H5P Guides

Dictation Tutorial

You can add audio samples containing a sentence for dictation and enter the correct transcription. Your students can listen to the samples and enter what they have heard into a text field. Their answers will be evaluated automatically.

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Example

Here's the Dictation content we'll create in this tutorial:

When to use Dictation

You can use dictation for any kind of exercise where the student should transcribe something that is spoken.

Step 1: Topic

In this tutorial we will create a dictation with two sentences: 

  • Sentence 1: "The cake is a lie."
  • Sentence 2: "The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog!"

The goal of the exercise is for a student to write down these sentences correctly based on audio they hear.

Step 2: Creating a Dictation

Select the New content option and choose Dictation from the list of Content types: 

Step 3: Dictation editor

The Dictation editor should now appear. The main part of the editor looks like this:

The Dictation editor consists of Task description and Sentences.

Step 4: Task description 

In the Task description field, we give the learner basic instructions or introduce the problem to be solved. We'll use this text for the Task description: It's dictation time! This is a very simple exercise. Just click on the audio play buttons below, listen to the samples and type what you heard.

Step 5: Sentences

We will add two sentences. For each sentence, we will add two audio files, one where we read the sentence with average reading speed and another, alternative, where we read the sentence with slow speed. 

Click on the "+" icon below Sound Sample. The Audio dialog will appear, it looks like this:

Click Upload audio file and choose the file you downloaded: Sentence 1 - average speed. Click Insert. You should get this:

Now you can upload Sound sample slow. Click the "+" below the Sound sample slow and upload the second audio -Sentence 1 audio (slow speed) the same way. 

In the Text field, write: The cake is a lie.

Now we've added the first sentence. To add the second sentence, click the "Add sentence"  button. The second sentence is:

  • Sentence 2: "The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog!"
  • Sentence 2 audio (average speed): Download here
  • Sentence 2 audio (slow speed): Download here

Repeat all the steps the same way as for sentence 1.

Step 6: Behavioural settings

Below are the optional settings for this content type:

Step 7: Finishing up

Save the node/article to view your finished Dictation.
You should now have the same result as the example on top of the page.  
Feel free to leave any comments or suggestions on how to improve this tutorial.