- Dictionary Training with the Oxford Paravia
- Tips for Teachers
- Teach them how to fish
- Which Dictionary
- Playing with Words
An old Chinese saying says:
Give a person a fish, and you feed them for a day. Teach a person how to fish, and you feed them for a lifetime.
A teacher should teach students how to learn, together with what to learn. If we, for example, as EFL teachers, teach our students the translation of single words, we may help them understand the meaning of those words in a particular text, in one particular moment. But if we teach them dictionary skills they can apply and "reuse" what they have learned in any foreign language learning context as well as in many other contexts.
It is a fact that in Italian schools dictionary skills are often peripheral to the syllabus, not only for English, but for any modern language, mother tongue Italian included.
This is quite astonishing, if we consider that the "Can Do" statement developed by ALTE (Association of Language Testers in Europe) in relation to the reading ability for CEF level C2 is:
CAN make full and effective use of dictionaries for productive and receptive purposes.
With this essay we would like to offer teachers advice on how to introduce dictionaries and how to integrate dictionary work into the English class by exploiting the free on-line materials of Dictionary Training with the Oxford Paravia . We hope that this will eventually stimulate and encourage teachers to make up their own activities and formulate their own ideas, tips and suggestions based on the dictionary, in order to satisfy students' needs and encourage their motivation and competence.
Looking up a word in the dictionary is part of a learning strategy, as it requires specific and well-developed skills. The dictionary is a powerful learning and teaching tool, but we must get to know it. As RRK Hartmann says:
The human demand for information is extremely potent and diverse, but it can be satisfied only if the search strategies used are appropriate to the task, or, to put it the other way round, reference needs cannot be made if the proper skills are absent.
(Teaching and Researching Lexicography, 2001)
Before introducing the dictionary - in the present case the bilingual dictionary - to their class, teachers have to consider what reference skills their students already have. The amount of guidance and preparatory work necessary to help them get the most out of the dictionary will depend on this.
Introductory or "brainstorming" activities are necessary for "breaking the ice" before actually starting any dictionary training or work. This and all the following suggested activities are taken from Dictionary Training with the Oxford Paravia:
GETTING STARTED: YOUR NEEDS - Activity 1. [PDF - 28 Kb]
This activity will help ascertain the students' degree of "familiarity" with the dictionary and their attitude towards this kind of work
Of course their interest towards dictionaries should be stimulated. Let them have free access to them. Make dictionaries a familiar presence in the class. The class reference shelf should include different types of dictionary, at least a good bilingual dictionary and a monolingual learner's dictionary. Resort to dictionaries not only in the course of standard lessons, but also as arbiters in games or quizzes and for spare-minute activities.
In this way, students will soon realize that there isn't just one dictionary, and that different dictionaries have different characteristics and conventions. Knowing the terminology common to all dictionaries (wordlist, entry, homograph, etc.) and the characteristics peculiar to each dictionary is very important. However, a whole lesson dedicated to the structure of a dictionary - its typography, abbreviations, symbols, etc. - would perhaps be considered as "deadly" boring. It is better to introduce this kind of information gradually, while focusing on other activities. This is why Dictionary Training with the Oxford Paravia presents single features of the dictionary structure in each of the chapters dedicated to common language areas such as vocabulary, pronunciation, grammar, collocations or register.
Here are some examples of how to use this precious on-line resource.
This is a natural starting point for encouraging students to use the dictionary. It is used when they meet an unfamiliar word and so they recognize the need for help from this kind of reference work. In class they may be content to rely on the teacher for explanations, but being able to find things out independently is an essential part of language learning and learning autonomy.
At home, the dictionary may be the only source of help; in class, it can take some of the pressure off the teacher and provide relief from the all-too-familiar routine of: 1) students reading texts 2) teacher explaining new words 3) students writing them down.
The dictionary can easily be incorporated into many of the activities that can be done in the class, such as brainstorming, pre-reading or text-based tasks, as the following suggestions show.
ACTIVITIES FOR CLASSROOM USE: MEANING AND TRANSLATION [PDF - 80 Kb]
Level of difficulty 1: Activity 7
Level of difficulty 2: Activity 5, Activity 8, Activity 9
ACTIVITIES FOR CLASSROOM USE: LEXICAL NOTES [PDF - 32 Kb]
Level of difficulty 1: Activity 1, Activity 2
When the focus is on pronunciation, the bilingual dictionary need not sit on the shelf! It can help students deal with the phonetic alphabet, pronounce unfamiliar words correctly or spot BE or AE pronunciations. Activities such as those below can be adapted to suit a variety of levels and can be useful preparation for oral practice.
