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Wood Avens
Guest
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| Posted: Tue Nov 08, 2005 2:06 pm
Post subject: Re: An English equivalent to the French 'dictee'? |
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On Tue, 8 Nov 2005 01:22:12 -0000, "Joe Higman" <zen79148@zen.co.uk>
wrote:
| Quote: | 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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You might just possibly be thinking of "A History of Everyday Things
in England" by Marjorie and C H B Quennell, published by Batsford.
http://tinyurl.com/7qj4h
--
Katy Jennison
spamtrap: remove the first two letters after the @
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Raymond S. Wise
Guest
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| Posted: Tue Nov 08, 2005 2:51 pm
Post subject: Re: An English equivalent to the French 'dictee'? |
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John Dean wrote:
| Quote: | Raymond S. Wise wrote:
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.
I remember dictation in English as a regular exercise in the UK in the
50s. Additionally, we had dictation in language classes - notably French
and German.
When my wife was teaching in the 80s, she occasionally used dictation as
a technique to test and / or improve her pupils' spelling.
Unwise to generalise about UK education unless you actually know
something about it.
--
John Dean
Oxford
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I had said it was probably unknown in Great Britain because I thought I
remember that being expressed by a British poster in one of these
English-usage newsgroups.
--
Raymond S. Wise
Minneapolis, Minnesota USA
E-mail: mplsray @ yahoo . com |
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Charles Riggs
Guest
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| Posted: Tue Nov 08, 2005 4:14 pm
Post subject: Re: An English equivalent to the French 'dictee'? |
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On 7 Nov 2005 04:46:33 -0800, "Arcadian Rises" <Arcadianrises@aol.com>
wrote:
| Quote: | An adjacent question:
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Oy!
--
Charles Riggs
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John Dean
Guest
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| Posted: Tue Nov 08, 2005 9:48 pm
Post subject: Re: An English equivalent to the French 'dictee'? |
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Raymond S. Wise wrote:
| Quote: | John Dean wrote:
Raymond S. Wise wrote:
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.
I remember dictation in English as a regular exercise in the UK in
the 50s. Additionally, we had dictation in language classes -
notably French and German.
When my wife was teaching in the 80s, she occasionally used
dictation as a technique to test and / or improve her pupils'
spelling.
Unwise to generalise about UK education unless you actually know
something about it.
--
I had said it was probably unknown in Great Britain because I thought
I remember that being expressed by a British poster in one of these
English-usage newsgroups.
|
Unwise, IMHO, to base an opinion on one person's unsupported claim. Of
course, that's just my unsupported claim. Still unwise, IMHO, to
generalise about UK education unless you actually know something about
it.
Double unwise to make assertions based on what you think you remember.
Especially at our age. I think I remember Winston Churchill saying that.
Or was it Oscar Wilde? Or Bernard Shaw? Or Mark Twain ...?
--
John Dean
Oxford |
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sage
Guest
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| Posted: Wed Nov 09, 2005 12:24 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.
--
Raymond S. Wise
Minneapolis, Minnesota USA
E-mail: mplsray @ yahoo . com
Yes, I did and that was in England. It was given in all the language |
classes I took -- English, Spanish, a couple of years of French and even
Latin.
There's a dictee competition each year for French-speaking school
children aorund the world. Am I wrong in the impression I have that an
English-speaking child won it not long ago?
Cheers, Sage |
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K. Edgcombe
Guest
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| Posted: Wed Nov 09, 2005 12:37 am
Post subject: Re: An English equivalent to the French 'dictee'? |
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In article <1131340694.907758.124100@f14g2000cwb.googlegroups.com>,
Raymond S. Wise <mplsray@my-deja.com> wrote:
| Quote: | In the newsgroup fr.lettres.langue.anglaise I expressed the opinion
that the "dict=E9e" 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 dict=E9e when you were young. Basically,
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Do you mean in French (or other foreign languages)? We had a lot of that
(London, 1950s). We also had dictation occasionally in English, probably not
after the age of about 13.
Katy |
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The Grammer Genious
Guest
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| Posted: Thu Nov 10, 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
<...>
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 my Detroit area high school in the later 1950s, the German teacher Mr.
Heuser (from Breslau) would read to us and make us write a Diktat every
Friday. He took it very seriously. He used an extremely red pencil. |
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Adam Maass
Guest
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| Posted: Fri Nov 11, 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:
| 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.)
|
Absolutely. Dictation was a standard feature of spelling tests in 4th and
5th grade. The teacher would repeat a sentence we had to copy down longhand.
Sometimes we could get her to repeat it.
(San Francisco, public school, mid-80s).
-- Adam Maass |
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