Study Guide

How to practice dictation effectively

The goal is not simply to “get the sentence right.” The real goal is to identify exactly what you failed to hear, correct it, and replay the sentence until you can recognize the sound pattern naturally.

01

Listen first

Listen once or twice before checking any hints. Try to notice rhythm, stress, and chunks of speech rather than isolated sounds.

02

Type what you hear

Do not get stuck on one word for too long. Type the whole sentence as best you can, then press Enter to check.

03

Fix the exact problem

When the app shows a wrong or missing word, press Ctrl to replay, correct it yourself, and press Enter again. This correction loop is the most important part of the exercise.

Recommended workflow

First listen: listen to the audio or video without looking at the script and type everything you can catch.
Check: press Enter. Focus only on the wrong or missing words shown by the app instead of revealing the full transcript too early.
Replay: press Ctrl to replay the same sentence and listen for connected speech, weak forms, contractions, and final sounds.
Correct: fix the word or phrase and repeat the cycle until the whole sentence is correct.
Save vocabulary while typing: in Dictation mode, select or double-click one word in your typed answer, choose + Save selected word, and add a Vietnamese meaning. The word is stored with the current sentence and timestamp for later vocabulary practice.
Lesson review: after the final sentence, review the full transcript and your Accuracy score. Click any highlighted missed word, add its Vietnamese meaning, and save it directly to Vocabulary.
Translate a completed sentence: after a Dictation answer is correct, choose 🌐 Translate beside Next · Enter. Listenise opens Google Translate in a new tab with the current English sentence ready to translate into Vietnamese.
Vocabulary practice: open Vocabulary, use the Vietnamese meaning and sentence context as clues, type the missing English word, and choose Check answer. After checking, the large blue heading shows the Vietnamese meaning when available, and the answer is shown in bold inside the full sentence. If it is wrong, extra or incorrect letters are shown in red with a strikethrough, while missing or replacement letters are inserted in green. Then choose Again, Hard, Good, or Easy to set when the word should return for practice.

What to do

Use short lessons of about 5–15 minutes and study them carefully. After dictation, listen to the full passage once more at natural speed and mentally follow the transcript.

What to avoid

Do not replay a sentence too many times before typing. Do not simply look at the answer and move on. Avoid audio that is so difficult that you cannot understand most of the sentences.

Keyboard shortcuts

Enter — Check / Next after completion · Ctrl — replay current sentence · Ctrl + ←/→ — previous/next sentence · Ctrl + ↑ — play the full audio.

Move your Library to another computer

Open My Library and choose Export Library Backup. Listenise creates a small JSON file containing your resource structure and saved learning progress. The backup does not contain your MP3/MP4/SRT files.

  1. Copy the exported dictationlab-library-backup-YYYY-MM-DD.json file to the other computer.
  2. Copy your original resource folders to that computer as well. They may be stored on a different drive or under a different parent folder.
  3. Open My Library → Import Library Backup.
  4. For each item marked Relink required, choose Relink folder and select the corresponding root resource folder.

Listenise uses stable resource/lesson IDs and relative lesson paths, so completed and in-progress lessons can reconnect to the copied resource set without importing each lesson again.

Shadowing mode

Open any lesson and choose Shadowing from Practice mode. The media plays continuously while the current subtitle is highlighted automatically.

For lessons opened from My Library, the app saves the last shadowing position and subtitle progress locally on this device.