What is dictation in the Charlotte Mason method?

Charlotte Mason, the British educator whose method many homeschool families follow, used dictation as a way to teach spelling, not as a test. Her version is a prepared lesson. The child studies the passage before the teacher reads it, so the writing is a check on what the child has learned rather than a surprise. The result is different from the dictation many people remember from school, which Mason herself disliked. The what is dictation guide covers the general meaning of the word, and this page covers the method.

The child prepares the passage before any writing

Mason's dictation starts with preparation. A child of eight or nine prepares one paragraph, an older child a page or two or three pages ¹. The child studies the passage alone, looks at each word they are not sure of, and then pictures it with their eyes shut ². Before the writing starts, the teacher puts any doubtful words on the blackboard, one by one, lets the child look until they have a picture, and then rubs each word out ³.

This preparation is the heart of the method. The child is not asked to recall a word they have never seen. They are asked to recall a word they have already studied, with the image in mind. Mason's own estimate is that the preparation takes ten minutes or less, and that after it there is rarely an error in spelling ⁴. That is her observation from her own schools, not a controlled trial, but it shows what she expected the preparation to achieve.

Mason criticised the common dictation lesson

Mason called dictation, as commonly practised, perhaps the most mischievous of the exercises children did at school ⁵. In the common version the teacher reads a passage clause by clause, repeating each clause, and the children write it without preparation. The teacher then underlines the errors, sometimes in red ink ⁶, and the children correct them, sometimes by copying the right word. Mason argued that a misspelt word leaves an image in the child's brain that the right spelling does not erase, so the usual method makes bad spellers ⁷.

Her steps reverse that order. The child studies the words first and meets the right spelling before writing. Any error that does happen is covered with a slip of stamp-paper, so that its image may be erased as far as possible ⁸.

Dictation sits later in Mason's sequence

Mason does not start with dictation. She wrote that the earliest writing practice for children of seven or eight should be transcription, copying passages slowly and beautifully, rather than letter-writing or dictation ⁹. Transcription, in her scheme, introduces spelling: the child looks at a word and then writes it from memory ¹⁰.

A homeschool publisher that teaches the method describes dictation as the step after a student can write words from memory. The student then prepares a whole passage and writes it at once as the teacher dictates ¹¹. Mason's own dictation lessons were for children of eight or nine and older ¹.

It depends on the child, the family and the goal

• For handwriting, dictation is the wrong main exercise. In Mason's sequence the handwriting work is copywork and transcription, and dictation comes once the child can write steadily. For the handwriting side, see dictation vs copywork.
• For a child who misspells but writes well, dictation with preparation is the method's direct answer to spelling.
• For a family that wants a score, the question is different. In language learning, a dictation can be a test: a piece of writing is dictated to students learning a foreign language ¹². Mason used dictation to teach, not to test. For how a spelling test differs, see dictation vs spelling test.
• For a child with a learning difficulty in spelling or writing, a general method cannot replace an assessment by a teacher or specialist.

How to run a Mason-style dictation at home

1. Choose a paragraph from a good book, poem or passage of scripture that the child can read.
2. Have the child read it through and mark the words they are not sure of.
3. Put those words on a board or a card, let the child look until they have a picture of each, then hide them.
4. Read the passage aloud a clause at a time, each clause once, and let the child write it.
5. Check the writing together. Correct errors once, and have the child write the right word from memory instead of copying the wrong one.

Mason's method fits best in short, steady sessions. For practice ideas beyond the Mason method, see how to practice dictation. The wider meaning of the word is in the dictation glossary entry, and the whole subject is laid out on the dictation overview.