For this exercise, students transcribe a piece of text (one or two sentences, usually a quotation of a well-known writer) that I dictate to them in class. Students proofread carefully for grammar, punctuation, capital letters, and spelling before being presented with the text; students are then responsible for noticing any errors they’ve made and correcting their transcriptions. As a class, we then identify the part-of-speech and/or definition of selected words and review any troublesome points of grammar or mechanics before discussing the meaning of the text. This discussion is sometimes followed by students’ journal writing or by some other activity thematically related to the text. After we’ve completed five dictations on this worksheet, students receive a classwork grade based on the accuracy of their corrections and are periodically quizzed on all previous dictations.

As you try to complete the dictations below, you may commit one or more of the 20 most-common writing errors. If you need practice with a particular skill, use NoRedInk (via Clever) or Khan Academy.

Worksheet #1
Dictation #1 (Agnes Repplier): Here’s the audio, and here’s the text.
Dictation #2 (Alice Walker): Here’s the audio, and here’s the text.
Dictation #3 (Gabriel Garcia Marquez): Here’s the audio, and here’s the text.
Dictation #4 (Johann von Goethe): Here’s the audio, and here’s the text.
Dictation #5 (Wangari Muta Maathai): Here’s the audio, and here’s the text.

Worksheet #2
Dictation #1 (James Baldwin): Here’s the audio, and here’s the text.
Dictation #2 (Ralph Waldo Emerson): Here’s the audio, and here’s the text.
Dictation #3 (Martin Luther King, Jr.): Here’s the audio, and here’s the text.
Dictation #4 (Alice Childress): Here’s the audio, and here’s the text.
Dictation #5 (Marshall McLuhan): Here’s the audio, and here’s the text.

Worksheet #3
Dictation #1 (Franz Kafka): Here’s the audio, and here’s the text.
Dictation #2 (Anne Frank): Here’s the audio, and here’s the text.
Dictation #3 (Rabindranath Tagore): Here’s the audio, and here’s the text.
Dictation #4 (Edith Wharton): Here’s the audio, and here’s the text.
Dictation #5 (Bob Marley): Here’s the audio, and here’s the text.

Worksheet #4
Dictation #1 (Joseph Campbell): Here’s the audio, and here’s the text.
Dictation #2 (Socrates): Here’s the audio, and here’s the text.
Dictation #3 (Michel de Montaigne): Here’s the audio, and here’s the text.
Dictation #4 (Rita Dove): Here’s the audio, and here’s the text.
Dictation #5 (Irina Dunn): Here’s the audio, and here’s the text.

Worksheet #5
Dictation #1 (Billie Holiday): Here’s the audio, and here’s the text.
Dictation #2 (Steve Biko): Here’s the audio, and here’s the text.
Dictation #3 (Carlos Castaneda): Here’s the audio, and here’s the text.
Dictation #4 (H.L. Mencken): Here’s the audio, and here’s the text.
Dictation #5 (Elisabeth Kübler-Ross): Here’s the audio, and here’s the text.

Worksheet #6
Dictation #1 (Thurgood Marshall): Here’s the audio, and here’s the text.
Dictation #2 (J.K. Rowling): Here’s the audio, and here’s the text.
Dictation #3 (Kofi Annan): Here’s the audio, and here’s the text.
Dictation #4 (Richard Feynman): Here’s the audio, and here’s the text.
Dictation #5 (Susan Ertz): Here’s the audio, and here’s the text.