[senco-forum] Developing listening skills in secondary pupils

Dictation was the one thing that worked for a severely dyslexic student

As a visitor, I was once asked to read a story to six boys whom the teacher 
described as 'hyperactive' They listened to my story for a few minutes then 
one boy began to play up. He was sniggering and distracting the boy on 
either side of him. I gave him a withering stare, implying that if he did 
not sit still, terrible things would happen to him. Much to my surprise and 
delight, he did sit still and then promptly fell asleep!  The boy was an 
'attention seeker' from a difficult home background and No - he didnt have 
APD!  Quite simply, the intellectual content of my story failed to engage 
him.

A behaviour (any behaviour) is a response to an environment! The 
environmment I was providing was simply inappropriate.

The most important and most overlooked fact is that listening, (like 
reading, knitting, juggling, playing the piano etc etc) is a skill and a 
skill is any activity that improves with practice to point that it becomes a 
reflex reaction ie. it is executed automatically by an unconscious part of 
the brain, leaving the conscious part of the brain free to accept any 
incoming stream of unrelated information - in other words you can do it and 
think about something else at the same time.

The only components of a skill that respond to practice are in fact, the 
mechanical aspects such as decoding/blending in reading, steering and 
changing gear in driving etc. The listening skill has fewer mechanical 
components and therefore it is the most difficult one to exercise and 
assess. Having said that, there is nothing any teacher can do to improve the 
listening skills of any child, other than to provide opportunities for 
positive practice. The teacher's skill lies in ingenuity of matching the 
child to an appropriate resource., whatever the nature of the child's 
learning difficulties.  Blanket condemnations such as 'dyslexics should 
never be given dictation' are injurious and destructive!

Dictation, (in the modern sense of the word), is just one of these 
approaches which is not only very practical but also extremely productive 
provided the level of challenge it poses is appropriate for the particular 
child.  And is does centrally involve listening. When it is a computer 
programme of supported dictation exercises, ten children can be working on 
different but appropriate topics and each at their own speed. Where the 
child produces an exercise book with a reasonably accurate transcription 
from dictation, that is unassailable evidence that a good quality of 
listening has taken place. If you can get the child to do this routinely, 
you are winning the battle of listening skills and in very measurable way. 
Where the quality of the transciption improves over time, listening skills 
as well as general literacy skills, are inevitably also improving.

This holds true whether the child has a specific or a non-specific learning 
difficulty.

Eddie C.

PS To the off-list enquirers, email me again at the end of October.

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "The Bodiens" <bodiens at emirates.net.ae>
To: <Olanys at aol.com>; <senco-forum at lists.becta.org.uk>
Sent: Friday, August 18, 2006 10:18 AM
Subject: Re: [senco-forum] Developing listening skills in secondary pupils

> Dictation was the one thing that worked for a severely dyslexic student 
> that I taught.  First of all we used Acceleread Accelewrite which raised 
> his nonword score from 1st to 24th percentile then we did dictations 3x 
> weekly with more from Mum at home, using text to speech software.  The 
> previous year we had followed the standard dyslexia intervention but come 
> the Septmeber my student had forgotten most of what he had learned. 
> Practise of the connection between speech and print through dictatiosn led 
> to him becoming a reader.
>
> Perhaps it depends how you pre-teach basic skills, then use dictation? 
> Dictation for the purpose of learning to read/spell, with the right tools, 
> can be very helpful.  Dictation for note-taking and dissemination of 
> information at secondary school is probably another matter.
>
> Philippa
>
>
> ----- Original Message ----- 
> From: <Olanys at aol.com>
> To: <senco-forum at lists.becta.org.uk>
> Sent: Thursday, August 17, 2006 8:13 PM
> Subject: Re: [senco-forum] Developing listening skills in secondary pupils
>
>
>> When I worked with severely dyslexic children the dyslexic  resource base
>> teacher informed the staff that these children were not to  take down 
>> dictation
>> under any circumstances - it is a nightmare for them and a  futile 
>> exercise
>> when pre-printed information sheets can so easily be provided  with very 
>> little
>> extra effort by teachers.
>>
>> Taking down dictation involves a myriad of skills and stages, many of 
>> which
>> are extemely difficult for pupils with SpLD and for some impossible and 
>> very
>> distressing...not to mention unnecessary. The same applies to the awful 
>> time
>> consuming task of copying from textbooks in these days of scanners and
>> printers.
>>
>>
>> Training  children who struggle to do so is a cruel waste of time and 
>> effort
>> for all  involved. I also think exercises like this are an unnecessary 
>> waste
>> of time  after a long and arduous day trying to cope at school and endure
>> homework.
>>
>>
>>
>> Best wishes,
>> Aly
>>
>> Chair Auditory  Processing Disorder in the UK/APDUK
>> www.lacewingmultimedia.com/APD.htm
>> www.apduk.org
>>
>>
>> -- 
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> 