[ELTWeekly Volume 6, Issue 24 | September 29, 2014 | ISSN 0975-3036]
Hi everyone,
I just found an interesting discussion on the usage of dictionaries in the classroom.
The topic of the survey / discussion is:
How do you use dictionaries in your classroom? Do your students use dictionaries to look up the meanings of words only or do you do other activities based on using dictionaries? Tell us about the activities you do with dictionaries in your classroom.
In response to the above question, more than 200 teachers from across the glove have submitted their feedback.
It will be interesting for you to discover the views and actions of your fellow teachers from different nations.
I teach at a level where taking a dictionary to a class is not necessary. But I have used dictionaries extensively and as a teacher educator, I offer courses on using dictionaries in the classroom. I suggest techniques on making the learners get used to the structure and layout of the dictionary; understand its various aspects and uses and build exercises to provide practice in using monolingual learner dictionaries. I also introduce to them different types of dictionaries such as activators, thesauruses, reverse dictionaries, lexicons and find out which is better. Of late, I have encouraged my students to get to using online dictionaries and in turn make their students become aware of these resources. Dictionary is an excellent self learning resource.
Dear Sir,
Thank you very much for adding you valuable inputs to the article.
I hope you are doing great!
Tarun
I have been teaching the skill of writing for about 10 years. I have noticed that the students are not able to use dictionaries correctly. they usually depend totally on using Arabic dictionary without using English one, In my opinion, using dictionaries in the class can be influential, especially to show them how words can be used in different contexts, but in Libyan schools it will be somehow difficult because of the large number of the students in the class and the limited time devoted for each lesson, in fact, I usually encourage my students to use different dictionaries at home