How dictation practice works for kids

What a dictation list is

A spelling list in Spelling Stars asks a child to spell one word at a time. A dictation list is a different exercise built for the same idea of listening and typing without seeing the text first: instead of single words, a parent types out a short passage, up to 700 characters, and the child listens to the whole thing read aloud, then writes down what they heard. It suits a child who is ready to move from single words to full sentences, and it practises punctuation and capital letters alongside spelling, since both matter to how the passage is scored.

Setting up the passage

Creating a dictation list starts the same way a spelling list does: a parent gives it a name, picks one of the available narrator voices, and sets who practises it and when. Where it differs is the passage itself and two switches that control how it is read aloud. "Say the punctuation" has the narrator name full stops, commas, question marks and the other marks in the passage out loud, in the plain terms a classroom uses, rather than reading straight through them in silence. "Break up long chunks" splits a long passage into shorter phrases at its natural sentence breaks, so a child is never asked to hold an entire paragraph in their head before writing any of it down. Before saving, a parent can preview exactly how the passage will be split and read, and adjust the switches until it sounds right.

How the audio is generated

Saving the list does not make a child wait. The passage is split into phrases behind the scenes and each one is turned into spoken audio in the background, the same way a spelling list's individual words are. The parent sees real progress as each phrase's audio finishes generating, rather than a bar that moves on its own, and if a phrase's audio fails to generate, a retry button appears rather than a silent gap.

What the child sees and hears

A dictation list offers two ways in for the child. Learn it plays the passage phrase by phrase with a simple transport underneath it: play and pause, restart, a seek bar, previous and next phrase, and a choice of Slow, Medium or Normal speed. The chosen speed is remembered on the device and carries straight into Write it, which is where the child actually types out what they hear. Write it keeps the same replay and phrase controls as Learn it, so a child can listen again as many times as they need to before finishing a phrase, and moving between phrases never clears anything they have already typed. A child can also open Write it directly from their home screen without going through Learn it first, for a quicker run at a passage they already know.

What a parent sees afterwards

Finishing a dictation writes down a score out of ten, based on comparing what the child typed against the original passage word by word, so the score reflects spelling, capital letters and punctuation together rather than spelling on its own. That score is what a parent checks back on to decide what happens next: a strong score usually means the passage is ready to be set aside for something new, while a lower one is worth going over together before deciding whether the same passage is worth another attempt. A short passage a child has nearly mastered is often worth one more attempt on the same day, while a passage that still has several differences usually settles better after a night's sleep and a fresh attempt tomorrow, the same way a spelling list's own tricky words tend to improve with a day's gap between attempts rather than several attempts in a row.