DICTATIONS

DICTATIONS SECOND SENIORS (15,16,17)

Army Ants

 

              What eats every animal in its path, raids other ant colonies, and migrates to find more food? An army ant colony! Army ants are amazing creatures! They have founded nests, developed a social hierarchy, migrated to other areas, and also have a very interesting life cycle and colony structure.

 

            An army ant colony consists of the queen, her eggs, soldiers and workers. These ants are nomadic, which means they must make temporary nests as they travel. Their nests are made up of army ants themselves, and they form walls and fasten onto each other by using their jaws and their claws, which enables them to hang from a log or another surface, while the nest encloses the queen and her eggs. Due to the large size of the colonies they need to move often to find food.They sometimes raid other colonies and capture slaves. Army ants kill and eat up to 100,000 animals in a day, such as lizards, snakes, spiders, chickens, pigs, goats, scorpions, and are also able to climb trees to eat birds and insects that live there.

The Lord of the Rings

 

            John Ronald Reuel Tolkien was a gifted author, who created a fairy world and its characters, described in the trilogy The Lord of the Rings. The story began as a sequel to Tolkien’s earlier fantasy book,The Hobbit, but developed into a much larger story, which has been translated into 38 languages and between 2001 and 2003, the trilogy were box-office hits all over the world.

 

            Tolkien is famous for having created such a literary genre as fantasy. All his books are real masterpieces. The Lord of the Rings is set in the fictional realm of Middle-earth. The complex story concerns humanoid peoples known as Hobbits, Elves, Men, Dwarves, Wizards, and Orcs. It centres on the Ring of Power made by the Dark Lord Sauron. But not only fantastic beings were concocted by him. Both a philologist and professor at Oxford University, he knew many ancient and modern languages. Thus, a new world – Middle-earth, along with its geography, its history, and several languages appeared.

 

 

 

 

The Hubble Space Telescope

 

            The Hubble Space Telescope is a space-based telescope that was launched in 1990 from the space shuttle Discovery. From its position 380 miles above the Earth's surface, Hubble has expanded our understanding of the universe — and of star birth, star death, galaxy evolution, and black holes in particular.

 

The telescope's science instruments are the astronomer's eyes to the universe. They include the Wide Field and Planetary Camera 2, Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph, Near Infrared Camera and Multi-Object Spectrometer, and the Advanced Camera for Surveys.

 

 When first launched, Hubble's lens was out of shape on the edges by 1/50th the diametre of a human hair. This very small defect made it difficult to focus faint objects being viewed by Hubble. Because the telescope is in low Earth orbit, it can be serviced by a space shuttle; thus, the defect was corrected during the first on-orbit servicing mission. The Hubble Space Telescope is scheduled for one more servicing mission before its planned retrieval in 2010. You may one day be able to visit the telescope at the National Air and Space Museum in Washington D.C.

 

 

 

DICTATIONS FIRST SENIORS ( 12,13,14)

Volcanoes 

            Today, there are many active volcanoes worldwide. As the world's population grows, more and more people are living in potentially dangerous volcanic areas. Volcanic eruptions continue - as they have throughout history - posing ever-greater threats to life and property.

 

How do volcanoes form?  Deep inside Earth, between the molten iron core and the thin crust at the surface, there is a solid body of rock called the mantle. When rock from the mantle melts, it moves to the surface through weak spots in the crust, and releases pent-up gases. But why does this solid rock melt and come to the surface? 

                    

Extremely high temperatures and pressure cause the rock to melt and become liquid rock or magma. When a large body of magma has formed, it rises through the denser rock layers toward Earth's surface. Magma that has reached the surface is called lava.

The Paper Clip

 

            A paper clip is a device which holds several pieces of paper together by means of pressure: it leaves the paper intact and can be easily removed. It is just a piece of steel wire bent into a double-oval shape, but over the past century nobody has invented a better method of holding loose sheets of paper together.

 

            The first bent-wire paper clip was patented by Samuel Fay in 1867. This clip was originally intended to attach tickets to fabric, although the patent recognised it could be used to attach papers together. Before the paper clip was invented, people used to use pins or string to put papers together. After this clip appeared on the market, many other types of clips were created, for different uses. But the paper clip we know and use today was invented in 1899, by William Middlebrook, who also invented the machine to produce the paper clip.

