Using a Modified Dictogloss to Improve English as a Second Language Learners’ Use of Genre-appropriate Conventions and Style

Abstract

This article explores the potential for using a modified dictogloss task to improve ESL learners' use of genre-appropriate conventions and genre-appropriate style in the context of genre-based instruction for writing. Dictogloss has been traditionally used to enhance learners' focus on lexical and grammatical features through discussions during the joint reconstruction of a text. The innovation of the current practice lies in its application to teach generic aspects specific to a particular text type, such as formatting, register, and organization. This practice is potentially important as it is a meaningful, productive task that raises learners' awareness of genre-related features of writing - an often-neglected but important aspect of learning to write. This practice was carried out in a secondary ESL classroom in Hong Kong, and the evaluation was based on an analysis of improvements in learners' genre-specific conventions and genre-specific style. Implications of this practice are discussed in terms of the possibilities for using model texts in dictogloss tasks within a genre-based approach to writing.

Keywords

Dictogloss ESL genre genre-based instruction second language writing

Reason for the Innovation

Learning to write in a second or foreign language is replete with challenges (Richards, 2002). In second language learning contexts, student writers tend to focus on lower order concerns, such as grammatical accuracy and precise vocabulary choice, as writing is often used as a means for language practice (Ortega, 2009). Writing instruction in the English as a Second Language (ESL) context of Hong Kong, where the current innovation was practiced, is no different, as the prevalent approach to teaching English focuses on decontextualized grammar practice (Lo and Hyland, 2007). However, learning to write is more than developing control over grammatical and vocabulary use. Effective writing requires an awareness of the audience and communicative purpose, and then adapting textual features accordingly. This sentiment is reflected in recent changes to the English language curriculum in Hong Kong, which recommends that learners go beyond vocabulary and grammar and demonstrate an awareness of genre-specific features, such as “appropriate style and register,” which are “more demanding and require considerable teacher support” (Curriculum and Development Council, 2018: 24).

A focus on genre in writing relates to how language is used to satisfy specific organizational structures for different writing purposes (Meyer, 1985). Supported by the systemic functional theory of language (Halliday, 1994), genre-based approaches view writing as purposeful responses to particular contexts and communities that conform to socially recognized style and conventions (Hyland, 2003). A common genre-based instructional framework is the teaching–learning cycle, which consists of a modeling stage (deconstructing a model text), a joint construction stage (activities to reinforce awareness of structural and linguistic patterns) and an independent construction stage (creating their own text of the same genre) (Cope and Kalantzis, 1993). In general, implementing the modeling/joint construction stages usually involves “teacher-led” activities (Chen and Su, 2012; Firkins et al., 2007) or “explicit instruction” (Graham and Perin, 2007). In our opinion, there is room for more meaningful activities within the genre-based approach, where learners can develop an awareness of the genre through collaborative self-discovery.

An alternative (or supplement) to teacher-led modeling/joint construction activities is having students complete a version of a dictogloss to support genre-based instruction. The dictogloss was originally popularized by Wajnryb (1988) as an alternative method for learners to develop grammatical competence, with core procedures consisting of reading a short text (usually twice) to students and having them jot down familiar words or phrases as they listen before pooling their notes to reconstruct a version of the text as a group. The procedure can be proceeded by instruction on useful vocabulary and followed by an analysis stage in which learners correct their texts through comparisons with other groups' versions and the original text. Through the processes of listening, notetaking and collaborative text reconstruction, learners can draw their attention to grammar and vocabulary. The learning value of the dictogloss is supported by sociocultural theory, as students have opportunities to pool language resources and enter into language-related discussions (Swain, 2006) within a collaborative and dialogic context (Aljaafreh and Lantolf, 1994). In this way, students are compelled to test hypotheses about how the text should be written (Swain, 1995), triggering cognitive processes important for language learning, such as noticing gaps in their interlanguage (Schmidt, 1990).

Several variations of the dictogloss have been suggested over the years. However, in keeping with the original purpose of task, these have been predominantly designed to facilitate an awareness of vocabulary and grammar (e.g. Jacobs and Small, 2003), with only a few examples of a dictogloss addressing other skills (e.g. dictogloss for listening development, see Prince, 2013; dictogloss for coherence in writing, see Amirian et al., 2012). To the authors’ knowledge, there has been no documented use of a dictogloss for improving the use of genre-appropriate style and conventions. Thus, the innovation presented in this paper is the design and implementation of a modified version for genre-based instruction, which makes use of a series of dictogloss tasks based on segmented parts of a longer model text of a particular genre. In this version, the dictogloss can additionally facilitate an awareness of genre-specific features as learners focus on elements of the text as a whole.

