Last Updated on October 4, 2023 by Editorial Team
Dictation involves dictating letters or statements that students make a note of after actively listening to each one correctly. As dictation helps students understand words and their particular sounds, it becomes crucial to use the dictation method in teaching to enhance reading and writing. While teachers and parents generally dictate words and sentences, dictation applications can be helpful in enhancing spelling and word recognition.
While various teaching methods are helpful, Dictation apps can help educators assess pupils’ ability to spell the vocabulary they have learned. These apps guide pupils to understand the meaning of the words learned. They also draw their attention to the confusing words, primarily the ones with the same or similar pronunciation but different meanings. Moreover, dictation applications are equipped with creative illustrations, graphics, and sound that engage students in the learning process.
Find below some interactive apps that can be helpful in building a strong foundation of words.
Helpful dictation apps for students
Dictation applications guide students to analyze their problems and give suggestions apart from teaching new vocabulary. Students can use context and grammar knowledge and apply phonics skills in spelling, which can be further used in writing and speaking. Lastly, they provide follow-up learning activities such as quizzes, games, and tests to consolidate effective learning.
1. English Listen and Write
Primarily focusing on improving students’ listening and writing skills, English Listen and Write is a popular application for Dictation among students. Students can explore a plethora of words, ranging from short to long words.
How to use:
- In this spelling learning game, you can choose from 8 difficulty levels.
- At every level, students will get some sentences with blanks.
- Students have to fill in the blanks from the options of syllables given along with each sentence.
- Once they have filled in the blank with the right option, they can listen to the sentences.
- Hence, the app enables them to read and engage in active listening.
There are a plethora of words that students can learn from this application. With over eight difficulty categories and 1600 spellings to learn, this app is ideal for studying the concept of dictation. The sentence riddles help enhance the thinking and cognitive skills of the kids.
App link: Playstore
2. Shorthand Dictation
The application features hundreds of shorthand dictations. All these spellings are shorthand dictations where a single word is broken into smaller words. This allows students to learn and understand words easily and effectively.
How to use:
- Students are provided with two options of Shorthand dictation, such as 80 words per second and 100 words per second.
- Many options of paragraphs are also provided.
- They can choose from either of these, ranging from 3 to 5 minutes.
- Press play on the dictation video, write in a notepad, and then type it in the typing box as soon as possible.
Shorthand dictation will allow students to analyze their mistakes and improve their grammatical skills. The dashboard feature helps them check their consistent improvement by recording their previous Dictation, which can help them compare their grammatical growth.
App link: Play store
3. Voice Spelling Dictation
It is a learning-based application focusing on spelling using voice dictation in particular. Not only will this application test the spelling but also the quick typing speed of students taking the dictation test. Students will be tested on their grammatical and typing skills simultaneously.
How to use:
- Choose your preferred Text-to-Speech Engine on the homepage.
- Students can also change the TTS engine and language in the settings.
- Students can also choose the number of words in the text.
- Now, you would need to add some records to the dictionary.
- Then press ‘Add Word’ to add it to the dictionary.
- The TTS engine will speak random records from the dictionary.
- Students can press the play button to repeat the last word, Dictation.
- After listening to all the words, type in words one by one to complete the sentence.
Dictation can be used for conversations and to improve writing and speaking skills. In the larger spectrum, it would encourage the students to work together to develop peer learning to encourage skills building.
App link: Play store
4. English Dictation and Speaking
This app enables the students to enhance their English speaking, writing, and listening skills. Since listening and speaking are necessary skills that students use throughout their lives, the application focuses on building strong foundations.
How to use:
- On the app home screen, select Dictation and press start.
- Students will be provided with jumbled words, which they will have to arrange into an accurate statement.
- Once the accurate statement is registered with the application, they can tap on it to listen to the Dictation.
- Similarly, they can also choose many preloaded paragraphs and press on them to work on their reading and listening skills.
- In this way, students get exposure to different words and their sounds. They may also be curious to find out the meanings of the words that interest them.
Learning through dictation improves the understanding and communication skills of the learners. Students can improve their writing and listening skills which are integral in conversions and useful means of expressing their thoughts. It also focuses profusely on the letter combination of specific word groups and their pronunciations.
App link: Play store
5. EASY peasy: Spelling for Kids- Learn to write
The name of the application suggests all its features. Students can learn a lot of new spellings in a fun and easy way. They can use the read-aloud function provided by the application to learn new spellings independently and compare their progress over time.
How to use:
- On the home screen, different levels are provided to the students based on difficulty.
- There will be an increasing number of sentences and words with each higher level.
- Students can choose any level. They can write from the Dictation, correct and practice difficult words and write texts independently.
- Using the read-aloud feature, they can hear the text and evaluate their pronunciation and mistakes.
The highlight of this application is developing listening skills. It also serves as a brilliant tool for educators to encourage their students to notice the gaps between their level of spoken and written English and the level they are aiming for.
App link: Play store
6. EDictation- English Dictation
Listening and writing are two important aspects of grammar and conversation. EDictation provides thorough practice for both of them. Boasting a wide range of exercises and words helps users to learn and improve their skills effectively.