The Origin of Cutlery

 

            Cutlery refers to utensils such as knives, forks and spoons, used as tableware, but eating or serving with utensils made of silver or other metals is relatively recent. Henry VIII, the most famous of England’s Tudor kings, used his hands to tear off big pieces of meat, throw them on his plate, and chop them up into smaller bits which he would then shovel into his mouth. These table manners were  acceptable until books on table etiquette were published around the fifteenth century.

 

            The spoon was one of man’s earliest inventions, the first ones being carved out of wood in Northern Europe. Later spoons were made of horns of cattle, ivory tusks, bronze, and eventually silver and gold.

 

           The knife, first used by hunters for cutting and spearing meat, was first made of flint, then of metal.

 

            Forks were introduced at the table around the time of the Crusades, at the beginning of the twelfth century, in Italy, but it took about 300 years for people to use them as everyday utensils.It was considered easier to use both hands, five fingers, or three fingers in the case of more aristocratic people.

   

 

DICTATIONS SECOND SENIORS ( 12,13,14)

Chimney Sweeps

  

         A chimney sweep is a person who cleans chimneys for a living. This job is considered to be one of the oldest in the world.  In the last two hundred years, chimneys grew large enough to hold a man, so this profession developed enormously in the time of the Industrial Revolution.

         In Victorian times, the business became notorious for employing young boys, as they were small enough to enter the chimneys and clean them from inside. The work was dirty and dangerous, and their employers were famous for abusing and exploiting them. Because of this, a special brush with a collapsible handle was invented, and it enabled the sweep to reach up the chimney without having to enter it.

          The image of the chimney sweep has improved, and this can be seen in the film Mary Poppins. In some parts of the UK it is considered lucky for a bride to see one on her wedding day, so many modern British sweeps hire themselves out to attend weddings.

Tornadoes

 A tornado is a dark funnel-shaped cloud made up of violently rotating winds that can reach speeds of up to 300 mph. The diameter of a tornado can vary between a few feet and a mile, and its track can extend from less than a mile to several hundred miles. Tornadoes generally travel in a northeast direction (depending on the prevailing winds) at speeds ranging from 20–60 mph. Tornadoes are most often generated by giant thunderstorms known as “supercells.” These powerful, highly organized storms form when warm, moist air along the ground rushes upward, meeting cooler, drier air. As the rising warm air cools, the moisture it carries condenses, forming a massive thundercloud, sometimes growing to as much as 50,000 ft in height. Variable winds at different levels of the atmosphere feed the updraft and cause the formation of the tornado's characteristic funnel shape.

Post-its

  

         Post-it notes, those small, yellow sticky pieces of paper which we all use, were not planned but were the result of a failed experiment. A man named Spencer Silver had been working in the 3M research laboratories in 1970, trying to find a strong adhesive. He developed a new type of glue but it was weaker than what 3M already manufactured. It stuck but could easily be lifted off. It was super weak instead of super strong! No one else knew what to do with it, but Silver did not throw it away – he kept it. Then, one Sunday four years later, another 3M scientist called Arthur Fry was singing in the church choir. He used pieces of paper to keep his place in the hymn book, but they kept falling out. Remembering Silver’s adhesive, Fry put some on the paper. With the weak adhesive, the paper stayed in place but came off without damaging the paper. In 1980, 3M began selling Post-it notes world-wide. Today, they are one of the most popular office products available.

  

DICTATIONS FIRST SENIORS (10,11,12)

 

Walt Disney

  

            Try to imagine a world without Walt Disney. Walt Disney is a legend; a folk hero of the 20th century. He transformed the entertainment industry into what we know today. He pioneered the fields of animation, and found new ways to teach, and educate. Walt loved history. As a result of this, he didn't give technology to us piece by piece. He connected it to his mission of making life more enjoyable, and fun. Walt was our bridge from the past to the future. He was a creator, an imaginative, and aesthetic person. Even thirty years after his death, we still remember him for everything he has done for us.

