Dictation

Background

Still surviving the test of time, a dictation remains the most accurate exercise type to evaluate spelling. With the Dictation item type:

• Students'/candidates' answers are automatically corrected.
• Students/candidates can control the pace of the dictation (if allowed by the author).

Procedure

Proceed as follows to create a Dictation:

1. Right click the folder in which you want the Dictation to appear.
2. Select New item.
   Result: The screen Make new item appears
3. Select the item type Dictation.
4. Name it.
5. Click OK.
   • Open the tab Properties to add or change the metadata of this item.
   • Open the tab Content and click on the text icon to add a text field or the asset icon to add an image, sound or video , … .
6. Click on Dictation to add a dictation to the exercise.
7. Select a sound file from the media library or from your computer and click OK.
   Result: he player will appear in the exercise.

   Tip: You can add up to two different sound files.

Changing questions settings

You can adjust the question settings at the bottom of the screen. Besides Question feedback, Positive and Negative feedback, you can also change the following :

• Play automatically (active/not active)

  When active, the player will automatically play the sound file when the exercise is activated. If the player is not active, the sound file will have to be started manually.

• Disable the player the first time (active/not active)

  When active, the player will first play the entire sound file before any other student actions are possible. This can be useful when you want the students to listen to the complete audio file before they can pause or stop it. You cannot activate this setting without also activating Play automatically.

Changing answer settings

At the bottom of the screen, go to the Solutions tab to change the answer settings.

• Hint (to give the students/candidates a clue).
• Answers.

As illustrated above, the answers are listed in a table with columns indicating Value, Correct (or not), Score and Feedback.

• You can erase an answer by clicking Delete.
• Click in the column Value to add an answer.
• Indicate whether the answer is correct or not.
• Give a score.
• If necessary, enter specific feedback per answer in the last column.

Adding alternative solutions

• See: adding alternative solutions

Adding a dictation with editor for marks

Placing marks in a dictation allows a student/candidate to listen to each part separately. To do so, he or she has to click on the part which he or she wants to listen to again.

Proceed as follows to add marks to a sound file:

1. Follow the procedure to create a Dictation but click Dictation with editor for marks instead of Dictation.
2. Type in a # in your answer where you want the mark (e.g. after the end of a sentence).
   Result:  These symbols # appear in the player.
3. If necessary, move the # in the player: click and drag them to change their place.

Correction

When the student clicks Correct, the answer given by the student will be checked by comparing it with all the correct answers entered into the exercise.

These correction codes will then be applied (correct sentence shown above) :