language[M]. Beijing: Foreign Language Teaching and Research Press, 2000. P41
[6] 毕晓莉. 听写的意义[J]. 玉溪师范学院学报，2004, (6). P49
[7] 朱嫣然. 听写在外语教学中的作用[J]. 浙江师大学报，2002, (2).P116
[8] Syllabus of TEM 4, 2004.
[9] Rebecca M. Valette. Modern Language Testing[M]. USA: Hard court Brace Jovanovich, Inc, 1977. P243
[10] 同[5]P249
[11] 同[5]P53
[12] 舒白梅. Modern Foreign language Teaching Methodology[M]. China: Shanghai Foreign Language Education Press, 2005. P142
[13] 同[5]P54
[14] 同[12]P142
[15] 李俊兰. 从听写入手提高学生的英语综合应用能力[J]. 天津工程师范学院学报, 2005, P65
[16] Davis.Paul & Mario Rinvolucri. Dictation[M]. Cambridge: Cambridge university Press,1988.
[17] Vivian Cook. Linguistic and Second Language Acquisiton[M]. Shanghai: Foreign Language Teaching and Research Press, 2000.P51
[18] 同[2]P17
[19] 同[2]P159
[20] 同[2]P151
[21] Oller. J. Language Tests at school[M]. London: Longman,1979.