 

 Walt Disney's dream of a clean, and organized amusement park came true, as Disneyland Park opened in 1955, in Anaheim, California. By the end of the eighties this fabulous $17-million magic kingdom had entertained more than 200 million people, including presidents, kings and queens, and royalty from all over the globe. Then Disneyworld was created in Orlando, Florida, in 1971, with Magic Kingdom, adding Epcot in 1982, and MGM Studios in 1989.

Guinness Records 

            The Guinness Book of Records is a book published annually, containing an internationally recognised collection of world records, both human achievements and extreme facts of the natural world. It was first published in 1955, and has shown people doing outrageous feats, such as the fattest man/woman, or the most swords swallowed by a person.

 

            The tallest man in history was Robert Wadlow, who grew to a height of 2.72 m. The tallest woman alive measures 2.30 m. The most pierced woman had, up to 2002, 720 piercings on her body, including 192 on her face alone. Kim Goodman of Chicago, Illinois, can pop her eyeballs out at least 11 mm beyond her eye sockets. A lady in Canada gave birth to a 10.8-kg boy in 1879, who unfortunately died 11 hours later. The land speed record is held by a British man, who in 1997 reached a speed of 1,227 mph in a super sonic car which generated a shock-wave and a massive sonic boom.

  

Deep Sea Creatures 

            Deep under the surface of the sea, where light no longer can penetrate, live a large number of strange-looking creatures. Some of these areas can be up to 11 km deep, and most of it is unknown territory. Conditions at these extreme depths are very different to those on land: temperatures are lower, pressures are higher, and food is sparsely distributed, so the life that exists down there has to be well-adapted. There is no plant life, because there is no light for photosynthesis.

 

            Some of the strange sea creatures which have been discovered are the following: the deep-sea dragonfish, which is a ferocious predator; the deep sea angler, a grotesque-looking fish that looks like a basketball with a large mouth full of sharp teeth; the gulper eel, one of the most bizarre creatures, which has a large mouth similar to a pelican’s beak, and it can swallow an animal much larger than itself.

        

SECOND SENIORS DICTATIONS 9,10,11

Sharks            

           Sharks are amazing fish which have existed since long before the time of the dinosaurs. They live in waters all over the world, in every ocean, and even in some rivers and lakes. 

           Unlike bony fish, sharks have no bones; their skeleton is made of cartilage, which is a tough, fibrous substance, not nearly as hard as bone.

           Sharks may have up to 3,000 teeth at one time. Most sharks do not chew their food, but gulp it down whole in large pieces. The teeth are arranged in rows; when one tooth is damaged or lost, it is replaced by another. Most sharks have about five rows of teeth at any time.             
   

           Sharks are different from other fish.  They can only swim forwards, whereas other fish can also swim backwards. Sharks’ eggs are fertilized in the female’s body. Other fish fertilize their eggs in the water.  Sharks can range in size from eighteen cm long to fifteen metres long.

Jack the Ripper

 

            "Jack the Ripper!" Few names in history are as instantly recognizable. Fewer still evoke such vivid images: noisy courts and alleys, hansom cabs and gaslights, swirling fog, prostitutes decked out in the tawdriest of finery, the shrill cry of newsboys - and silent, cruel death personified in the cape-shrouded figure of a faceless prowler of the night, armed with a long knife and carrying a black Gladstone bag.

 

But by today's standards of crime, Jack the Ripper would barely make the headlines. Why is this symbol of terror as popular a subject today as he was in Victorian London?

            Because Jack the Ripper represents the classical whodunit. The case is an enduring unsolved mystery, which professionals and amateurs have tried to solve for over a hundred years. Between the months of August and November, 1888, the Whitechapel area of London was witness to a series of horrific murders, which remain unresolved to this day. He comes out from the fog, kills violently and quickly and disappears without a trace. The perfect ingredients for an everlasting thriller.

Earthquakes    

            An earthquake is what happens when two blocks of the earth suddenly slip past one another. The surface where they slip is called the fault. The location below the earth’s surface where the earthquake starts is called the hypocentre, and the location directly above it on the surface is called the epicentre.