In summary, the reason for the innovation is to integrate a collaborative, productive task into a genre-based approach with the learning aim of improving students’ use of genre-appropriate style and conventions. The following sections describe the Hong Kong secondary school context where the innovation took place and examples of the dictogloss tasks that were implemented. The authors conclude with an evaluation of “dictogloss for genre-based instruction” using data that provides evidence of improvement in students’ use of genre features.

The Teaching Context

The innovation was conducted with 22 students (11 male, 11 female) at a local secondary school in Hong Kong. The students were from the same Form 2 class and aged between 13 and 15. Their first language was Chinese, either Cantonese or Mandarin. The students were mostly motivated English learners and engaged actively in their English lessons, but nonetheless had limited vocabulary and grammar knowledge and were particularly weak in productive skills. Their estimated English proficiency was pre-intermediate (i.e. Common European Framework of Reference for Languages, level A2).

The school itself was categorized as a “Band 2C” school, which in Hong Kong means the academic performances of students are below average compared with other schools in the same district (Band A schools are considered the highest performing schools). Cantonese was employed as the medium of instruction for all subjects except English, and hence opportunities for communicating in English were limited. The first author was teaching at this school for seven weeks during the time this innovation was carried out.

Innovation: Dictogloss for Genre-based Instruction

Regarding text preparation for the dictogloss, Wajnryb (1988) suggested using “texts bearing approximately seven units of propositional meaning” to avoid placing undue demands on learners’ memory (p. 65). A distinguishing feature of our “dictogloss for genre-based instruction” innovation is that it uses a much longer, complete text of a specific genre. The text is then segmented, and the segments are used in a series of connected dictogloss tasks. In this way, learners are compelled to discuss aspects of the text type beyond vocabulary and grammar during their reconstruction. In our context, the dictogloss task was implemented alongside genre-based instruction for four weeks. The aim during this period was for students to acquire the skills “to write a school newsletter with appropriate conventions, and style.” Thus, the target genre was a “newsletter,” which has a specific audience (e.g. members of an organization), purpose (e.g. reporting on an event), conventions (e.g. title, subheadings, introductory and concluding paragraphs and topic sentences) and style (e.g. semi-formal style, use of first-person singular or plural to refer to the writer or the writer's organization, to summarize the event, to express gratitude to the participants, to express expectations about future events). For evaluation purposes, we conducted pre- and post-writing tests to determine if the innovation was effective in improving learners’ ability to use genre-appropriate style and genre-appropriate conventions.

Week 1: The Pre-test

In the first week, three lessons were dedicated to language input and genre instruction. The instruction emphasized the aforementioned aspects of style and conventions of a newsletter. Students participated in a range of teacher-led activities (e.g. analyzing model writing, reflecting on readership and purpose) and explicit instruction on grammar and vocabulary relevant to the newsletter genre (e.g. the use of pronouns, past tenses to recount past events). Students then individually wrote “a school newsletter for a school film festival,” which became the pre-test in our evaluation. The purpose of the pre-test was to establish a baseline writing performance whereby improvements due to the innovation could be judged.

Weeks 2–4: Designing and Implementing the Dictogloss Tasks

A model text from a coursebook (Harfitt et al., 2012) was selected and adapted for the dictogloss tasks (Appendix A). The text was written by the “President of the Social Services Club” who reported on a fun fair organized to support a charity that rescues unwanted dogs. The text represented an exemplar of the genre, as it included features that would be typical of a newsletter. The model text was segmented into three dictogloss texts: (a) introduction and first body paragraph; (b) body paragraphs; and (c) final body paragraph and conclusion. Each segment formed the basis for three dictogloss tasks implemented over three weeks.

In preparation for the first dictogloss, the students divided themselves into eight student pairs and two groups of three. They kept the same pair/group throughout the three dictogloss tasks. For each of the three dictogloss tasks, the teacher followed the procedures below.

Each student was given a sheet for notetaking (see Figure 1).

The teacher introduced the purpose of the newsletter.

The students were told that they would be listening to the text twice and could only take notes the second time.

