Dictation Ability of Grade Ten Students: A Comparative Study

Abstract

This research work entitled "Dictation Ability of Grade Ten Students: AComparative Study" aims to find out the ability to take dictation from the recordedtext in English. Dictation that is comprised with listening and writing plays vital role toimprove the language skills in separate or integrated way. Regular and continuouspractice of dictation through recorded text helps not only in developing thelistening ability but also in coping it with writing. The main objective of this studywas to find out and compare the ability to take dictation by public and privateschools' students of class ten of Parbat and Kaski districts. For the research work, the researcher selected a passage from the coursebook of class ten which was not taught to them upto the time of data collection(App I).Then he divided the passage into many blocks that were appropriate for thedictation purpose (App. II).Then he recorded the passage in a studio in Pokhara.He selected 8 schools, out of them, 4 were the private and 4 were the public ones,in Parbat and Kaski districts using nonrandom judgmental sampling procedure.Then he visited the schools one by one in different dates and selected 20 students(10 boys and 10 girls) from each of the schools using simple random samplingprocedure. Thus the total number of sample population for the study was onehundred and sixty who were studying in class ten. It was found that the privateschool students were performed better than the public school students in takingdictation. For the analysis and interpretation of the data, the researcher decided tofollow one item one mark system was adopted. The answer sheets were codedfrom the serial number 1 to 160 to make further analysis easy and consistent. Foreach type of error, one mark was awarded. Then the collected data were checkedby the researcher himself and marks were given. The collected data were analyzed, tabulated and interpreted by using the simple statistical tools like percentage andaverage. The obtained result was compared and contrasted one another. The study consists of four chapters.The first chapter deals with the general introduction of the study. this chapter also consists of review of the related literature, objectives of the study, significanceof the study and the definition of the specific terms. The second chapter deals with the methodology of the study. it alsocomprises of the sources of data collection, sampling population and samplingprocedures, tool for data collection, process of data collection and limitationsofthe study. The third chapter deals with the analysis and interpretation of the data. Theobtained data were analyzed and interpreted and presented in different tables. Theaverage and percentage were also drawn based on different variables like district,sex, stream etc. The fourth chapter deals with the findings of the study. The findings andrecommendations are suggested to the concerned authorities.