 

            The earth shakes when there is an earthquake because of the movement of the tectonic plates which form a layer on the surface. These plates are like the pieces of a puzzle, and they keep moving around slowly all the time. The edges of the plates are called plate boundaries and these are made up of many faults . Most of the earthquakes around the world occur on these faults.

             To measure the intensity of earthquakes, scientists use an instrument called a seismograph, which records the movements on a strip of paper, called a seismogram. An international scale shows the magnitude of an earthquake.

The scale goes from 1 to 12, and Chile is the country which has had the strongest earthquake in the world.

   

FIRST SENIORS DICTATIONS Nº 8,9,10

 

         Charlie Brown

 This fictional character has been living with his pet dog Snoopy in a small American town since 1950, when he first appeared in the strip cartoon Peanuts .  Charlie Brown has been popular for almost fifty years, and he still experiences all the happiness and frustration of a typical boy, playing baseball with his friends and going to school.  His first appearance in a TV film was in 1965, and so far he has made several films and many videos.  His appeal is as strong as ever, and his adventures have been translated into many different languages all over the world. Each of the characters that are appear with him has his or her own peculiar personality: Lucy, the eternal grouch; Schroeder, his Beethoven-obsessed pal; Linus, with his security blanket: Pig-Pen, the dust-attracter, and so on.

Armadillos

 

         Armadillo is a Spanish word which means 'the little armoured one'. An armadillo is a little mammal with a bony covering that is like an armour.  There are ten kinds  of armadillos, which live from southern United States to southern South America. The upper parts of armadillos are covered with bony shells. These include one on the head and two solid pieces on the back. These two pieces are connected by a flexible centre section made up of movable bands, and they enable the armadillo to twist and turn.

 

         Curiously, an armadillo's teeth are very soft, so it has to eat soft food, such as ants, termites, larvae, grubs and bugs. It has to dig to find its food, using long, strong claws and powerful forearms.

          They mostly protect themselves by digging and running away. It is only one kind which rolls itself into a ball, to avoid being eaten.

 

Pizzas

 

         Pizza, like most fast food, started off  as a peasant food.  It was simple, cheap and filling, and usually very good as it was made of local ingredients. And then it came into contact with the USA, and the USA corrupted it.  The USA, as we all know, is a land of plenty, and so when the food of immigrant peasants was transported to the USA, it got upgraded, or downgraded, depending on your point of view.  In the case of pizza, the simple combination of a thin, crisp dough base and intensively flavoured tomato purée, cheese, anchovies, etc. was turned into an industrialised production process. The dough was mixed with sugar to make it sweet and injected with fat to make it easy to eat, and then it was topped with almost everything you can imagine – vegetables, meat and even fruit!

 

DICTATIONS FIRST SENIORS (7,8,9)

Everyday Life for the Mayas

Maya women rose and started the fires before 4 a.m. Women made breakfast toasting leftover cornmeal pancakes. By 5 a.m., the men had finished eating and left for the fields with their sons. There they harvested their maize. At mid-afternoon, men and boys used to return from the fields and sometimes hunt or check their traps along the way. They used to kill birds with blowpipes and clay pellets. Sometimes they also hunted with spears. When the men got home they had hot baths waiting for them. Some cities had community baths. After bathing, men had dinner but their women didn’t eat with them. The women had to serve the men and then eat their dinner later. Dinner included cornmeal, black beans, meat, maize, rabbit and turkey.After dinner, men usually worked at making wooden and jade objects which were sometimes used in trading. The women would spin cotton and weave.

Ants

Ants are small, dark and silent, and live underground where they cannot be seen. They are venomous and bite, move in legions, and are ugly. But ants are the most successful organisms in evolutionary history. There are over 8,000 species, distributed everywhere on Earth, except in the polar regions. The greatest number of ant species are found in tropical rainforests and savannahs.
Ants, unlike termites, cannot be eaten, because of the formic acid in their bodies, which makes them indigestible, although they can eat us.
Ants are so successful because they have the division of labour built into their system. The colony is almost exclusively female, and the males remain in the nest until the time of their fatal nuptial flight. They mate once, and then die. Ants waste no time and do not play.

