Dictionaries - Part 2

[Pages:5]Teacher Development Pack

Dictionaries - Part 2

Dictionaries

Before reading `Dictionaries', complete the following tasks: ? What problems might students encounter when using a bilingual dictionary? ? What information would you expect to find in a good dictionary for students of English?

Now read Dictionaries. Does the author answer the questions in the same way as you did?

ELT Forum ? Dictionaries ? Part 2 ?2002 Pearson Education Ltd.

This extract originally published by

Dictionaries

by Scott Thornbury

from `How to Teach Vocabulary', Pearson Education 2002.

For a long time the use of dictionaries in class was discouraged, generally on the grounds that dependence on a dictionary might inhibit the development of more useful skills, such as guessing from context. Also, it was argued that if the dictionary is a bilingual one, learners may over-rely on translation, at the expense of developing a separate L2 lexicon. Finally, indiscriminate dictionary use often results in the kind of errors where the wrong word has been selected for the meaning intended. A student of mine, for instance, wrote a recipe for Close shave with pinenuts: the Spanish word rape has two English equivalents in the dictionary: monkfish (the intended meaning) and close shave (the unintended outcome). However, the role of dictionaries in vocabulary learning has been reassessed. As sources of words, and of information about words, they are unequalled. Nowadays, an excellent selection of learner dictionaries is available, and coursebooks regularly include activities designed to encourage resourceful and efficient dictionary use.

At this point, we need to distinguish between the different kinds of dictionary available. The first important distinction to make is between:

? bilingual dictionaries (e.g. a French?English, English?French dictionary), and ? monolingual dictionaries (e.g. English only)

On the whole, learners tend to favour bilingual dictionaries over monolingual ones. They

are easy to understand, and the time taken to refer to them only minimally interrupts reading or listening. More importantly, they are also useful for production ? for speaking and writing. For example, a German learner wanting to express the idea of Schlange but

not knowing its English equivalent (snake), would have no trouble finding the right word in a German?English dictionary. But where would he start with an English-only dictionary? Even if he had a vague idea that it began with an s, there are a lot of words beginning

with s to wade through before getting to snake. Nevertheless, bilingual dictionaries, especially the pocket or electronic ones that most students have, can be misleading, as we saw with close shave. By suggesting a one-to-

one match between L1 and L2 words, they often oversimplify matters. Here, for example, is how a pocket French?English dictionary deals with the word shed (which we met in the snake story on page 53):

shed1 shed2

(Sed) n hangar m. remise f. (Sed) vt jeter, r?pandre

As it happens, if you consult the entries for jeter and r?pandre in the same dictionary, you will find that neither give shed as an equivalent. So, while the dictionary may be of some use in helping the learner understand shed when the word is encountered in a text, it gives no guidance that would help the same learner produce shed when engaged in a writing task, for example. A further distinction can be made between

? native speakers' dictionaries, and ? learners' dictionaries

The latter use a restricted vocabulary for their definitions. They also include data that is of particular use for learners, such as grammar information ? e.g. whether a noun is countable or not, or whether a verb is followed by the infinitive or the -ing form. The better

ELT Forum ? Dictionaries ? Part 2 ?2002 Pearson Education Ltd.

This extract originally published by

learner dictionaries also include advice for learners that is based on an analysis of typical learner errors. On the right, for example, is a note on how actually is used: Another distinction is between dictionaries that are organised:

? alphabetically, or ? according to meaning categories

A reference book organised according to meaning categories is generally classed as a thesaurus. For example, in the Cambridge Word Selector series, words are organised not alphabetically but according to shared or similar meanings. Unlike a conventional thesaurus, only a limited number of words are included in each category, and definitions are provided in the learner's L1. Here, for example, is an entry from the Catalan version of the Word Selector: A meaning-based organisation is particularly useful for production, that is, for preparation for speaking or writing tasks, since it allows the learner to search for the exact word to represent an intended meaning. For example, a learner wanting to find an appropriately idiomatic expression to express the general idea that `Teachers should "be modern" in their knowledge of teaching methods' would first look up modern (English) or modern (Catalan) in the book's index. This leads to the appropriate section where the student would not have to look far to find the expression keep up-to-date, so as to produce `Teachers should keep up-to-date with teaching methods'. A similar principle governs the organisation of both the Oxford Learner's Wordfinder Dictionary and the Longman Language Activator. For example, the Activator (dubbed `the world's first production dictionary') is based on around 1,000 `key words', which together comprise `the basic meanings of the core of English' (or a core vocabulary ? see page 21). Organised under each key word is a `menu' of words and phrases with related meanings. Unlike the Word Selector, the Activator is monolingual. Here, for example, is how the Activator deals with modern: Picture dictionaries, because they are thematically organised, are another kind of meaning-based dictionary, and are particularly useful in that they group together words of the same lexical field. Their limitation is, of course, that they are restricted to things or actions that can be illustrated. But for younger learners they are ideal. Finally, there are those learner dictionaries that have specialised functions, such as dictionaries of business English, dictionaries of idioms, of collocations, of phrasal verbs, and pronunciation dictionaries. (See the further reading list on page 183 for specific titles.) What sort of information does a dictionary provide? Below, for example, is the entry for shed from the Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English. * Note, first of all, that there are two homonyms that have the form shed, and that these two different meanings are listed separately as shed1 and shed2. Pronunciation is supplied, using phonemic script (Sed). Grammatical information follows, including part of speech (n, v), the fact that the noun is countable [C] and the verb is transitive [T], as well as the verb's inflexions (shed, shedding). Both entries are further sub-divided into their different polysemes, e.g. shed1 1 a small building ... and 2 a large industrial building ... In the case of the verb shed, different meanings are signposted in capital letters for ease of reference. Definitions are written in easy-to-understand language, and examples are included that are chosen to display the word's meaning as well as its grammatical behaviour. Common collocations are included: shed light on, shed blood, etc. Links to derived forms are also signalled, as in see also bloodshed. Register and style information is also included, where relevant. Thus, shed tears is marked as being literary while shed its load is British usage. Finally, frequency information is added in the margin: S 3 means that the noun shed is in the 2,000?3,000 band in terms of frequency in spoken English (S = spoken). A word marked as W 1 , on the other hand, would be in the top thousand words of written English (W = written). A word marked W 2 would be in the next thousand, and so on.

ELT Forum ? Dictionaries ? Part 2 ?2002 Pearson Education Ltd.

This extract originally published by If we compare this information with the map of what is involved in knowing the word tangi (see page 16), it is clear that all the relevant linguistic information is supplied by the dictionary. Of course, the less linguistic, more encyclopedic, information is missing: the iconic role of the garden shed in suburban British culture is not even hinted at. For this kind of information we would need to consult a dictionary of culture. For example: ... In Britain people generally choose to sit in the back garden, out of view of other people. The back garden usually also has a lawn and flower beds, and sometimes a vegetable plot or fruit trees. There is often a bird table (= a raised platform on which food is put for birds) and a shed in which garden tools are kept. (from the Oxford Guide to British and American Culture, OUP)

ELT Forum ? Dictionaries ? Part 2 ?2002 Pearson Education Ltd.

Teacher Development Pack

Now that you have read Dictionaries, complete the following tasks: Explain the mistake made by the author's student (Close shave with pinenuts) ? What data, in the author's opinion, is of particular use for learners? ? What kind of dictionaries can be used as production dictionaries? ? What information is given in the example entry for `shed'? ? What kind of information could you expect to find in a dictionary of culture?

ELT Forum ? Dictionaries - Part 2 ? 2002 Pearson Education Ltd

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