Dictation practice: train your ear by typing what you hear

Why it works

When you listen for the general meaning, your brain fills the gaps with guesses and you rarely notice. Typing removes that comfort. Either you caught the word or you did not.

The words learners miss are seldom the long, difficult ones. They are small words said quickly ("of", "have", "them"), endings such as -ed and -s, and words that link to their neighbours. Dictation brings these into the open, where you can work on them.

How Dictation mode works here

1. Open a lesson and choose the Dictation tab above the sentence.
2. Press play. The sentence is shown with some of its words missing.
3. Type each missing word. Space or Enter moves to the next gap, and the up arrow plays the sentence again.
4. Press Check. Right words lock in green; near misses tell you to look at the spelling.
5. Stuck? Reveal one word and carry on. Then go to the next sentence.

The transcript beside the video stays blurred until you finish each sentence, so you cannot read ahead by accident.

How many words to hide

• Some: the harder words only. Good for a first pass over new material, and for learning how new vocabulary sounds.
• Most: more than half the sentence. This is where the quick small words start to matter.
• All: every word, a full dictation. Demanding, and best kept for short sentences or a passage you have already shadowed.

Start low. If you get nearly everything right first time, hide more. If you reveal more than you type, hide fewer or slow the video down.

Getting the most out of each sentence

• Listen to the whole sentence once before typing anything.
• Replay as often as you need. Three or four times is normal; that is the practice, not a failure.
• Drop to 0.75× for a sentence you cannot catch, then return to full speed and listen again once you know the words.
• After checking, play the sentence one more time while reading it. This is the moment the sound and the spelling join up.
• Type by ear. Do not work the word out from grammar alone; if you have to guess, replay first.

What your mistakes are telling you

• Missing small words (a, the, of, to): these are weak and short in natural speech. Listen for the rhythm; there is a beat-less syllable where the word should be.
• Missing endings (walk / walked, cat / cats): final consonants are soft in English. Listen to the start of the next word, where the ending often lands.
• Two words heard as one, or one as two: this is linking. "An apple" sounds like "a napple".
• Right sound, wrong spelling: your ear is fine. This one is a spelling point; open the word card and look at the word once more.
• A word you have never met: not a listening problem. Save it and move on.

Dictation and shadowing together

The two exercises train opposite directions: dictation is sound to words, shadowing is words to sound. They help each other. A sentence you have typed correctly is easier to say, because you now know every word in it. A sentence you have shadowed is easier to hear, because your mouth knows how the words join.

A simple pattern: shadow a passage for a few days, then test yourself on it with dictation. Or do the reverse with new material: dictation first to learn what is being said, shadowing afterwards to learn to say it.

How long to practise

Ten minutes is plenty. Dictation takes concentration, and tired ears stop hearing detail. Five to ten sentences done carefully are better than thirty done in a hurry.