The teacher first read the paragraph at a regular pace.

After finishing the first reading, the teacher asked them to make brief notes on the sheet given.

The teacher read the paragraph again at the same speed, but with pauses between sentences or clauses in the case of long sentences.

Students were given 12 minutes to re-write the paragraph using a reconstruction sheet. The title and the subheadings were provided to scaffold the organization of the newsletter (see Figure 2).

The teacher provided feedback on genre-related features of their text reconstructions.

Students compared their paragraphs to the model text and discussed differences between them.

Figure 1.

The dictogloss instructions and worksheet (dictogloss 1).

Figure 2.

Group writing sheet (dictogloss 1).

Week 5: The Post-Test

After the three dictogloss tasks, students completed the post-test, which required them to write “a school newsletter reporting on the events of Environment Day.” The post-test had the same structure as the pre-test.

Evaluation of Innovation and Reflection

Our reflection is based on an evaluation of students’ pre- and post-test compositions and the teachers’ subjective observations in implementing the dictogloss.

The individually written pre- and post-test compositions were evaluated using two rubrics that assessed genre-appropriate conventions (Appendix B) and genre-appropriate style (Appendix C). A random sample of 23% of the pre-test (five compositions) and the post-test (five compositions) were rated independently by the first author and another teacher. There was an 80% and 90% agreement between the raters for genre-appropriate style and genre-appropriate conventions, respectively. Disagreements were resolved through discussion. Descriptive statistics revealed that students improved on both measures from the pre-test (Genre-specific conventions: M = 3.23, SD = .612; Genre-appropriate style: M = 3.55, SD = .666) to post-test (Genre-specific conventions: M = 3.55, SD = .671; Genre-appropriate style: M = 3.64, SD = .658). After checking for normality, two paired sample t-tests were conducted, which revealed that these improvements were significant for both genre-specific conventions scores (t = 2.63, p = .016) and genre-appropriate style scores (t = 2.49, p = .021). These results are congruent with studies demonstrating that model texts serve to facilitate an awareness of genre-specific features (Pasand and Haghi, 2013; Yang and Zhang, 2010). The significance of our innovation is that students improved their use of genre-specific features using model texts as a basis for text reconstruction tasks.

In terms of genre conventions, noticeable changes from pre- to post-test included students’ increased use of subheadings to signpost reported activities, clear paragraphing and the inclusion of topic sentences to signal the general-to-specific organization. In terms of style, several students made improvements in their consistent use of pronouns, degree of formality and word choice. The excerpts in Figure 3 contain illustrative changes of one student's compositions. Firstly, the student incorporates subheadings (Recycle with us; Share food) and topic sentences (First activity is recycle with us) into his post-test, which are lacking in his pre-test. Secondly, we can see that he addresses the reader with the second-person pronoun “you” in his pre-test, which demonstrates his lack of awareness of audience (he erroneously assumes all the readers participated in the film festival). This improves in the post-test: although the student fails to use the third-person pronoun, he directly addresses the participants as “students.”

Figure 3.

Example of changes from post-test to pre-test (genre-appropriate conventions).

From the teachers’ observations, a particularly successful aspect of the dictogloss innovation was that students engaged productively in the task – this was true even for students who were usually reticent during lessons. In fact, students seemed quite capable of focusing on issues beyond grammar and vocabulary during dictogloss-induced discussions. We believe it was through these discussions that students “noticed” salient features of the text (Schmidt, 1990), leading to a growing awareness of target genre elements. Although we are aware that explicit teaching has been shown to be effective in genre-based instruction (Graham and Perin, 2007), we believe productive activities were necessary for these students to consolidate knowledge of the genre.

