Analysing and
teaching meaning (3)
SSIS Lazio - Lesson 3
prof. Hugo Bowles
January 2007
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Lesson 3 - part 1
Dictionaries and other resources
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The Criteria of a Dictionary
• Formal Criteria:
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A list of the headwords (entries)
Information about each headword
Functional Criteria
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A reference work (to provide information about
difficult technical words)
A storeroom for a language (to find out what once
existed and what exists today)
A code of law (to decide whether to accept or
reject regional, historical or social variants).
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Criteria regarding content
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Spelling
Lexical meaning
Word class
Pronunciation
Stress
Etymology
Collocations etc.
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The history of English Dictionaries
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1604: A Table Alphabetical; Robert Cawdrey
(2,500 words)
1616: English Expositor; John Bullokar
1623: English Dictionarie; Henry Cockeram
1656: New World of English Words; Edward
Phillips
1702: A New English Dictionary; John Kersey
(28,000 words)
1721: Universal Etymological English Dictionary;
Nathaniel Bailey (40,000 words)
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Dictionary
of the English
Language
1755
by Samuel Johnson
Two volumes
40,000 entries
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An American
Dictionary of the
English Language
1828
by Noah Webster
Two volumes
70,000 entries
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Oxford, Longman, and Collins

1928: Oxford English Dictionary (12
volumes, 15,487 pp., 252,200 entries)

1968: Longman’s English Larousse
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1987: Collins Cobuild English
Language Dictionary
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The Corpus Revolution:
Word-watching  Compiling a corpus

Corpus: A collection of written or
spoken materials.

The sources: magazine articles,
brochures, newspapers, lectures,
sermons, broadcasts, chapters on
novels, etc.
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The Survey of English Usage
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The first large corpus of English-language data,
compiled in the 1960s.
Directed by Randolph Quirk
Based at University College London
It consists of 1,000,000 words taken from 200 texts
of spoken and written materials.
The texts were transcribed by hand and stored on
index cards.
In the 1970s the spoken component was made
electronically available by Jan Svartvik of Lund
University
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Some important corpora

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The first computerized corpus: the Brown University
Corpus of American English, Providence, Rhode
Island, USA, in 1960s.
The Lancaster–Olso/Bergen (LOB) Corpus of British
English, in 1970s.
Collins–Birmingham University International
Language Database (COBUILD), in 1980s. The
corpus reached 20 million words.
Longman/Lancaster English Language Corpus, in
1980s, using both American and British English,
comprises 30 million words.
Bank of English (Birmingham University), started in
1991 and reached 450 million words in 2002.
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The British National Corpus
(BNC)
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A collaboration between Longman, Oxford
University Press, Chambers Harrap
(Oxford University Computing Service),
The University of Lancaster, and the
British Library.
Compilation from 1991 until 1994 = 100
million words. Particular attention has
been paid to the internal balance of the
corpus.
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The International Corpus of
English
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Based at the University College London
Began in 1980s
By 1991, 20 countries agreed to take part:
 Australia, Cameroon, Canada,
Caribbean, Fiji, Ghana, Hong Kong,
India, Ireland, Kenya, Malawi, New
Zealand, Nigeria, Philippines, Sierra
Leone, Singapore, South Africa,
Tanzania, UK, and USA.
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Types of dictionary (1)

Standard monolingual
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Learners monolingual
(usuall with pictures
andstudy guides)
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Thesaurus

Oxford, Longman,
Chambers, Webster
Oxford Advanced
Learners, Cambridge
International,
Longman Dictionary
of Contemporary
English
Roget, Longman
Lexicon
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Types of dictionary (2)

Bilingual (with
translation)
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Zanichelli, Garzanti
ecc.

Concept dictionaries
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Thematic dictionaries
(cuture, quotations)
Cambridge
Wordroutes, Word
Activators

Technical dictionaries
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Dictionary formats
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Book form - pocket/full-size
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Online
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CD-ROM
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Other sources of lexical
information
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Concordances
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Glossaries
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Parallel texts
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Learners dictionary advantages
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More information
- lexical, collocational, grammatical,
pronunciation
Better information
- based on language corpora of English in
use
Better learning
- written in English
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Learners dictionary disadvantages
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No translation

Very few technical words
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Bilingual dictionary advantages and disadvantages

DISADVANTAGES
gives a quick translation

can give a quick
misunderstanding
can give a quick
understanding

doesn’t help learning
processes

ADVANTAGES
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Collocation dictionaries,
concordances and glossaries
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The advantage of a collocation dictionary is to
find collocations which are not availablee in a
dictionary
A concordance from a corpus can also be used
to find collocations or new ways of expressing a
concept
Glossaries are compiled and used by specialists
and are only useful for translation students
working on advanced lexis
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Some advice

Choose a learners dictionary which really
helps your students’ lexical problems and
which you like using as a teacher

A good bilingual dictionary is also
extremely useful but make sure you use it
for translation only
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Lesson 3 - part 2
Using resources and materials
with students
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Knowing the meaning of a word
- what it implies for students
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Decoding and recognising the form
Understanding the meaning
Remembering the word
Producing the word
Using the word
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1. Decoding and recognising the
form

Read and relate written form to spoken
form

Listen to and identify a word
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Morphological understanding of roots and
affixes (word-formation)
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2. Understanding the meaning

what the word refers to
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the connotation of the word
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the style and register of the word

its discourse function
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3. Remembering the word
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Meaning (receptive)
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Form (productive)
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4. Producing the word
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Spoken form (pronunciation)
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Written form (spelling)
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5. Using the word
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Accurately (grammar, syntax)
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Appropriately (style register, collocation)
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Using a dictionary for reading
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Look at the context of the word
Use the context to decide on the grammar
of the word (is it a verb/noun?
Use the context to make a hypothesis
about the meaning
Use the dictionary to check your
hypothesis
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Using a dictionary for speaking
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Know the phonetic alphabet (i.e. you need
to be able to produce the sound of the
symbol)
Look up the phonetic spelling of a word
Produce the sound of the word by reading
the phonetic spelling or by listening
to/repeating the sound (CD/online
dictionaries)
Practice the word in isolation and in a
stream of speech
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Post-dictionary work
You need a system to help students record
and remember words:
 Alphabetical order
 Word maps
 Words organised by topics
 Different types of list (idioms, phonetic lists
of words with same sound)
 Lists with translations
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Dictionaries
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See the list and analysis of dictionaries
and software in the article on lexicography
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