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Pierre Jelenc
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Linz
Guest
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| Posted: Mon Nov 07, 2005 10:11 pm
Post subject: Re: An English equivalent to the French 'dictee'? |
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Raymond S. Wise wrote:
| Quote: | So, my question for everyone, Americans, British, and others, is if
you had something like the French dictée when you were young.
Basically, the dictée is having a class of students take down
dictation in longhand in order to check students' spelling. (In
French, this amounts to a sort of grammar check as well, since so
many words can be pronounced the same but are spelled differently to
show different tenses or to show gender.)
|
We definitely did this in French and German language classes up to O Level.
I also remember having English dictation now and again in my first year of
secondary school - we had to punctuate the passages ourselves and there were
invariably questions at the end to test our comprehension. |
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jerry_friedman@yahoo.com
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| Posted: Tue Nov 08, 2005 3:35 am
Post subject: Re: An English equivalent to the French 'dictee'? |
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Arcadian Rises wrote:
....
| Quote: | An adjacent question:
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I like "adjacent".
| Quote: | is "dictee" also the term used or musical dictation? i.e.when the
teacher plays or sings a tune and the class takes it down on that
special music papers?
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Good God, imagine being able to do that!
--
Jerry Friedman can read and write music.
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Paul Wolff
Guest
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| Posted: Tue Nov 08, 2005 4:46 am
Post subject: Re: An English equivalent to the French 'dictee'? |
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In message <436f2e33$0$349$da0feed9@news.zen.co.uk>, Philip Eden
<philipATweatherHYPHENukDOTcom@?.?.invalid> writes
| Quote: |
"Laura F. Spira" <laura@DRAGONspira.fsbusiness.co.uk> wrote:
Reflecting on this process, I am now struggling to remember text books. We
didn't have any at primary school - we copied down material from the
blackboard. At secondary school we certainly had them for Maths and Latin
but I can't remember any others. I wonder when textbooks became standard
in all subjects?
We certainly did. Some were handed out and signed for at the
beginning of term, but others, in short supply, were handed out
during each lesson, sometimes shared between two. For English
we used a series of books by Ronald Ridout who had taught at
our school in an earlier decade. Books were usually referred to
by the author's name: we'd be instructed, for instance, to "Turn
to Ridout page 37."
We had a French textbook by Whitmarsh. I know that because the French |
master always told us to get out our "Marais Blanc(s)".
--
Paul
In bocca al Lupo! |
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Mike Lyle
Guest
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| Posted: Tue Nov 08, 2005 5:12 am
Post subject: Re: An English equivalent to the French 'dictee'? |
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the Omrud wrote:
| Quote: | Mark Brader <msb@vex.net> spake thusly:
Raymond Wise:
So, my question for everyone, Americans, British, and others, is
if
you had something like the French dictée when you were young.
Basically, the dictée is having a class of students take down
dictation in longhand in order to check students' spelling...
Well, we had that in French class. But not in any sort of English
class I was in, if that's what you're asking about. Not in Latin
class either.
Same here. We had it in French lessons at high school. I don't
remember having it in English lessons.
|
We certainly had dictée in French, and dictation in English, from the
earliest years -- age nine for French, probably six for English. We
had it occasionally in Latin, but it wouldn't have been particularly
helpful, as Latin spelling is so predictable; I don't remember it in
Greek, but I couldn't swear to that -- there's only a vague memory of
writing down isolated words to practise the alphabet. After the age
of, I suppose, 13 all that stopped, and the French one was replaced
by "reproduction": a very valuable exercise in which a passage or
story was read out a couple of times, and then we had to write it in
our own words in the target language, sometimes with, and sometimes
without, a preliminary q&a session in the language. (Hot from biology
lessons, we relished the name, and I enjoyed the activity, too -- the
nearest I'd get to the real thing for a long time.) Both happened
much later with German and Russian, too, but I didn't do very much of
either. I have another vague feeling that the "reproduction"
technique sometimes appeared in English lessons, but, again, I
couldn't affirm to it. My Latin and Greek prose composition was
always dodgy, and I suspect it might have been better if the same
method had been used.
--
Mike. |
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annandale
Guest
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| Posted: Tue Nov 08, 2005 5:44 am
Post subject: Re: An English equivalent to the French 'dictee'? |
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On Mon, 07 Nov 2005 07:56:20 -0500, Don Phillipson wrote:
| Quote: | "Raymond S. Wise" <mplsray@my-deja.com> wrote in message
news:1131340694.907758.124100@f14g2000cwb.googlegroups.com...
. . . "dictee" is unknown in the US, and that it was probably
unknown in Great Britain as well. Someone replied that when he was
young, he had taken dictation in class. This surprised me.
