Cooperative dictation

• Target skills: Reading, Writing, Listening, Speaking
• Level: all levels
• Materials: three different pieces or paragraphs of a text
• Class organisation: groups of three students
• Preparation: find any text that you find appropriate for the level of your students and divide it in three parts or paragraphs. Copy paste the full text in three different pages and on each page erase two of the paragraphs and leave only one. You must replace the space of the erased paragraphs with writing lines. Each page must have one single paragraph and space to write the others. 

In this activity, students must get in groups of three. Each student gets a paper with one paragraph of a text and space to write the other two paragraphs. Each student of the group must have a different paragraph on his/her paper. Tell the students that this is a special dictation because they are going to dictate and correct the text, not the teacher. Explain that student 1 will dictate his paragraph to the other two students, and when he finishes, it is the turn of student 2 to do the same. Finally, student 3 will dictate his part. When the three students have completed all the text, they can correct it themselves passing their original texts to the partners.

Turn it into a competition! 

You can organize a contest and see which group has made the fewest mistakes.