Learning by cheating is a way to create a self-spelling training for students who need repeated practices.
Arabic dictation can represent a challenge for elementary bilingual students in UAE private school. The reasons are multiple, but the most common reason is that the Arabic language is harder than the first language taught in these schools, which is the English language, and students have the choice to escape from using the Arabic language in their daily talk and prefer the "easy" English language than their mother tongue.
Consequently, the Arabic dictation is considered a tough task for most of them, and, for those who do not know the Arabic language and are reading this article, it is to say that Arabic letters can be used in three different shapes, and most of them are pronounced differently just by adding one dot and sometimes two dots on the top or under the letter.
It is also to say that, dictation homework is a tough task for the parents as well who have to train the child and provide the right amount of repetitions to help them perform better and learn the transcription of the new words. And to be able to succeed in a simple dictation, students need to use complex neural network to connect the notions and the fragmented letters just to recall for only one word in the Arabic language. This might be a complex thinking process for most students during the dictation time.
That is why, visual training can be the fastest solution to complete the task and achieve the training successfully. What I mean by visual is what other people consider cheating: Seeing the word before writing it during the training. Training sessions can be repeated like any other training for learning except that for this method, it has to be a daily practice, or a daily training with approximately 3 to 4 sessions a week. Some students will need 2 to 3 sessions only, others will need 4 and more sessions. In all cases, training will be decreased from time to time to challenge the student with his own ability to recall the dictation.
Self-learning in Dictation
The educators’ role is to guide the students to self-learn and to take responsibility of their own tasks inside and outside the school. However, dictation is not a task that a student can achieve alone with no trainer. Students can copy their dictation, they can write it again, but it is not the right way to train for a dictation, it has to be dictated by someone else!
Now, the easiest way parents can train the child is to read the dictation and, sometimes, to spell the word to achieve this training with all the stress that a parent can endure in this sitting, and most of them cannot bear to see how much their child’s mistakes are just spontaneous reactions, how much their child is taking time to write, and how much the process can require repetition.
To be able to achieve self-learning for this task, I tried to make a simple PowerPoint-based video, and used an AI (standard) speaker from Speechelo to make an Arabic Dictation Trainer. Then I dispatched the video to the parents to understand how they feel about this method and to know if it really helps to train the student and lifts the stress that usually settles with this task on both the student and the parent.
As a primary feedback, some parents liked the self-learning that this training could achieve and how much time and effort it saves for both the student and the parent, while some others considered that their children are not getting trained properly as they could "cheat" by going back to the word to copy it!
To understand the extent of this training, I had to try it on a primary student who is a slow writer and has low reading skills in Arabic taking into consideration the fact that my training should be effective for all student levels, and if it works with a low level student, it will definitely work with a standard level student.
First, I had to introduce the video to the student, explain how to work on it to train himself for the dictation and then to show him when to pause the video to make the transition between the sentences smoother for the student as he is a slow writer. Then, I asked him to start the training while observing his moves.
The student started the dictation: the first sentence was not that easy for him, he had to pause the video at each word. Then, he started getting used to the pattern of the dictation: visual printing of the words and then dictation with 40 seconds pause between each word. It is clear that the student needed at least one minute to write the word, but I was amazed by the way his brain could adapt with the short time he was given to write the dictated word, and started to speed up his writing to be able to transit from a word to another with no pause! This was the first good impact I could register for the self-dictation trainer.
After two weeks of training with the same technique on different dictations, the student showed interest as he could “cheat” during the training by going back and forth in the video and could see the word before writing it. Cheating in this way is considered a vision-based learning to recognize the graphemes, and exposing the student to the word with no stress or negative feedback could help him perform better the day of the test, as he could expose himself to the training several times and could practice the writing along with the listening at his own pace. Repetition could reinforce the listening and the reading of the words, and to print it while it is being read. No teacher nor parent can expose the student to this considerable amount of stress-free repetition during a dictation training.
Another element I needed to know is the performance of the student at school. Indeed, the student could reduce the number of mistakes as he could train a lot during the week, but the most important fact is that the student was writing faster, was less stressed during the dictation test and showed a consistent and a reasonable pattern of mistakes.
Self-training for dictation with a video is an important upgrade to consider in private schools. It reinforces self-confidence, lifts stress from both the parent and the student, gives to the student the opportunity to train at his own pace and a chance to correct his own mistakes. Consequently, it will improve his reading and writing skills and establish a feeling of responsibility towards his training with no involvement of the parents who are the main provider of this training at this time.
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