English Dictation was normal in junior classes (age 9 to 10) of
the (private) school I attended in London in the 1940s, and
French Dictee in all classes (age 9 to 14.)
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We had English dictation in primary school in Hobart, Tasmania, and
French dictee in the first two years of high school there, but I don't
recall having French dictee in my third year of high school (1934) in New
Zealand, or later.
--
CWAM. |
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Adrian Bailey
Guest
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| Posted: Tue Nov 08, 2005 5:49 am
Post subject: Re: An English equivalent to the French 'dictee'? |
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"Philip Eden" <philipATweatherHYPHENukDOTcom> wrote in message
news:436f2c83$0$358$da0feed9@news.zen.co.uk...
| Quote: | "Raymond S. Wise" <mplsray@my-deja.com> wrote in message
news:1131340694.907758.124100@f14g2000cwb.googlegroups.com...
In the newsgroup fr.lettres.langue.anglaise I expressed the opinion
that the "dictée" is unknown in the US, and that it was probably
unknown in Great Britain as well. Someone replied that when he was
young, he had taken dictation in class. This surprised me.
So, my question for everyone, Americans, British, and others, is if you
had something like the French dictée when you were young. Basically,
the dictée is having a class of students take down dictation in
longhand in order to check students' spelling. (In French, this amounts
to a sort of grammar check as well, since so many words can be
pronounced the same but are spelled differently to show different
tenses or to show gender.)
Here (Beds, UK) we certainly had these exercises in French
and, less frequently, in German at school in the late-1960s. They
actually formed part of the GCE O-Level examinations in those
subjects.
|
And they were still part of the exam in 1982.
Looking back, it occurs to me that the classes I sat in in the early 80s had
more in common with the classes of a century earlier than with the classes
of today. Maybe that's a slight exaggeration - what do you think? I wonder
how many kids today are as petrified of getting into trouble as I was? How
many kids today sit on seats that are attached to their desks? How many have
liver for lunch? How many schools have a house tug-of-war competition? How
many state-school pupils are taught by teachers who wear gowns? How many
state-school pupils have Divinity and Latin on their timetable?
There were two big changes at school before I left: it went comprehensive,
and the first computers arrived. Two big contributors to the change of
atmosphere.
| Quote: | But not in English.
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No.
| Quote: | About ten or twelve years ago the BBC Radio 4 programme
"Word of Mouth" sang the praises of the "dictée"
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It is fun.
Adrian |
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Mike Lyle
Guest
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| Posted: Tue Nov 08, 2005 5:52 am
Post subject: Re: An English equivalent to the French 'dictee'? |
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John Dean wrote:
| Quote: | Laura F. Spira wrote:
[...]
Reflecting on this process, I am now struggling to remember text
books. We didn't have any at primary school - we copied down
material
from the blackboard. At secondary school we certainly had them for
Maths and Latin but I can't remember any others. I wonder when
textbooks became standard in all subjects?
I remember them in secondary education (mid fifities to mid
sixties)
for pretty much all subjects.
[...]
Providing and maintaining brown paper covers for your custodianship
of any given text book was required.
[...] |
Flotsam and jetsam of a transworld education follows:
The First and Second Primers. Viking ship on cover of second.
Pronounced "primmer" by red-blooded fair-skinned Australian
berserkers of all ages.
French book known at the prep school as "Toto" from name of leading
character, real title unknown.
Hall & Knight's Algy, preceded by "the red book", whose author's name
and refs to Euclid I deplorably forget.
Marten & Carter's History: flint implements to the Industrial
Revolution in x easy volumes. Arthur burning cakes, ect ect.
Superseded, as one aged, by Brett.
The Clarendon Latin Course. Black and official-looking: clearly by
the same man who invented the Constitution.
That red atlas for young Australians: Tasmania got a whole page, when
Ceylon didn't. Lots of red on the political maps, though.
Kennedy's Shortbread Eating Primer, superseded by Kennedy's Latin
Primer (the unexpurgated adult version, which I have now sadly lost.
Very sadly, as it would deal with nonnulli AUE enquiries in short
order.)
North and Hillard for Latin, Hillard and Botting for Gk. Mountfield's
Bradley's Arnold, natch.
WTF were the Latin and Greek verse composition books called? Waste of
bloody time they were, I can tell you. I can rupture a hexameter to
buggery without the least help from any smug textbook.
Abbott and Mansfield, Grecian equivalent of Kennedy (who captures
gerundive, and leads it into captivity, chiz.)
Latin For Today. (I wish I could find a set: it was very good.)
Who the hell was the geog? Sort of _Our World for the Young
Empire-Builder_ kind of thing, but without bare-breasted colonial
subjects, chiz.
Sex-ed booklet by skool chaplain, hem hem!