Igloos

Every five-year-old knows what igloos look like from the outside, but what are they like inside? And what would it be like to live in one? Imagine yourself inside a hollow dome made of snow and ice, with more ice underneath you. Would it be too cold to sit down comfortably? Would you be able to stand up, or would you have to crawl around on your hands and knees? Could you light a fire? Wouldn’t the fire fill the igloo with smoke and start melting the walls?
The first thing you notice after crawling down through the entrance tunnel is that the igloo is bigger than it looks from the outside. It is also quite warm inside. this is partly because the snow blocks provide very good insulation, and partly because of a stone lamp burning seal oil. To prevent the drips from the snow wall there are animal skins hanging across the ceiling and down the walls. There’s also a small hole which allows the smoke to escape, so that the people don’t suffocate.

TIPS FOR STUDYING DICTATIONS

1. Remember that practice makes perfect. Only practice (and repetition in writing words) can help improve your spelling. There’s no easy way to do this. Some people have better visual memories than others. But most people need to practise, practise and PRACTISE!

2. Try to visualise the difficult words in your mind as you read the dictation to yourself. Close your eyes, imagine the word written, then open them and compare with the dictation. Count the letters the word has.

3. Don't try to study a dictation at the last minute. Try to do this over several days. Also remember that comprehension is important, as it forms part of the unit test. Try to understand what the dictation is about. Don't write mechanically. Get someone to dictate the most complicated words to you. Read the dictation aloud to yourself.

Remember I'll be thinking of you the day before a dictation.

Good Luck!

 

 

DICTATIONS SECOND SENIORS (4,5,6,7,8)

              Carnivorous Plants               

             Plants are supposed to be eaten by animals, not animals by plants! It sounds like a reversal of nature. But in fact, just as you can find bird-eating spiders in the jungles of America, so you can find carnivorous plants all over the world.       

           There are about six hundred species and sub-species of carnivorous plants known to man. These plants attract insects, capture them, kill them and eat them. The best known is probably the Venus Flytrap, which captures flies, ants, other insects and spiders in its sticky leaves before digesting them at its leisure.  The largest carnivorous plants are vines which grow to twenty or thirty metres long and have been known on rare occasions to kill vertebrates such as birds, mice and frogs.                          

             Many carnivorous plants are extremely beautiful, and just as there is a market for exotic pets, so it is perfectly possible to buy a Venus Flytrap, although it is complicated to properly  take care of a plant like this.

           Fire

          Before he discovered fire, man was much more vulnerable.  Other animals were bigger, faster, stronger and more dangerous. Fire changed all that. Fire was man’s discovery. No other animal could produce and control it. It frightened away all the fierce beasts and attracted other people: men, women and children now stayed closer together.  Fire gave them warmth and security and made them feel comfortable. Now during the long, lonely hours man had a friend. In the evening, when the sun set and it became colder, everyone would gather around the warm, protective fire, their eyes fixed upon the flickering flames. Now it was possible to cook meat so that it tasted better and it became natural to share meals. Perhaps it was by a fire that language first developed.

                 Sandcastles                               

                 A true beach lover knows there’s nothing more relaxing than feeling the sun on your back, the wind through your hair, and wet sand on your hands as you build a fairy-tale castle fit for a king.                    

                Although you may not believe it, there is an art to castle-making, and there are contests, websites, and even newsletters dedicated to this area.                    

              The first step to a successful sandcastle is a good water source. Dig a hole or get yourself a good bucket. Then it’s all a matter of carving. Experts generally carve sandcastles from mounds of sand, rather than trying to build from the bottom up and making walls and towers which won’t last very long. They get themselves a nice pile of wet sand and carve it down to castle shape. The secret is to go slowly and carve just a little bit at a time. If you get impatient and scrape off a big piece, you’ll have to start all over again. Relax, get into the mood, and watch your dream castle slowly appear. But remember, it won’t last longer than the wave that washes it away!

                  Acupuncture              

                Acupuncture is one of the oldest, most commonly used medical procedures in the world. It originated in China over 2,000 years ago, and became better known in the USA in 1971, when a reporter on The New York Times wrote about how Chinese doctors had used it to ease his pain after surgery.            

               Acupuncture involves the stimulation of anatomical points on the body by a technique which involves penetrating the skin with thin, solid, metallic needles that are manipulated by the acupuncturist.            

