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Dictionary activities: Introducing new vocabulary

Level:	All levels
Language:	British and American English	From meaning to word worksheet (with key) (PDF: 20 KB)

This is a natural starting-point for encouraging your students to use dictionaries, since it is when they meet an unfamiliar word that they most readily recognize the need for help from an outside source.

In class they may be content to rely on you for explanations, but being able to find things out independently is an essential part of language learning. At home the dictionary may be their only source of help; in class, it can take some of the pressure off you and provide relief from the all-too-familiar routine of students reading text - teacher explaining new words - students writing them down.

The dictionary can easily be incorporated into many of the activities that you would do as pre-reading, pre-listening or text-based tasks, as the suggestions given below show.

Treasure hunt

An activity that builds vocabulary and develops study skills, by getting students used to consulting their dictionaries.

• Choose a number of topics (e.g. animals, sports, jobs, describing people, food or drink, furniture) and ask students to draw a group of circles with a topic in each one. If you prefer, you could let students choose some of the topics.
• Students work in pairs. You say a letter of the alphabet. Each pair must look in their dictionary to find one word beginning with that letter in each category. Encourage them to look for new words that they think other students may not know either.
• Impose a time limit of about 15-20 minutes (depending on the number of categories) and ask each pair to report back. Record all the words in large circles on the board for the whole class to copy.
• For each correct word (and they must spell it correctly too) pairs get one point, and if they have found a word that nobody else has got they get two points. Any new words must be explained to the rest of the class.

Guessing and explaining

• Before giving the students a text which contains a number of new vocabulary items, give them a list of the words and a list of definitions from the dictionary. Ask them to try to match the words with the definitions, first by guessing from clues such as the part of speech, associations with known words, breaking down words with affixes, etc. Once they have made their 'educated guesses' they should check in the dictionary.
• Alternatively, divide the class into groups and give each group some of the new vocabulary items that will occur in a text to be dealt with in class. Let them check meanings and pronunciation in the dictionary and pre-teach the words to the other groups. Giving a general context for the text will enable students to choose the most likely meaning for words that have several senses.
• You could ask students to prepare part of a text for homework with the help of the dictionary. Encourage them to look at contextual clues, before they use the dictionary, so that their search is better informed. Make them think about how they present new vocabulary in 'their' section of the text to the rest of the class. Could they draw a picture, or use mime? Does the dictionary have useful example sentences that they could quote to the rest of the class?

Categories

• Give each student a list of the new words you want to introduce. If the word has more than one sense, give an example sentence including the sense of the word you wish to present.
• Tell the students to look the words up in their dictionaries and put the new words into two categories according to whether the words have positive or negative associations for them. This should be based purely on personal feeling, and there is no 'right' or 'wrong' answer. Here are some examples of the kinds of words you might give: thunder, memory, stubborn, dentist, rollercoaster, competition, deadline, gossip, fast food, technology.
• When everyone has finished, ask students to mingle, compare their lists and explain their choices to each other.

Alternatively, you could tell students to divide the words into the two categories of their choice.

From meaning to word

• On the board or an OHT write a list of definitions of the new words and the words themselves with every other letter blank.
• Working in pairs, students have to complete the words and match them with the definitions.
• To help, and also to familiarize students with the phonetic alphabet, you can give the pronunciation of the words, with alternate symbols blanked out.

Predicting what a text is about

• Before the class, prepare two short texts, A and B, which contain vocabulary your students will not be familiar with. The texts should be either totally unrelated or, to make the exercise more difficult, related in some way.
• Extract the new words from the two texts and write them on the board or an OHT in random order so that the students cannot tell which text they come from.
• Tell them the words come from two different texts and they have to use their dictionaries to find out the meanings of the words and separate them into the two groups. If they need extra help you can give them the titles of the texts.
• They should then try to predict the content of the two texts.
• Finally, give the students the two texts, which they should be able to read without difficulty.

Here are two example texts, with the words you might want to extract in bold:

Industry in Britain

Important industries in Britain today include gas and oil production from the North Sea, engineering, pharmaceuticals, textile manufacture, food processing, electronics, tourism and insurance. Along the coasts fishing is an important source of income. Coal mining is now much less widespread than before. Much of the coal produced is used in power stations to generate electricity. The main centres of the steel industry are in South Wales, northern England and the Midlands. Factories are often located together on an industrial estate on the edge of a town. Many service industries are still based in or near London, but modern telecommunications have allowed companies to move to places where rents are cheaper and there are people needing jobs. (from the Oxford Guide to British and American Culture)

The countryside

The countryside of Britain is well known for its beauty and many contrasts: its bare mountains and moorland, its lakes, rivers and woods, and its long, often wild coastline. Many of the most beautiful areas are national parks and are protected from development. When British people think of the countryside they think of farmland, as well as open spaces. They imagine cows or sheep in green fields enclosed by hedges or stone walls, and fields of wheat and barley. Most farmland is privately owned but is crossed by a network of public footpaths. Many people associate the countryside with peace and relaxation. They spend their free time walking or cycling there, or go to the country for a picnic or a pub lunch. (from the Oxford Guide to British and American Culture)

Call my bluff

• Students work in teams of three.
• Give each team two different words that are new to the whole class. The team members work together to write three alternative definitions for each word. One of the definitions is the real one and the other two are invented.
• When they have prepared their definitions two teams play against each other. Team A's word is given and each team member must read out one of the definitions, doing their best to convince Team B that they are giving the real definition. Team B must try to guess which definition is the correct one. If Team B guess correctly they get a point, if Team A manage to fool them they get a point.
• To avoid confusion it is a good idea to reinforce the correct meanings of the new words with a follow-up activity, for example a simple matching words and definitions exercise, or asking students to write sentences using the new words.

Related title

Oxford Guide to British and American Culture

Source

Oxford Teacher’s Club:
http://www.oup.com/elt/teachersclub/articles/dictionary_topic2?cc=gb