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Dictionary activities: Getting started with dictionaries

Level:	All levels
Language:	British and American English
Getting to know your dictionary worksheet (with key) (PDF: 44 KB) Using words appropriately worksheet (with key) (PDF: 22 KB) Travel quiz worksheet (with key) (Word: 15 KB)

Before you use a monolingual learner's dictionary with your class, what should you consider?

• Choose the right level. It is possible to use a learner's dictionary at all levels of language learning, but it is important to choose a dictionary which is appropriate for your class in terms of the level of the language of definitions and examples and in its coverage of the kinds of words that they will need.
• Consider what study/dictionary skills your students already have. Some students may be quite familiar with dictionaries in their own language, or with bilingual dictionaries; others may have very limited reference skills. The amount of guidance and preparatory work necessary to help them get the most out of their dictionaries will depend on this.
• Read the introduction to the dictionary and familiarize yourself with the conventions, abbreviations, etc. used.
• Encourage your students to explore their dictionary so that they discover what information is available, how to find what they're looking for, and how to use it correctly when they find it.

The alphabet

Especially – but not only! – for students whose first language does not use the Roman alphabet, a good knowledge of the alphabet is the first step to finding your way around the dictionary quickly and easily. Here are some ideas of ways to practise alphabetical order in class:

• Students stand in a line, beginning with the student whose name begins with, say, an A or a B and ending with the student whose name comes last in the alphabet.
• Dictate 5 or 6 words to the class, divided into two teams. One student from each team comes to the board and they race to write the words up in alphabetical order.
• Write words on the board beginning with every letter in the alphabet, and go round the class, each student saying a word in the correct order.
• Play the 'I went shopping and I bought' game, in groups or as a whole class. The first student begins 'I went shopping and I bought an apple' (or anything they can think of beginning with A). The next student repeats 'I went shopping and I bought an apple and a banana' (or anything else they choose beginning with B). The game continues with each student repeating the whole sentence and adding a new item beginning with the next letter of the alphabet.
• Give a word as the 'dividing line' and then call out or write up a series of words. The students must say whether each word comes before or after the 'dividing line'. For example, the word like is given as the divider. Do the following come before or after the divider: some, come, van, lemon, mouse, ice, glass, love? This could be done as a group activity, with half the class as the 'befores' and half as the 'afters'. When a word is called out, the correct side should quickly claim it (to get a point). Points can be deducted for claiming a word that does not belong on your side, or for failing to claim a word within a specified time (e.g. 5 seconds).
• Give students some jumbled sentences such as those below and ask them to rearrange the words in alphabetical order so that the sentences make sense: supper is brilliant a preparing chef met has Peter's just Bernard's wife cousin
• Or, to make it more difficult, ask students to rearrange the words in reverse alphabetical order: help shouldn't why I Christine ? Steve address phone tell number Sandra's and
• Give students some jumbles which spell words when the letters are arranged in alphabetical order. This will help them to think about alphabetical order right through the word, not just for the first letter. tryid, malsot, wolf, enbig, yopc, nwok

Key

A brilliant chef is preparing supper.

Bernard's cousin has just met Peter's wife.

Why shouldn't I help Christine?

Tell Steve Sandra's phone number and address.

Dirty, almost, flow, begin, copy, know

Getting to know your dictionary

This activity aims to introduce the layout and features of the dictionary. It uses a worksheet from the Oxford Elementary Learner's Dictionary, but you can make a similar worksheet from any dictionary.

• Give each student a copy of the 'Getting to know your dictionary' worksheet, and ask them to match the descriptions on the right with the dictionary terms on the left. You could do the first one as an example.
• When students have finished, check their answers.
• Then students look at the extract from the dictionary and identify which sort of information is highlighted in each case.
• After checking answers, ask students to open up their dictionaries and try to find an example of each of the categories. Ask if they found anything which didn't fit into one of the categories.

Travel quiz

quiz is a fun and practical way of making students aware of the type of information that is contained in a monolingual dictionary. You can write your own questions, perhaps based around a topic that the students will be studying.
The 'Travel quiz' we offer, for example, is based on the theme of travel, and involves looking at definitions, grammar patterns, cross-references, phrasal verbs, collocations, phonetics, idioms, opposites, synonyms, US English and derivatives.

• To keep the quiz lively, have students in teams of two, and allow them only a short time (say, 30 seconds) to write the answer to each question.
• You could read out the questions in the students' L1 and/or English, depending on how good their listening is.

Finding the right sense

Inexperienced dictionary users often do not realize that the meaning they are looking for may not be the first sense covered, or may be in a different part of the entry, or even in a separate entry. This activity will help them to get used to the different parts of an entry and train them to check to see if the meaning they have found corresponds to the context.

• Using a dictionary which is suitable for upper-intermediate level, the students should look up the words listed below.
• They should then try to find which sense corresponds to the example given. Remind them that the word they are looking for may have more than one part of speech (for example, water can be a noun or a verb), or may be divided into separate entries marked with homonym numbers (for example tear1, tear2).
• They should then write down the sense number and, where appropriate, the part of speech and the homonym number.

Using words appropriately

A good learner's dictionary will give a lot of information about how words should be used.

Labels may tell users that words express a particular attitude, are appropriate only in particular situations or have their use restricted in some other way.

It is important that users become familiar with the labels in their dictionary and understand how this information should affect the way they use new English vocabulary.

The 'Using words appropriately' worksheet which uses the labels from the Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary will help them:

• Jumble up a list of labels and their meanings.
• Ask students to match the labels with their meanings.
• Then show students a list of words and ask them to decide which label the words are likely to have in a dictionary and to write them under the appropriate heading. You could choose words that your students have met recently, but make sure that their use is restricted in some way.
• Finally ask students to try to think of at least one more word that might need each of the labels. They can check in the dictionary to see if they are right.

Related title

Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary

Source

Oxford Teacher’s Club:
http://www.oup.com/elt/teachersclub/articles/dictionary_topic1?cc=gb