Arse of Parnassus poetry book.
Perhaps more interesting were the _non_-textbooks in the huge
bookcase with doors. Baden Powell's miscellaneous writings on
paddling one's own canoe, falling out of one's own tree, and
generally not being beastly were pretty good; but the ones I liked
best were the ones on how to conquer the virgin woods and gallop the
lone prairies and stuff of America: it was probably about 1957 that I
discovered you didn't need to take a case of Sheffield-made tomahawks
to barter with the locals, and that doing the Indian stroke with your
paddle wasn't an indispensable skill when you wanted to get to
Detroit.
--
Mike. |
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Guest
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| Posted: Tue Nov 08, 2005 6:10 am
Post subject: Re: An English equivalent to the French 'dictee'? |
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I never heard of this before!
In Indiana in the 1950s, we had spelling classes, with a textbook.
Each weekly lesson had 10 words (third grade -- 8-year-olds) increasing
to 30 words (eighth grade -- 14-year-olds). We would use the words in
sentences, talk about their derivation, talk about their parts (roots
and affixes), etc. And, each week, we would have a spelling test, for
which we would each take out a sheet of paper, write our names at the
top, fold it down the middle, number the lines in the two columns
according to the number of words in the test, and then write each word
the teacher pronounced. Words from previous lessons were often
included!
Spelling bees -- now, spelling bees were mostly for fun, a contest.
And some practice in speaking before an audience, I now realize. Once
a year, though, spelling bees got serious! Each classroom would have a
bee to select a contestant in the school-wide bee, the winner of which
would compete in the newspaper-sponsored local bee with the hope of
going to Washington DC for the National Spelling Bee.
I did not have dictee in French class. But then, I was stuck in that
truly insane latest idea of language teachers, the "conversational"
course. Which does not work in a classroom!
English class -- in grade school, it was mostly grammar and
punctuation, with "how to write a paragragh" mentioned once or twice.
We wrote book reports, on whatever books we'd read on our own.
Literature -- not really; reading, rather. We could read, but never
talked much about what we had read. (We also had penmanship and
phonics, separate classes.) Other grade-school courses: arithmetic
(up through pre-algebra, I think), geography (world, American,
European, Asian, Southern Hemisphere), history (world, American,
European), health, science. No foreign language until high school,
thanks to World War I. See, before that, small children could learn
either Spanish or German; in 1917, German had to be removed -- and
Spanish went with it.
In high school, English was literature. Foreign languages offered were
Latin, French, and Spanish in nearly all schools in Indiana; some had
German too, and a few had Greek.
Textbooks -- every course had a textbook. In Indiana in the '50s and
'60s, we had to buy our books, but often a used book could be purchased
for less. In other states, even back then, books were lent to each
pupil by the school for the year -- no note-taking, and give it back at
the end of the year.
Cece |
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Robert Lieblich
Guest
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| Posted: Tue Nov 08, 2005 6:32 am
Post subject: Re: An English equivalent to the French 'dictee'? |
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"Raymond S. Wise" wrote:
| Quote: |
In the newsgroup fr.lettres.langue.anglaise I expressed the opinion
that the "dictée" is unknown in the US, and that it was probably
unknown in Great Britain as well. Someone replied that when he was
young, he had taken dictation in class. This surprised me.
So, my question for everyone, Americans, British, and others, is if you
had something like the French dictée when you were young. Basically,
the dictée is having a class of students take down dictation in
longhand in order to check students' spelling.
|
One more data point for you: I learned English spelling and such in
Anglophone Canada -- Windsor, Ontario -- late in the reign of George
VI, and I recall no such practice. We had the usual spelling tests,
but we were given, and we wrote, individual words. I have never had
to endure systematic instruction in French.
--
Bob Lieblich
Who never picked up the Canadian accent |
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Robert Bannister
Guest
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| Posted: Tue Nov 08, 2005 6:44 am
Post subject: Re: An English equivalent to the French 'dictee'? |
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Raymond S. Wise wrote:
| Quote: | In the newsgroup fr.lettres.langue.anglaise I expressed the opinion
that the "dictée" is unknown in the US, and that it was probably
unknown in Great Britain as well. Someone replied that when he was
young, he had taken dictation in class. This surprised me.
So, my question for everyone, Americans, British, and others, is if you
had something like the French dictée when you were young. Basically,
the dictée is having a class of students take down dictation in
longhand in order to check students' spelling. (In French, this amounts
to a sort of grammar check as well, since so many words can be
pronounced the same but are spelled differently to show different
tenses or to show gender.)
I'm not interested in examples of dictation when studying shorthand.
Nothing like the dictée occurred in my schools when I was young. The
spelling bee served the same function, although we did them only
rarely.
|
"Dictation" was quite common when I was at primary school in England.