              Most people experience no or minimal pain as the needles are inserted. Some people feel energized by it, while others feel relaxed.                

             Acupuncture is one of the key components of Chinese traditional medicine, in which the body is considered as a balance of two opposing and inseparable forces: yin and yang. Yin is the cold, slow or passive principle, and yang is the hot,  active principle. The Chinese believe that illness is because of an imbalance of these two elements. which produces a blockage of chi, or vital energy.         

                  Mayonnaise                 

                Mayonnaise is a thick, creamy sauce or dressing which is made of oil, egg yolks, lemon juice and seasonings. It is an emulsion, which is a mixture of two liquids that normally cannot be combined. Oil and water is the classical example of an emulsion. Emulsifying is done by slowly adding one ingredient to another while simultaneously mixing rapidly. This disperses and suspends tiny droplets of one liquid through another. However, the two liquids would quickly separate again if an emulsifier were not added. Emulsifiers are liaisons between the two liquids and serve to stabilise the mixture.  Eggs and gelatin are among the foods that contain emulsifiers. In the case of mayonnaise, the emulsifier is the egg yolk.        

               Mayonnaise was invented in 1756 by the French chef of the Duke de Richeliu, who had just won a battle at Port Mahon. As the chef had no cream to add to some eggs to make a sauce, he substituted it for olive oil, and mayonnaise was born. He named the new sauce ‘mahonnaise’ in honour of the Duke’s victory.   

DICTATIONS FIRST SENIORS (4,5,6)

           Black Holes

          Black holes are places where ordinary gravity has become so extreme that it overwhelms all other forces in the universe. Once inside, nothing can escape a black hole’s gravity  -  not even light.        

          Yet scientists know that black holes exist. They know how they are born, where they occur, and why they exist in different sizes. They even know what would happen if something or somebody fell into one. Black holes obey all the laws of physics, including the laws of gravity. A black hole can range from the size of a marble to the size of the entire solar system. What is inside a black hole? Scientists believe that all the matter in a black hole is piled up in a single point in the centre. To properly understand a black hole centre requires comprehension of quantum gravity, but how this theory works is still unknown, and this is one of the most important unsolved problems in physics.

         Blimps         

        You’ve probably seen advertising blimps in the sky above your city at some moment in your life. Blimps are a type of lighter-than-air craft, called an airship.  Like a hot air balloon, blimps use a gas to generate lift, but, unlike a balloon, blimps can move forward through the air under their own power, like airplanes. In the past they used hydrogen gas, but after the explosion of the Hindenburg in 1937, they use helium instead. They can hover like helicopters, travel in all kinds of weather and stay aloft for days. Some blimps are equipped with lights for night advertising.  

       A blimp controls its buoyancy  in the air in the same way a submarine does in the water. It rises because of the helium gas inside its tanks, and when the pilot wants to descend, he fills other tanks with air. Air is heavier than  helium, so the blimp starts going down. 

            Fairy Tales         

           A fairy tale is a story featuring characters such as fairies, goblins, elves, trolls, giants, and others. The fairy tale is a sub-class of the folk tale. These stories often involve royalty, and modern versions usually have a happy ending.  

           In the beginning, fairy tales were part of an oral tradition, which means they were told from one generation to another. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, fairy tales were associated to children’s literature. Actually, fairy tales are more about princes, princesses and dragons, involved in combat, adventure and romance than fairies themselves. Fairies had a secondary role.

           According to a 2004 survey among 1,200 children, the most popular fairy tales are Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, Hansel and Gretel, Rapunzel, Little Red Riding Hood and the Town Musicians of Bremen.  

Dictations do a lot for you!

Although the word 'dictation' may give you the shivers, it is very true that you learn a lot from them. They are useful because of the following:

* they help you improve your listening and writing skills

* they consolidate your spelling and  punctuation

* they teach you new vocabulary

* they help you to learn about and understand different cultures and people

 

 

* they improve your general knowledge

* they teach you about intonation in another language

* they force  you to write neatly and clearly

For these reasons and possibly more, you will find that dictations are useful. Some day you will realise how much you learned from them!