A good starting point might be to concentrate on some sounds, for example the easily confused vowel and consonant sounds or diphthongs.
Once students have become familiar with phonetic symbols and stress marks, they can even try to solve a crossword puzzle with rhyming words!
ACTIVITIES FOR CLASSROOM USE: PRONUNCIATION [PDF - 92 Kb]
Level of difficulty 1: Activity 1, Activity 10
Level of difficulty 2: Activity 2, Activity 3, Activity 5, Activity 11
Level of difficulty 3: Activity 12
Grammatical information is more essential for EFL learners than for native speakers. It is not surprising then that bilingual dictionaries and monolingual learner's dictionaries provide considerably more grammatical help than monolingual dictionaries for native speakers.
In the Oxford Paravia dictionary information on the grammar of words is indeed exhaustive.
First of all, a wide range of grammatical information is included in the entry itself. Both morphology (irregular plurals of nouns, plurals of nouns ending in -o , countable and uncountable nouns, irregular forms of verbs, doubling of the consonant in -ing forms, irregular comparatives and superlatives) and syntax (verb patterns, phrasal verb patterns, attributive adjectives) are taken into consideration.
Secondly, there are special grammar notes that appear at the beginning of the entries or next to them and are there to clarify or expand upon the more complex grammatical aspects of the words. They are primarily intended for people seeking to express themselves in a foreign language; thus, they are appropriately contrastive . These notes are really worth reading, and they represent valuable material for classroom use.
ACTIVITIES FOR CLASSROOM USE: GRAMMAR [PDF - 56 Kb]
Level of difficulty 2: Activity 4, Activity 5, Activity 6, Activity 7
ACTIVITIES FOR CLASSROOM USE: GRAMMAR NOTES [PDF - 92 Kb]
Level of difficulty 1: Activity 9
Level of difficulty 2: Activity 3
Level of difficulty 3: Activity 7
In English we can talk about a burning desire or a blazing argument , but we do not say * a blazing desire or * a burning argument . In English, somebody can be a heavy smoker , whereas in Italian you wouldn't say * un fumatore pesante , but un fumatore accanito or un forte fumatore .
These conventional word combinations are called collocations , and all languages have a number of them.
Expressions like these are perhaps easy to understand for a foreign learner, but not so easy to produce correctly. It often happens that there is interference from the mother tongue and collocational patterns may seem arbitrary or odd to the student. A learner who uses the wrong words for collocations like these may be understood, but he or she will not sound natural. Only familiarity can give non-native speakers the "feel" for the right word, and until they achieve this, the dictionary is the best source of help
The Oxford Paravia dictionary includes a large number of collocates. They are given mainly in square brackets, but also by means of examples, and can be used to identify the best translation for a word in a given context.
The following activities show one possible way to introduce collocations into the class.
ACTIVITIES FOR CLASSROOM USE: COLLOCATES AND COLLOCATIONS [PDF - 84 Kb]
Level of difficulty 1: Activity 6
Level of difficulty 2: Activity 1, Activity 4
Level of difficulty 3: Activity 3, Activity 8
Students are often confronted with choice about register: look like or resemble , ask for or request , go down or descend ? Many students often opt for a more formal word than is appropriate. They may feel that it is "safer" to remain on the side of formality, or, as their mother tongue is Latin-based, the more formal expressions, often of Latin origin, may seem more natural to them. On the other hand, some learners may have been exposed to English in informal situations and feel insecure when faced with the need to write a formal letter or report.
If mistakes and insecurities of this kind are common among your students, or if questions of style and register have arisen in your classroom, then the bilingual dictionary can be brought into the discussion and you can focus on the information it gives about register.
Once students realize how the dictionary can help them to choose more confidently among the various possibilities - thanks to register and style labels and relevant examples - they will be more inclined to make the dictionary part of their routine for choosing their words.
ACTIVITIES FOR CLASSROOM USE: REGISTER [PDF - 80 Kb]
Level of difficulty 2: Activity 4
Level of difficulty 3: Activity 2, Activity 3, Activity 5, Activity 7
These are just a few examples of how to use the bilingual dictionary in your class. We could go on, for example talking about the use of the dictionary for learning/teaching idiomatic expressions or phrasal verbs, for checking spelling and written work, for playing word games, and so on.
The dictionary is indeed an invaluable resource: it isn't just a huge "word container", but it is something that comes to life when we first start opening it, using it and interacting with it.
However, a dictionary is not a "holy book", but simply a tool . In order to exploit all the potentialities this tool offers you obviously have to learn how to use it. Hence the necessity of dictionary training.
Through dictionary training we can give students the possibility of acquiring important life skills such as identifying a problem, searching and finding a solution. We will make them into more responsible and autonomous learners.