Online dictionary usage skills and Word Choice Activities
Non-native speakers are typically very afraid of English to English
dictionaries. However, these can be a very important resource for developing
their facility with word choice. Here is a potential extra credit assignment that
you can extend to your non-native speakers.
So as not to provide disproportionate opportunities to these students, you
could covertly offer this as an alternative to a higher-level style activity assigned
for extra-credit to the rest of the class (the other students will understand that
non-native speakers have different needs).
The three word choice resources that follow can be used in the same manner,
as enrichment exercises for your non-native speakers. These assignments are
short but very helpful for non-native speakers. They can be used as additional
homework activities towards the beginning of term (provided that you require
your native speakers to do an additional assignment as well).
Using Online Dictionaries
Go to www.onelook.com
Type in the word “dog” and see how the following dictionaries define the word.
Then look through three more dictionaries and assess how useful each will be
for your purposes. Indicate which you think would be most useful for you.
Insert the definition of the
word here.
What kind of information does this
dictionary provide?
Is the definition easy to
understand?
Are there additional features
provided?
Webster’s 1828
Dictionary
American
Heritage
Cambridge
Dictionary of
American
English
malison
muffin top
speakeasy
denunciation
Does anything in the
definition of the word
suggest that it is not
appropriate for
academic writing?
Do you see slang,
informal or colloquial
(colloq.) next to the
word?
Do you see obsolete
(obs.) or archaic (arch.)
next to the word? (this
indicates that the word
is no longer used)
Is the word only found
in very few
dictionaries? (this
suggests that not many
dictionaries consider
this a word)
Use www.onelook.com to find the definitions of the following words. Then
determine whether the word is appropriate for academic writing. Write your
answers next to the words below.
Warning signs that will let you know that a word is not
appropriate for academic writing:
Using Visual Thesauruses
www.yourdictionary.com This thesaurus gives you different families of synonyms
and definitions of words. Click on the tabs at the top of the page to switch between
the dictionary and thesaurus.
www.visuwords.com This thesaurus shows a visual representation of synonyms
with related usages. You can use this guide to see the parts of speech (see the color
guide on the left) and the definitions of each synonym (hover your mouse over the
words to reveal these).
Look up the word “grow” in these thesauruses. Use what these two sites show you
about the different types of meanings for these words to determine a synonym for
“grow” in the sentences below. Be as specific as possible.
1. The number of tomatoes grew dramatically during the ten years that followed the
flood.
2. The old woman grew and ate only tomatoes for years before dying of
malnutrition.
3. The tomato grew into the largest of its kind, winning awards all over the
southeast.
4. The tomato she found had grown from seeds carelessly left behind the previous
year.
Using Online Corpuses
Go to www.americancorpus.org
Click on the chart button in the upper left corner of the screen. When you type in
the word “stuff,” you will find that this word is normally used in spoken English
rather than academic English.
Part 1: Look up the following phrases in the corpus. In what genres are these
phrases typically used?
spoken
fiction
magazine newspaper academic
a lot of
a significant number of
a great many
Part 2: Examining usage
1. Look up zeal in the dictionary and write down a definition.
In what contexts would you use this word?
Is it a positive word or a negative word?
2. Click on the “list” tab and then look up zeal* in the corpus. This will give you all
of the words that begin with this root. Click on the word zealots. This will show
you the different contexts where this word is found.
Does the word “zeal” have a similar definition, or are the meanings very different?
Is zealots a positive word or a negative word?
What is this word generally used to talk about?
What might you be discussing if you use this word?
Close reading revision exercise
Revise the following paragraph using the tools you have learned about to correct
word choice.
Jnana grew up in a trivial village in western India. She instructed herself to read
and spent most of her liberal time as a child reading books in the book store nigh
her house. After a turgid childhood, she decided to abandon home and attend
university. She went to Delhi and posing as a remunerating student, began
learning about the domain of organic chemistry. By the age of 20, Jnana had
created a cheap fertilizer that was to recast the farming practices in India.
Application exercise
It will be essential to indicate word choice issues in early papers that your nonnative students write so that they can practice with revising specific cases using
these tools. You can have them revise more generally (perhaps one paragraph at a
time) for word choice when they are in the final stages of revision.