How to use:
- On the home screen, choose between two levels; General or Academic.
- In either of the levels, there will be many different text options.
- Students will first hear the text and then type what they have heard in the dialogue box.
- They can check their answers and get a final report card for their mistakes and progress.
It is a helpful way to learn English and grammar skills. This would make students involved and engrossed in their learning. It also promotes a high level of independent learning and self-evaluation.
App link: Play store
7. A Spelling Learning
The target audience for this application is students from grades 1 to 5. They can learn spellings consisting of 3 to 11 syllables. The learning is made easy with pictures to refer to and fun with a colorful keyboard.
How to use:
- Choose from 30-plus categories of words.
- Students will get a picture of an object or a person.
- They have to analyze the picture and type it in syllables.
- Press speak to listen to the correct pronunciation of the word.
Students can record their answers and then orally communicate them to understand the word better. Through the visual presentation, they can also understand the accurate meaning of the word.
App link: Play store
8. Dictation Helper
The iPad OS has got a really powerful voice detention tool built in. Dictation Helper is one of the helpful applications for Apple devices to help students learn new words without the constant vigilance of their teachers and parents. It allows text-to-speech as well as image-to-text.
How to use:
- On the home screen, students can type a particular word or statement to convert it into speech.
- Students can also type sentences with certain punctuation marks to understand the flow when converted to speech.
- Students can also select their preferred language, interval, and the number of attempts.
- After this, use the icon on the right to listen to words/sentences typed for conversion.
- Siri dictation will then take words and transcribe them as speech.
It is an effective application to let students understand the tone and correct pronunciation of words and sentences. Students can also highlight important parts in their dictations while they hear. The files are easy to access and can be shared through different mediums and devices.
App link: App Store
9. FunFunSpell English Dictation
This application is created for kids to practice dictation all by themselves. Kids can begin with any of the two: Sentences or words. The application gives the kids options to find and start, where they can find different levels of words based on the difficulty level. The application also helps students understand the vocabulary, which not only helps them with spelling but also broadens their sphere of vocabulary and new words.
How to use:
- The kids first need to select the difficulty level and then start the online dictation
- Once done, they can save their results.
- At each time, they are competing with a lot of other users online who are also making use of the same difficulty level.
- In the end, the app will rate its performance on the basis of its competitors.
A feature of the application also caters to showing the kids some pictures, where they are expected to type in what exactly is there in the image. For example, an image of a telephone is shown, and students need to correctly input the spelling of the image shown. The application also focuses on teaching students the spelling of a few words that are mostly misspelled.
App link: Play Store | App Store
10. SpellOut- English Dictation
Being a powerful app to teach learners more about the English language, this application focuses on improving the listening skills, vocabulary, spelling, and pronunciation of the students. The application uses news reading and picks up words from various articles and more to help students with better spelling and vocabulary.
How to use:
- To begin, students must select their dictation task, and then complete the words spoken in the application.
- Next up, a fill-in-the-blanks type of quiz would also be given to the students to evaluate their listening skills, along with their power to spell the words correctly.
- Lastly, the students would be shown their performance. The app would also keep track of the student’s achievements over time.
Along with providing a great tool for students to practice spelling, the app also comes with an in-built dictionary that helps students know the meanings of the words they don’t know. This application can also be used by students who are preparing for competitive exams like IELTS, TOEFL, TOEIC, etc.
App link: App store
How can Educators use these apps for students?
One of the primary highlights of these apps is that they guide students to divide words into syllables and identify the ‘small words in the word. Football can be understood as foot + ball. Hence, parents and educators can set challenges for students to break words and learn new words through the apps.
These apps focus on teaching students to enable grammatical skills explicitly, i.e., drawing their attention to the letter-sound relationships and understanding the meaning of words. In this manner, parents and teachers can promptly ask students a meaning they might have learned through an app. They can also ask students to start working on their note-taking skills to enhance grammatical understanding.
Parents and teachers involved with special students can take help from these applications to engage students, improve their concentration, and teach the concept of self-learning development experience specializing in learning. They can learn and understand different words, texts, and grammatical concepts. Thus, improving their ability to express their ideas clearly in writing and speaking.
Summing Up…
The dictation apps help students reflect on their learning and provide grammatical support. These also consolidate pupils’ listening skills, help educators understand pupils’ performance, and provide constructive feedback. Teachers and parents can use these applications as a testing medium to motivate learning capabilities. These applications can be used to create different classroom activities for students or be given as a test to understand their progress.
Dictation is designed and conducted as a listening and writing activity for young learners in the apps mentioned above. Not only is it fun and highly engaging, but also an interactive activity.
An engineer, Maths expert, Online Tutor and animal rights activist. In more than 5+ years of my online teaching experience, I closely worked with many students struggling with dyscalculia and dyslexia. With the years passing, I learned that not much effort being put into the awareness of this learning disorder. Students with dyscalculia often misunderstood for having just a simple math fear. This is still an underresearched and understudied subject. I am also the founder of Smartynote -‘The notepad app for dyslexia’,