For the first time this year the Spanish GCSE listening exam will feature a dictation section whereby students listen to a recording in Spanish and have to write down what they hear. This tests students’ ability to accurately transcribe spoken Spanish.

In this blog post we will look at how to prepare for this part of the listening exam to make sure you achieve the best marks.

Why are dictation exercises valuable?

Dictation activities whilst learning a language are an excellent way to improve your listening skills.

• They provide good listening practice.
• They help you connect sounds with written language.
• They improve spelling and phonics.

How to prepare for dictation

• Master exam technique

You will hear a sentence spoken 3 times. The first time will be at normal speed, the second time it will be spoken slowly and the third time will be normal speed again. Make sure that the first listening is to get the gist of the sentence, its meaning and tense. Use the second time to write down what you hear and the final time to fill in any gaps and to check your spelling and accents.

• Don’t leave gaps.

You may hear a word that you do not recognise. Do not panic. Try to write it down phonetically as you hear it. You may still get marks if it is partly correct and often once you write it down, you then may work out what the word is from the context of the sentence.

• Learn vocabulary for key topics

Make sure you have learnt all of the vocabulary for each theme. The most important ones include school, free time, holidays and technology.

• Understand phonics

Make sure you know if a word is spelt with a ‘b’ or a ‘v’ because the sound is the same in Spanish. For example, viene, vino, vine, bien, bonito, bajar, debajo etc. Remember that the ‘h’ is silent in Spanish so learn the key words that begin with an ‘h’; hotel, hay, hasta, había, hombre etc.

• Learn which words have accents.

Make sure you remember to put accents on the correct vowels. This is important for the correct pronunciation of words because it tells you which syllable is stressed in a word. Remember, all words ending with -sión or -ción have an accent on the ‘o’. Other common words with an accent are: también, todavía, él, sí, difícil, matemáticas, simpático, música, fútbol, jóvenes, exámenes etc.

• Focus on higher frequency verbs

Make sure you know the most common verbs really well and in different tenses. Focus on verbs such as ser, tener, gustar and querer and their conjugations is present, past and future tenses.

• Use online resources to prepare

You can find free online resources to help practise dictation on Youtube if you search for “GCSE Spanish dicatation practice”. For example, ‘bilingual cerebros’ has many videos to help practice dictation.

Search on the tes website for resources that teach dictation.

Listen to some GCSE listening past papers to hear the style of recordings to expect. You can find past papers from previous years on the website Revision world.

Use Speechling which features thousands of sentences in Spanish to practice dictation at various levels. You simply listen and type what you hear which you can then click on ‘check’ to see where you made any spelling mistakes.

• Consistent practice

Try to incorporate some listening practice into your everyday routine. The key is little and often. This is the best way to train your ear to spoken Spanish. Ideally you want to spend 10-15 minutes a day on listening practice.

• Study in pairs

If you have a study partner you could practices together by taking it in turns with one of you reading out a sentence whilst the other person writes it down. Then swap over with a different sentence. Practise reading out sentences at different speeds; slow and normal, as they will be in the exam.

Summary

If you make sure to do all of the above then you will be able to tackle the dictation part of the GCSE listening exam with confidence and ease, ensuring you get the best mark possible. Remember stay calm, don’t panic and do not leave gaps!