Later on, of course, we also had them in French and German classes. In
fact, it was part of the examination.
--
Rob Bannister |
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Robert Bannister
Guest
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| Posted: Tue Nov 08, 2005 6:47 am
Post subject: Re: An English equivalent to the French 'dictee'? |
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Paul Wolff wrote:
| Quote: | We had a French textbook by Whitmarsh. I know that because the French
master always told us to get out our "Marais Blanc(s)".
|
Not only did we use Whitmarsh (thankfully know by its true name) when I
was at school, but it was still being used when I started teaching
French. Then there was an even older book "Sprechen Sie Deutsch".
--
Rob Bannister |
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Robert Bannister
Guest
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| Posted: Tue Nov 08, 2005 6:53 am
Post subject: Re: An English equivalent to the French 'dictee'? |
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Philip Eden wrote:
| Quote: | Here (Beds, UK) we certainly had these exercises in French
and, less frequently, in German
|
I'm surprised at that last part. The whole point of dictation in German,
and where it differed from French, was that you had to insert the commas
yourself in the correct grammatical places - this applied in both O and
A-Levels. That's why I often think the ACP (alt.usage.english comma
police) must have all learnt German at school.
--
Rob Bannister |
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Jitze Couperus
Guest
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| Posted: Tue Nov 08, 2005 8:01 am
Post subject: Re: An English equivalent to the French 'dictee'? |
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On Mon, 7 Nov 2005 22:12:52 -0000, "Mike Lyle"
<mike_lyle_uk@REMOVETHISyahoo.co.uk> wrote:
| Quote: | the Omrud wrote:
Mark Brader <msb@vex.net> spake thusly:
Raymond Wise:
So, my question for everyone, Americans, British, and others, is
if
you had something like the French dictée when you were young.
Basically, the dictée is having a class of students take down
dictation in longhand in order to check students' spelling...
Well, we had that in French class. But not in any sort of English
class I was in, if that's what you're asking about. Not in Latin
class either.
Same here. We had it in French lessons at high school. I don't
remember having it in English lessons.
We certainly had dictée in French, and dictation in English, from the
earliest years -- age nine for French, probably six for English. We
had it occasionally in Latin, but it wouldn't have been particularly
helpful, as Latin spelling is so predictable; I don't remember it in
Greek, but I couldn't swear to that -- there's only a vague memory of
writing down isolated words to practise the alphabet. After the age
of, I suppose, 13 all that stopped, and the French one was replaced
by "reproduction": a very valuable exercise in which a passage or
story was read out a couple of times, and then we had to write it in
our own words in the target language, sometimes with, and sometimes
without, a preliminary q&a session in the language. (Hot from biology
lessons, we relished the name, and I enjoyed the activity, too -- the
nearest I'd get to the real thing for a long time.) Both happened
much later with German and Russian, too, but I didn't do very much of
either. I have another vague feeling that the "reproduction"
technique sometimes appeared in English lessons, but, again, I
couldn't affirm to it. My Latin and Greek prose composition was
always dodgy, and I suspect it might have been better if the same
method had been used.
|
You and I followed very similar curricula - I remember dictation in
English as well as in French. Then after 4th form or so, the dictée
became reproduction, while English dictation mophed into the
writing of précis. Somewhere the concept of recapitualtion
also got in there for evening prep - but the details are now vague in
my mind.
Jitze |
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Joe Higman
Guest
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| Posted: Tue Nov 08, 2005 8:01 am
Post subject: Re: An English equivalent to the French 'dictee'? |
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"Raymond S. Wise" <mplsray@my-deja.com> wrote in message
news:1131340694.907758.124100@f14g2000cwb.googlegroups.com...
In the newsgroup fr.lettres.langue.anglaise I expressed the opinion
that the "dictée" is unknown in the US, and that it was probably
unknown in Great Britain as well. Someone replied that when he was
young, he had taken dictation in class. This surprised me.
So, my question for everyone, Americans, British, and others, is if you
had something like the French dictée when you were young.
I went to a state primary school in Oxford (England), then for a year to the
University of Chicago Laboratory School when I was 10-11 (1960 - 61). After
that I went to a direct grant school in Oxford, Magdelen College School
(MCS) from 11 to 16, when I was expelled.
We did dictation at my primary school (Copse Lane) and at MCS. We also had
Whitmarsh.
I was thinking the other day about some books that we had when I was young.
They were about periods of English history (the Tudors, The Stuarts, etc)
and had lots of line drawings about architecture, dress and other aspects of
life. I think they may have been published by a firm called Britons or
Britains. My parents liked them because they were supposed to be
educational. Does anyone else remember these books? |
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