Listening Beyond Words: How Dictation Enhances Speaking Skills Using H5P Interactive Book

Published on 30 April 2025
by Yi Dai, English Language Centre, School of Languages, Xi’an Jiaotong-Liverpool University

Target skill(s)

Set-ups

Teachers need to prepare:

1. 1. Audio files: This H5P activity only accepts existing audio files; users cannot record their voices when editing in H5P. Thus, preparing the audio files before setting up H5P, downloading textbook audio, or creating your own recording is recommended.
   2. Texts: Prepare the texts for this activity, i.e., audio transcription.

These can be adapted from weekly teaching materials based on your teaching curriculum.

This H5P activity is called ‘Interactive Book.’ H5P interactive activities can be created on various online Learning Management Systems (LMS), i.e., LMO at XJTLU, which is powered by Moodle. Instructions for adding H5P to Moodle have been extensively covered in previous collections, such as Drag the Words and Interactive Video in the 2023 collection. Therefore, the following sharing will focus on integrating audio into other H5P activities using Interactive Book, like Mark the Words.

Step 1: Create an Interactive Book activity

To set-up an Interactive Book, teachers can go to H5P Content Bank; click on the ‘Add’ and select ‘Interactive Book (Image 1). Alternatively, teachers can use Lumi to create and set up this Interactive Book activity, and upload to Moodle.

Step 2: Create audio materials content.

1. In the ‘Content’ area, select ‘Audio’ (Image 2).
2. Name and upload the audio file(s). The crucial decision here is how you want to display the audio player.

• Refer to Image 3 – Choose ‘Minimalistic’ mode: Users see a simple player shape to click to pause or continue.
• Refer to Image 4 – Choose ‘Full’ mode: Users can access a progress bar for playback and skipping.

Note:  If multiple audio files are needed, create a new content section for each audio by clicking the ‘Add content’ button (Image 5).

Image 2. Upload audio file(s)

Image 4. ‘Full’ mode to allow the function of pause and volume control.

Image 5. Add more audio files or other activities

Step 3: Create Marked the Words content

Once the audio setup is complete, locate the ‘Add content’ button and click it to create scripts/texts for students to read and mark while simultaneously viewing the progress bar (Image 5).

1. In the ‘Content’ area, choose the ‘Mark the Words’ activity this time (Image 6).
2. Edit the title and activity instructions to suit your design.
3. Scripts/texts for students to read and click on should be put in the ‘Textfield’ (Image 7). Place asterisks (*) before and after each correct word (asterisks should be placed around individual words, not phrases).

Note:  As circled in Image 7, there is a highlighted button ‘i Show instructions’. Click on it, and detailed instructions of how to put asterisks (*) will be shown on the screen (Image 8).

Image 9 provides a preview of the final appearance of this activity. Here, the ‘Full’ mode displays the player with one audio containing all five sentences, allowing students to pause and playback as needed. On the left-hand side, a column serves as a bookmark. If additional pages or other activities are integrated, they will be accessible there.

Image 7. Edit texts.

Image 9. Preview.

Procedure

1. Students receive pre-teaching regarding sentence stress, including which types of words should be stressed.

2. Students can work in pairs or groups to complete this activity in a physical class. Alternatively, students can independently complete this activity online as a review exercise. They have the option to replay the audio and make additional attempts.

3. Speaking always needs an output. Ask students to practice sentence stress by following the audio and reading from the Mark the Words texts.

4. Next, teachers can provide a topic related to the lesson and instruct students to practice sentence stress in pairs. One student speaks while another student notes down the words being stressed.

Caveats and alternatives

While this activity aims to enhance speaking skills, specifically sentence stress, and offers several advantages, there are some potential caveats to consider:

• Technical requirement: As outlined in the setup, teachers must create audio files in advance, for example, when they aim for authenticity or lack textbook audio material to facilitate the activity. This prerequisite may pose challenges in settings with limited technological resources. To address this, educators can utilize AI tools for text-to-audio conversion, such as ElevenLabs, to streamline the process and enhance accessibility.

• Dependency on visual aids: While visual aids can assist students in understanding the context and focusing on their speaking skills, there is a risk of over-reliance. They may sometimes just read sentences and guess answers, potentially hindering their abilities to develop listening and speaking skills without text cues provided.

Therefore, an alternative way to design this activity is using Dictation, another H5P interaction that enables creators to use the in-browser recording function. However, this restricts users to typing responses. As clarified earlier, this could introduce spelling challenges that interfere with the target skill practice.

Additionally, this Interactive Book can be used as a tool for post-listening practice, specifically for practicing note-taking strategies: listen, and mark or drag and drop the words that should be noted down.

Additional information

This article presents one application of the Interactive Book to create activities aimed at enhancing speaking and listening skills. For further exploration of interactions facilitated by Interactive Book, you can visit the official H5P website for more details: https://h5p.org/content-types/interactive-book

Click the button below to download the demo of this Interactive Book activity: