TEACHER TRAINING WORKSHOP
January 21, 2006
KARI MILLER, Academic Coordinator, DLIC-CEC-EPN
“HOW DO YOU SAY…?” USING DICTIONARIES IN THE CLASSROOM
1. Introduction
2. Making it easier to find your way around the dictionary:
a. Explore the distribution of letters
b. Use guide words
c. Scan a dictionary page
3. Learning more about words:
a. Pronunciation
b. Learn about phrases/idioms/phrasal verbs
c. Expand on language by exploring collocations
4. Games and activities using dictionaries:
a. Sound it out!: Discuss words that are spelled differently from the way
they sound (i.e., knee, receipt, debt, listen, answer). Have students find
the phonetic spelling of these words using their dictionaries and then put
them on the board. Use the worksheet to expand on this topic. Students
may have great fun creating their own worksheet!
b. What’s the correct definition?: Divide the class into small groups. Give
each group unusual or uncommon words. Ask them to find the words in
the dictionary, and to copy down the most common definition. Then, ask
them to create two or three more false definitions for the word. (For
advanced students, they may even be able to use their words “falsely” in
the sentence, according to their definitions!) To play the game, groups
read their words and their definitions, and the other group tries to guess
which definition is the correct one.
c. Guide word sentences: Give students a list of words. Ask them to find
the words in the dictionary, and then to locate the guide words at the top of
the page (you may need to explain guide words). Next, have students
create sentences which include both guide words in them. Encourage the
students to be creative and to have fun with their sentences.
d. Picture Dictionaries: Ask students to find pictures of things they would
like to know the name of in English. Have them put their pictures together
and find the names and write them below. There are many variations of
this activity: Students can use a picture with many things in it, and label
the things they feel are most important, students can use their vocabulary
words by finding pictures that represent them. Remember that the pictures
and words could be ambiguous or intangible, such as pictures of happiness
or words like however or since. The idea is that students begin making
connections between words and images, which is what we do in real life.
e. Mining the dictionary for metaphors: Explain the difference between
metaphorical and literal meaning.
Collocations
Ask students to work in pairs or groups and list common adjectives that occur with the noun opportunity,
common verbs with the noun contract, and common adverbs with listen.
Ask students to open their dictionaries at the word conversation and find the four collocates that are listed
in the entry and then to write four sentences using these.
Phrasal Verbs
Get students to look up the phrasal verbs for stand in their dictionaries and ask questions such as:


How many different phrasal verbs does stand have?
How many senses are there for stand for?
Which sense of stand out means ‘to be much more impressive or important than others’?
Idioms/Phrases
In the entry for the noun heart, find the following:


a phrase that means ‘to decide that you want something very much’
a phrase that means ‘to not want to do something because it seems cruel’
a phrase that means ‘to upset someone very much, especially by showing them that you do not love
them’
Distribution of Letters
Hold a dictionary in front of you so that all the class can see it. Open it, and ask them to guess which
letter the book is open at. Try this a few times, then get them to do it in pairs.
You can also ask questions such as:




What do you think the first word in the dictionary is?
What is the last word?
Which letter starts the most words in English?
How many pages do you think it takes up in the dictionary?
This again helps them to locate more easily where they will find words.
Guide words
On the page lion to literally, which of the following words would you find?
liquid, literature, list, link, listen
Suggest two other words that should be on that page.
On the page sometime to soothe, which of the following words would not be there?
somehow, song, something, soon, sorry
When students are ready, ask them to compare their answers with the dictionary.
Pronunciation
Ask the class to work in teams and give each team three different words that they probably don’t know.
Ask each team to choose a word and write the word in three phonetic spellings, two of which are incorrect.
When they are ready, ask each team to say and write its word as if they all could be correct. The other
teams try to deduce or guess the correct pronunciation without using the dictionary.
Do the same activity but this time ask the teams to find three stress patterns for their word. Ask students
to find a word of three or more syllables. When they are ready, they write the word on the board, in
normal spelling, and then say each of the three pronunciations aloud. The other teams try to guess which
stress pattern is most probable, and check with their dictionaries.