Do people still do musical dictations in the UK? If so does anyone have any tips on the best way to go about them?

They're alive and kicking (and man, how they kick!) in Japan, and one reason is probably because people think it's a skill needed to study in France.

Are the dictations single-line melody, or 2-3 part?

they still have dictation in the edexcel AS and A2 music listening paper

At university (early 80s) we progressed to 4-part dictation of about 4 bars in 4/4. First hearing - melody (and some bass, if lucky); second time through, rest of the bass; sketch in any obvious harmonies; third & fourth times through, get the inside parts and/or check your previous guesswork.

Skills involved: hearing melodic intervals and the degrees of the scale for the key you're in; 'seeing' rhythms you hear; understanding of harmony and cadences; very quick music-writing. As David says, it's fun when you can do it. Probably not so much fun if you can't. Interestingly, I don't ever remember being taught HOW to do it - we just did it over and over. I am certain that the individual skills that allow someone to do this are teachable to a certain extent. I suspect the best education is just lots and lots of singing from notation. Aural dictation is just like singing from notation, but backwards.

*nods*

Dictation forms a reasonable chunk of Kodály work, where of course the students are encouraged to try to hear the melody in solfa.

We do 'stick notation' (ie the rhythms written in stick form with the solfa letters written underneath) dictations as well as staff notation ones.

We also do 'oral dictations' - ie singing back in solfa the melody played/hummed to you, then building this up phrase by phrase until you have worked out the solfa and memorised the whole piece - THEN you write it down!

In part dictations it is quite common to sing one line whilst the teacher plays the other - brilliant for polyphonic hearing as you are singing one thing but listening to another .

And of course there's plain rhythm dictations and solfa 'note chains' (no rhythm, just write the solfa letter for the sound you hear).

Kodály said a musician should be able to 'see what you hear and hear what you see'. I could never, in the Dark Ages when I did 'O' Level, do dictation to save my life - but, as with the other side of the coin (sight-singing), solfa has been my salvation and I am still SOOOO excited when I listen to a melody and I can hear it in solfa...

Yes we did 4 part dictation as well. I found it helped to be able to know what the chords were (e.g I,II,III etc). Also for one line dictation recognising intervals is important. in listening skills every lesson we do 10 intervals, 10 chords, 6 cadences, 4 modulations and 2 chord progressions and it really helps. Its also funny because everyone has there own songs they think of to work out the intervals

Its something my partner seems to have learnt how to do in whatever music saturday school he seems to have spent most of his life pre-Uni...

Seems the lucky few still get taught it!