SHORTCUT HERE: tinyurl.com/teslsk
Joseph Ng and Binney Sharma, May 9, 2025
The Presentation Slides
INTRO
This session transforms Dictation Triptychs, one of the most interactive activities that lock in the four skills LSRW, from paper-based to paperless. Enjoyed by classes, especially the teachers-turned-ringmasters, the DT materials and method were inspired by Eliot Aronson's anti-oppression jigsaw classrooms and post-Vygotskyan peer scaffolding. When COVID stanched the use of in-person DT sessions, many pedagogies pivoted quickly to the online platform, but it wasn't as intuitive for the relatively tactile DT. This session proposes to exploit online breakout rooms for the jigsaw activity and extend the beneficial impacts to synchronous online and hybrid classes alike.
SPECIALIST ROOMS
Here are the handouts for the breakout rooms with automatic assignment:
In each room, they will:
- introduce themselves quickly
- learn all the meanings and pronunciation of everything in their assigned script
- practise the dialogue in pairs to gain fluency and identify gaps
- number off and remember it as the assigned number for the Jigsaw Room next
JIGSAW ROOMS
Participants choose to join the room of their given/chosen number from the previous room.
So each room should have three participants, one from each of the specialist rooms. They will quickly introduce themselves before proceeding to the dictation activity.
In each room, one specialist will give the dictation of their practised column to the other two participants. Clarification, spelling out words, spelling things out, etc., are encouraged. When done, the other two participants will take turns giving dictation to the group.
When everyone has given dictation, they're free to "cheat," to look at the answers--possibly copying and pasting into the chat box.
TAKE UP
This is an important step. The breakout rooms are closed, and the instructors invite two representatives of each Specialist Room to perform their practised dialogue--keeping this to reps from respective Specialist Rooms is crucial in minimizing the proliferation of mistakes made from dictation. The instructor's role is to cheer achievement, fix pronunciation errors, and elicit and clarify any remaining confusion.
OPTIONAL ACTIVITIES
Paired Practice: This may seem so boring to native speakers, to simply read through again the repeated dialogue with a partner. But remember, we're not teaching native speakers but learners, who usually do appreciate the opportunity to reinforce their learning.
Jumping "Pachinko" Exercise: Since the three conversations in triptych are functionally equivalent, this activity is themed after the popular Japanese game that combined pinball with slot machines. The idea is that in real-life conversations, the actual wording is unpredictable, so players are forced to skip columns when going down the triptych--they're not allowed to go directly down but must jump to another column at each turn. Hopefully, they will be pleasantly surprised at the new conversations that result from each random dialogue.
One-Way Dictation:
Additional DT Samples:
DT1: Interruptions
DT2: Medical Emergencies
DT3: EFL University Life
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