Admittedly, there are several ways that this innovation could be improved upon, which may inform teachers’ modification of our “dictogloss for genre-based instruction” task for their classes. Firstly, the text used in this innovation was adapted from a coursebook – that is, it was based on an artificial text. It might have been more appropriate to adapt an authentic text (i.e. texts created for use outside of the language classroom) as a basis of the dictogloss, as authentic texts carry more communicative value, making textual aspects of the genre more salient (Gilmore, 2007). To do this, teachers can make use of several strategies for adapting authentic texts, such as segmenting, shortening, simplifying, contextualizing and glossing, to create modified authentic texts suitable for use in their classrooms (for text adaption strategies, see Thornbury, 2005). Secondly, we felt the aim of the genre-based instruction that included the dictogloss could have been more contextualized. Our implementation approximately followed the teaching–learning cycle (Cope and Kalantzis, 1993). The dictogloss was carried out after an introduction to the genre using other model texts (i.e. the “modeling” stage), the innovation itself reinforced aspects of the genre (i.e. the “joint reconstruction” stage) and the post-test required students to individually compose a text of the same genre (i.e. the “independent construction”). The independent construction could have had a communicative aim more in line with students’ reality (e.g. newsletter to parents detailing school activities) and the dictogloss texts could have more closely matched this purpose. Thirdly, due to logistical constraints, student pairings were self-selected. To take advantage of the collaborative learning benefits of mixed proficiency pairs (Aubrey, 2018; Leeming et al., 2020), the teacher might have more carefully selected students of different proficiencies, so that more capable students could help weaker students. Finally, we felt we could have done more to draw learners’ attention to genre features during the dictogloss task. The input features of the text could be modified to make target features more salient, but a better strategy might be modifying the dictogloss worksheet, so that students are given parts of the text but must reconstruct other parts that contain important aspects related to the genre. This would have had the effect of directing students’ attention to the targeted features.

The goal of writing is not only to demonstrate control over vocabulary and syntactical choices; likewise, a text is not simply an example of vocabulary and grammar. The innovation reported in this paper is a variation of a dictogloss that uses a complete example of a text to bring about an awareness of genre-specific features. We hope that our description and evaluation provide a concrete example of how a productive writing activity can divert students’ focus beyond the sentence level.

Footnotes

Declaration of conflicting interests

The authors have no conflicts of interest to declare.

Funding

The authors received no financial support for the research, authorship and/or publication of this article.

ORCID iD

Lam Ting Chun

Scott Aubrey

Appendix A: Dictogloss texts

Fun fair raises thousands to help unwanted dogs
First Dictogloss Practice (Reconstructing introductory paragraph and body paragraph)
Introduction
Hong Kong Dog Rescue (HKDR) is a charity that saves and finds homes for unwanted dogs. Last weekend, we held a fun fair to support HKDR We hoped the fun fair would raise money for the charity.
Activity 1: Stalls
First of all, the club organized stalls to raise funds. We sold second-hand clothes, delicious homemade cupcakes and even clothes to keep pets warm in the winter. We’re glad to see many more items were sold this year.
Second Dictogloss Practice (Reconstructing body paragraphs)
Activity 2: 5K race
Besides, a 5K race was held to raise finds. All students who joined the race put on dog costumes. Many teachers thought the students were cute and the event was enjoyable.
Activity 3: School Band Performance
The fun fair also features a performance by the school band. It took place in the school hall and more than 500 students went to the show. The band performed the song ‘I Love My Dog’. The students were very excited and sang together.
Third Dictogloss Practice (Reconstructing body paragraph and concluding paragraph)
Activity 4: Game booths
The highlight of the festival was the game booths. After playing the games, students learnt more about unwanted dogs and the ways to help them. Some student were surprised by the number of street dogs and wished to give them a helping hand.
Conclusion
Overall, this year’s fun fair was a big success. It raised more money than last year: a record HK$12,000. It is hoped that there will be more and more support to unwanted dogs.

Appendix B: Rubrics for rating genre-appropriate conventions

Score	Description	Points
5	Expressions, organization and formatting are effective and appropriate to the genre.	9–10
4	Expressions, organization and formatting are consistently appropriate to the genre.	7–8
3	Expressions, organization and formatting are mostly appropriate to the genre.	5–6
2	Expressions, organization and formatting are to some extent appropriate to the genre.	3–4
1	There is little sense of genre conventions.	1–2
0	The work does not reach a standard described by the descriptors above.	0
Point (✓)	Conventions
	1. Title
	2. Subheadings
	3. Introduction, which gives a summary of the event
	4. Theme
	5. Topic sentence, which gives the name of the activity
	6. Describe what the activity is about
	7. Describe why the activity is organized
	8. Examples
	9. Responses of the participants
	10. Conclusion

Appendix C: Rubrics for rating genre-appropriate style

Score	Description
5	The style is effective and appropriate to the task.
4	The style is consistently appropriate to the task.
3	The style is mostly appropriate to the task.
2	The style is to some extent appropriate to the task.
1	There is little sense of style.
0	The work does not reach a standard described by the descriptors above.

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